Review: Adobe Indesign CS3 DTP software

Adobe’s Indesign is gradually making some progress in challenging Quark Xpress’ stranglehold on the professional DTP market, and this latest version is well equipped to attract even more new users.

Indesign’s layout and typographic tools are certainly impressive, but its greatest strength is probably the fact that it is part of the wider Adobe product range.

The common interface design means that Indesign will feel instantly familiar to users of Photoshop and other Adobe software. You can also use Adobe’s Bridge file browser to quickly insert multiple graphics and other elements into your Indesign layouts.

More importantly, this latest version of Indesign includes a number of graphics tools that come straight out of Illustrator and Photoshop. There’s a powerful new transparency tool, along with effects such as bevel, emboss, and glow. These effects can also be saved as part of a style that can be used in other projects.

The Styles feature has also been extended so that you can apply text and graphic formatting to spreadsheets or tables imported from Excel or Word. There are some nice interface touches as well that can further speed up the design process.

You can customise palette layouts, and the commands shown in the various pull-down menus, and then save these as custom workspaces.

You can even bypass the traditional menu structure altogether using the Quick Apply palette. This is a real timesaver that enables you to type in a word such as ‘shadow’ in order to instantly activate the drop-shadow tool, rather than having to locate the tool in a palette or menu.

Quark Xpress certainly isn’t going to just roll over and die, but Indesign CS3 is a worthy competitor and the ability to buy it as part of a suite that contains Photoshop, Illustrator and Acrobat will make it particularly tempting for many designers.