Sneak Peek: InDesign CS3

Adobe uncharacteristically takes the wraps off new features of InDesign CS3--a year early.

This week, Adobe pre­sent­ed select­ed mem­bers of the press with sneak peeks at upcom­ing products–and per­mis­sion to pub­lish that infor­ma­tion. Still near­ly a year until the release of Creative Suite 3, per­mis­sion to pub­lish about fea­tures such as those you’ll read below is unprece­dent­ed from the com­pa­ny near­ly as famous for it’s strict­ly enforced “no com­ment about unan­nounced soft­ware” pol­i­cy as for the soft­ware itself.

My esteemed col­league, David Blatner, beat me to press with an overview of the InDesign CS3 fea­tures we were both shown. Read David’s post on the new InDesignSecrets blog, but return here to fill in the details of InDesign CS3’s Object Effects, attribute-level trans­paren­cy, and vast­ly improved con­tent place­ment features.

In my brief­ing with Adobe’s Chad Siegel, senior prod­uct man­ag­er InDesign and InCopy, I learned about the new fea­tures (includ­ing things I can’t yet tell you), and, more impor­tant­ly, actu­al­ly saw them in use. Unfortunately, because the user inter­face of InDesign is still very much open to change, screen­shots are not allowed. You’ll have to take my word that these fea­tures work.

Multi-Asset Place

Among the most tedious and time-consuming tasks in page lay­out is plac­ing assets–external images and text. In pri­or ver­sions, InDesign eased the process by allow­ing drag-and-drop of images and tex­tu­al files from the desk­top, Mac Finder, Windows Explorer, Bridge, and oth­er file- or asset-managing sys­tems. Images, for exam­ple, could be dropped into InDesign en masse by drag­ging from Bridge; those images would all drop into the same loca­tion in the doc­u­ment, to be posi­tioned lat­er. It saved some time, but not as much as the new multi-asset place.

Instead of choos­ing a sin­gle exter­nal file via File > Place, in CS3 you’ll be able to select an entire fold­er full all at once. Doing that, loads the place cur­sor with all of those files, ready to be placed sequen­tial­ly. The cur­sor will show a count of the lined up assets, and a live pre­view of the next one on deck. Previews show thumb­nails for to-be-placed images and the first few words of tex­tu­al assets like Word doc­u­ments. Clicking in a pre-existing frame or draw­ing a new one places the first asset and loads the next into the batter’s box. It’s real­ly some­thing to see, and makes fill­ing a lay­out with assets fast and smooth.

Frame Fitting Options

Working along­side the multi-asset place is anoth­er fore­head smack­er: Frame Fitting Options. Instead of one at a time set­ting the crop­ping amount or fit­ting style of images placed in InDesign CS3, you’ll be able to define a default fit­ting style–none, Fit Content to Frame, Fit Content Proportionally, or Fit Frame Proportionally. After set­ting the option, every sub­se­quent­ly placed image (or frame) will auto­mat­i­cal­ly fit its frame (or con­tent) to match your set­ting. When plac­ing a selec­tion of images that require crop­ping, four-way crop mea­sure­ment box­es also allow you to pre­set how much to chop off the top, bot­tom, left, or right, and from which ref­er­ence point the crop­ping should occur.

Attribute-Level Transparency

Although we won’t see Illustrator’s Appearance palette in InDesign CS3, we will see the foun­da­tion for it in sep­a­rate trans­paren­cy and blend­ing mode con­trol for a frame’s fill, stroke, and con­tent. In the revamped Transparency palette, each frame or object now has selec­table entries for all three, which can be indi­vid­u­al­ly tar­get­ed and adjust­ed with the opac­i­ty slid­er. The back­ground col­or of a text frame, for instance, can be set to 50% trans­par­ent while the text itself remains com­plete­ly opaque. Even bet­ter, each attribute can have its own blend­ing mode inde­pen­dent of, or in con­junc­tion with, an over­all object blend­ing mode that effects the fill, stroke, and con­tent simul­ta­ne­ous­ly. For exam­ple, con­sid­er a plac­ing an image inside a col­ored frame, and set­ting the image blend mode to Screen such that it blends with its own con­tain­er, and then, in a com­pound­ed effect, the con­tain­er and its con­tent is blend­ed into oth­er page objects with an Overlay mode.

Each attribute entry in the Transparency palette lists its blend mode and opac­i­ty per­cent­age, so you’ll nev­er be left won­der­ing what you or your pre­de­ces­sor did to achieve that mar­velous (or hideous) effect.

Photoshop Effects

In addi­tion to inde­pen­dent trans­paren­cy and blend­ing mode con­trol, object fills, strokes, and con­tent will each have access to Photoshop effects.

In a dia­log vir­tu­al­ly iden­ti­cal to Photoshop’s Layer Styles, InDesign CS3’s Transparency Effects dia­log enables Drop Shadow, Inner Shadow, Outer Glow, Inner Glow, Bevel and Emboss, Satin, Basic Feather, Gradient Feather, and an all new Directional Feather for objects. Like Photoshop’s Layer Styles, Transparency Effects lists the com­pound­able effects in sep­a­rate panes with all the options one might expect–including Photoshop’s intu­itive angle dial, an alti­tude mea­sure­ment box, and a glob­al light option. Each object attribute has an inde­pen­dent list of effects. There are iden­ti­cal effects avail­able for the entire object and indi­vid­u­al­ly its stroke, fill, and content.

During the demon­stra­tion, Transparency Effects were used to bev­el and emboss just the stroke of a text frame, leav­ing the fill and text flat. Then, the frame was resized to show a smooth and instan­ta­neous redraw of the object and its effects. Once applied, Transparency Effects do not hin­der mod­i­fi­ca­tion of the object. In fact, the effects may be removed or them­selves mod­i­fied, and they can even be instant­ly copied to oth­er objects.

Again tak­ing a cue from Photoshop, when Transparency Effects are applied to objects or attrib­ut­es in InDesign CS3, their entries on the Transparency palette dis­play a styl­ized f icon. That icon can be dragged from one attribute to another–say, from the fill to the stroke–to move or copy the effects from one to anoth­er. In a stroke of pro­duc­tiv­i­ty genius, the f icon can also be dragged to oth­er objects on the page, instant­ly apply­ing effects to those. Styling an entire spread of objects will take seconds!

Object Styles, of course, now track the new fea­tures, but the drag-and-drop method is even faster when work­ing with just a few objects on the same spread.

These effects–and many more to come–are enabled by the inclu­sion of what Adobe called a â€œheadless ver­sion of Photoshop” in the InDesign code. In terms clos­er to layman’s, large sec­tions of Photoshop CS3 func­tion­al­i­ty are being pulled into InDesign CS3 by includ­ing the actu­al code writ­ten by the Photoshop team rather than via the hit-or-miss emu­la­tion we’ve often seen used in the past to bring fea­tures of point prod­uct into another.

Tidbits

Of course, InDesign CS3 and all of the Creative Suite 3 will be Universal Binaries for Intel-based Macs, and will be Vista-optimized for Windows. In fact, the cur­rent builds of the appli­ca­tions are already run­ning on these platforms!

At the same time Adobe showed us InDesign CS3, they pre­viewed a new tech­nol­o­gy, code-named “Apollo” to Publish​.com. You can read about that here.

Renewed Commitment

The point of attribute-level trans­paren­cy and effects is, of course, doing more with live, editable objects in InDesign with­out the need to import Illustrator or Photoshop art­work. Although Adobe promis­es a much tighter inte­gra­tion between the Creative Suite point products–including those brought into the fold by the Macromedia acquisition–there is an equal focus on refin­ing the line between appli­ca­tions. Each iter­a­tion of the major appli­ca­tions have brought clos­er rela­tions and con­tent shar­ing between them, but Adobe is also try­ing to find the right mix of what each appli­ca­tion should do native­ly. How much should InDesign do inter­nal­ly before requir­ing the assis­tance of Illustrator or Photoshop, is a key ques­tion asked through­out the ongo­ing devel­op­ment of InDesign CS3. From what I’ve seen so far, Adobe is com­ing up with some excel­lent answers to that question.

In addi­tion to show­ing off some cool fea­tures we’ll def­i­nite­ly see when InDesign CS3 ships in the 2nd quar­ter of 2007, Adobe made it clear that they have big plans for the future of publishing–in all media. Although the details are still hush hush, look for some tru­ly amaz­ing ideas to arise from the com­bi­na­tion of Macromedia tech­nol­o­gy and Adobe inge­nu­ity. Although Macromedia walked away from print pub­lish­ing work­flows, Adobe has found new ways to use their tech­nol­o­gy to the ben­e­fit of print pub­lish­ing, as well as, of course, to Web, motion, and mobile publishing.

Although all my ques­tions couldn’t be answered at this ear­ly date (it’s still Adobe, after all), I’m excit­ed about what I’ve seen so far. And, cool as they are, the InDesign CS3 fea­tures aren’t half as entic­ing as what Adobe won’t let me say… Yet.

Note: The “InDesign CS3” logo at the top of this arti­cle is an artist’s ren­di­tion, and is not relat­ed to Adobe’s planned InDesign CS3 brand­ing in any way. Illustration by Vadim Litvak