Adobe InDesign

An official introduction is not necessary when it comes to an Adobe-developed application. Their capabilities are almost limitless. You can use them for anything, from personal projects to professional, industry standard designs. If a magazine's layout is your responsibility, you can find and use a wide variety of specialized applications, but Adobe InDesign is among the few programs which provide professional-grade tools for designing any type of publication. The recently released CS6 version gives you a better grip over your contents and it makes it easier to make the necessary preparations, to export your documents in various layouts.

It takes a considerable amount of time to install a program from the Adobe suite, due to its large setup package. For example, InDesign's package is 1.28 GB. The good news is that you can download and install the Adobe Download Assistant. It displays the available Adobe applications neatly organized in separate categories and you just need to select a language and click a Download option, next to the application you are looking for. The assistant will download and install the program right away.

At a first glance, you will notice that InDesign CS6 provides the same core functionality as the previous versions. Its guide lines, content snapping features, the possibility of importing layers from Photoshop and other helpful functions are still there. Text, images and other contents can be inserted as separate elements, on different layers, if you want to and you may perform numerous editing tasks on individual items. You can add drop shadows, set different transparency levels, effects and much more.

InDesign's new collector and placer tools are ideal for copying and pasting one or more items to another page, in the same document or to a different project. After selecting the collector tool, on the left side of the interface, you may copy multiple items, one by one, just by clicking them. When you collect items, they will appear as thumbnails, on a horizontal panel, called a conveyor. The placer tool can be selected on the same conveyor and you can insert the collected items by clicking or clicking and dragging anywhere in your document. Depending on what options you select when you insert the collected options, the software may or may not keep them on the conveyor. Additionally, you may click an option on the conveyor to collect a selection, all items from one or all pages and so on.

A unique addition is the software's liquid layout function and the possibility of creating alternate layouts. Creating different layouts for the same documents can be tedious work, but InDesign can solve this issue. When creating an alternate layout, you can define your own width and height or select a preset, as if you were starting a new project. Additionally, you can choose a liquid page rule, to adapt your contents to the new layout. Depending on your selection, InDesign will adapt your contents, based on smart guides or objects, it will re-center them or scale them. You can also select a few options, on the same window, to copy text styles to a new group, link stories or to enable a smart text reflow function.

InDesign makes it possible to create interactive PDF documents as well. While designing your document, you can turn any object into a button, check box, a check list and more. Once converted, you can assign numerous actions to that object, like going to a different page or a web site, printing and many others. This can be helpful if you want to create forms, which should be filled out.