Introduced in 1999, this year marks the 20th anniversary of Adobe InDesign and since then the industry has changed forever. When introduced, InDesign brought a new revolution in digital desktop publishing. Publishing became easily accessible to the masses. Companies can effortlessly design layouts, and publish content on their own.
Since its inception, we have come a long way. Though this DTP software wasn’t the first to offer solutions in digital publishing but it offered the industry first innovations to many creative professionals. At that time, InDesign was the first software that allowed the publishers to work with the object transparency. This might be common for us now, but this was one of the most spectacular features of that time. In 2001, MacWorld published InDesign highlighting the impact of this option, they mentioned: “The most impressive feature in the coming InDesign update is object transparency. It lets you change the opacity of anything on your page—text, boxes, or pictures.”
Before this, QuarkXPress has established itself as a trustworthy brand name in desktop publishing. However, it wasn’t able to match the ease, friendly user interface and tools provided by Adobe InDesign. It was in 2003 when Adobe launched its bundle of designing software with Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign3.0 and Acrobat with extremely competitive pricing strategies.
This bundle helps in the establishment of InDesign in the industry and since then, this DTP software has dominantly taken over Quark and there was no looking back from then. Adobe has released the updated version of InDesign CC this year and the upgrade has brought significant changes in the interface of the software along with the addition of several relevant properties.
InDesign has become an essential software for designers to learn. With variety of Graphic design courses available you can go choose which fits you the best.
Let us look at the features that helps InDesign to rule and stand firmly in the desktop publishing industry till now :-
1. Properties Panel
Being a multi-page publishing design software, this DTP software offers tons of options to apply formatting to objects and text. People who InDesign often know that they have a full Control as well as Character panel to make formatting in the text but with the latest update, adobe has brought another panel for you – Property Panel.
Considering the ease, Adobe found that it can be really tiring for new beginners or people who use it less to work with a plethora of formatting dialog boxes. So, they came up with a new property panel that will show only relevant commands and will change itself according to what you have selected. For example, if you are making changes in the text, the panel automatically shows the text properties like character setting, text style, font size, bullets, and numbers, etc.
However, it does not offer all the control, you still have to go to the paragraph and character style panel to make major changes but this addition will definitely make your work comparatively easier.
2. Layout Features
Every designer comes across a daunting situation to change a design layout after completing the design or there can be general reason to change the adjustment of the page. With InDesign’s updated version it has become extremely easy to change the dimensions with the new adjust layer feature. It has come as a rescue for the designers, you can easily manage spacing between paragraphs, and images or fit them properly using content-aware technology.
There are multiple options available in the software to use Adjust Layout, You can choose any among these,
- Go to file, then document setup, and click on the Adjust layout button.
- Select File and then Adjust Layout.
- You can also find the Layout button in the Properties Panel.
Check out the different types of layouts graphic designers should follow
3. Liquid content
Priorities have changed drastically in recent years and with the increased use of mobile phones, designers have to create different versions that are compatible with all the devices, irrespective of the size of the screen. With a liquid layout, designers can manually change the size and orientation of multiple pages. This option gives the freedom to control how your design will appear on different layouts with different size ratio
To find the liquid layout panel, you have to
- Select the desired page with the Page tool
- choose liquid page rules from the control bar
or you can also select the tool manually by choosing
- Liquid Layouts Panel in Windows > Interactive > Liquid Layout
4. Content-aware graphic fitting
The latest edition of the software comes with the intelligent option of fitting the best part of the image in the frame rather than spending time adjusting it manually. Obviously, what is the best part of an image will always remain debatable.
This option doesn’t come as a default setting in the software, one has to turn it on to apply to all the images. You can find this option in the Preferences dialog box.
Choose the Preferences dialog box and go to general panel from there you can select Make Content-Aware Fit as your default option
This option works best on some images while the experiment is required for others. In my opinion, this works well with raster images than vector one.
5. Font Features
Most of the designers spend a significant amount of time in selecting the right font for their designs.
- Preview fonts with enhanced browsing:
Designers can preview the font they have selected by hovering their mouse over the several different fonts in the list. The designers can now also preview the font by moving their mouse over the list. Adobe has also renamed its typekit services to Adobe Fonts which enhances font browsing.
- PDF Enhancements Digital publishing
Publishing always looks like a tedious task but with InDesign, you can easily publish your documents online. It has splendid capabilities to design EPUBs and with this option, you can easily create both fixed-layout and reflowable eBooks
As a leader in desktop publishing, InDesign reigns in the design industry. As a leading graphic design training institute in Delhi, ADMEC has always understood the changing environment and always offered solution to cope up with it. Observing the shift from hard-copy books to E-Books, the use of this DTP software has significantly increased from past years. We offer the best InDesign courses in Delhi to make our students excellent in this field.
These were some of the features that helped InDesign to dominate the industry. You can check out our more blogs to get interesting knowledge about various software.
Till then, Keep Exploring!