Pagemaker alternative?

sdemott · Post by **sdemott** » Sun Oct 28, 2007 5:34 am

For simple 1-page layouts, business cards, postcards and the like I usually use Illustrator. I have the full CS2 suite and only use InDesign for large layouts.

Pages is cool and I use it for some simple layout work (flyers, promotional mailings), but I find it a bit lacking for anything else.

As far as sending thngs to printers, I usually resort to a PDF unless they specifically request otherwise.

Phil O · Post by **Phil O** » Sun Oct 28, 2007 6:38 am

Same here. Many printers actually prefer pdf format these days.

Phil

mikebeckmotu · Post by **mikebeckmotu** » Sun Oct 28, 2007 11:16 am

Be aware that many times printers are doing edits and fixes to your files before they hit the press (to optimize print quality), and if you supply a PDF, some of those edits may not be possible, and you might have to do a little re-working. It's best to ask the printer about file formats before finalizing things in order to save time and headaches.
Some common issues are:
-no bleeds built into the artwork
-fonts not embedded in PDFs or supplied with native files
-low resolution raster files
-using tiny text in raster files (usually doesn't reproduce well)
-incorrect color space usage
(such as supplying RGB files and expecting a 2-color output)
-mixed uses of black swatches in full color projects
(printers will often prefer to use a "rich" black for large areas of
solid black consisting of their preferred mixture of CMYK colors)
I say these things about printers because I are one in real life.
Sorry to go off on a tangent, but I like to see print projects work out to everybody's satisfaction, especially where musicians are concerned!

Phil O · Post by **Phil O** » Mon Oct 29, 2007 6:10 am

mikebeckmotu wrote:Be aware that many times printers are doing edits and fixes to your files before they hit the press (to optimize print quality), and if you supply a PDF, some of those edits may not be possible, and you might have to do a little re-working. It's best to ask the printer about file formats before finalizing things in order to save time and headaches.
Some common issues are:
-no bleeds built into the artwork
-fonts not embedded in PDFs or supplied with native files
-low resolution raster files
-using tiny text in raster files (usually doesn't reproduce well)
-incorrect color space usage
(such as supplying RGB files and expecting a 2-color output)
-mixed uses of black swatches in full color projects
(printers will often prefer to use a "rich" black for large areas of
solid black consisting of their preferred mixture of CMYK colors)
I say these things about printers because I are one in real life.
Sorry to go off on a tangent, but I like to see print projects work out to everybody's satisfaction, especially where musicians are concerned!

I'm meticulous about the things you mention and make sure these things are correct BEFORE sending something to a printer. I usually get upset if a printer makes ANY edits without consulting me. It's the equivalent of you sending something to a mastering engineer and him making a decision about a "noise" at the beginning of a song and editing it out without consulting you, only to find out that you intentionally left that noise in. Sorry if i sound testy, but one of my pet peeves is when someone messes with my art.

If I've made a mistake, call me and ask about it (and if I want it corrected). That's how things should be handled...But you are correct about PDFs being difficult or impossible to edit, and your advice about asking the printer about file formats is indeed the way to go.

Phil

MIDI Life Crisis · Post by **MIDI Life Crisis** » Mon Oct 29, 2007 8:39 am

The nice thing about InDesign is it opens you Pagemaker files intact. I have hundreds of pagemaker files for all sorts of things (CD covers, live setup diagrams, ads, programs, etc.) and haven't lost one using the auto conversion in InDesign.

The program itself is great, but not as simple as Pagemaker was. Duh! The selection tools are a little cryptic, but you get used to them. The results are great.

I have the CS 2 package and it works great under Leopard (boy, I just love the sound of that!) Don't know about the CS 3 for compatibility but I do know that CS 2 won't be supported if there is a future issue with a later version of the Mac OS.

For really simple design, you could even use MS Word.

mikebeckmotu · Post by **mikebeckmotu** » Mon Oct 29, 2007 6:33 pm

Hi, Phil - I thought I should clarify that edits are made "behind the scenes" in order to make sure the art *is* replicated as intended. Mostly, it's to make up for inherent shortcomings in printing presses, not for aesthetic reasons (like subjective color-correction or things like that).
I'd have to say you're in the minority in that you'd like to be notified about any issues before printing (which I am all for!). Most people seem annoyed by any interruption in the production process, and say we should do whatever is needed, and hurry up and get it printed!
Sorry to go off topic this far...
I have ink in my blood.

Good to know CS2 works in Leopard - bodes well for CS3, which has been working pretty much flawlessly in Tiger.

rcannonp · Post by **rcannonp** » Mon Oct 29, 2007 6:48 pm

mikebeckmotu wrote: Good to know CS2 works in Leopard - bodes well for CS3, which has been working pretty much flawlessly in Tiger.

Really? I've found it to be kinda buggy.

MIDI Life Crisis · Post by **MIDI Life Crisis** » Mon Oct 29, 2007 8:21 pm

rcannonp wrote:
mikebeckmotu wrote: Good to know CS2 works in Leopard - bodes well for CS3, which has been working pretty much flawlessly in Tiger.
Really? I've found it to be kinda buggy.

Can you tell us where the bugs are you found? Maybe we're not doing the same things?

rcannonp · Post by **rcannonp** » Mon Oct 29, 2007 9:36 pm

After I posted I realized that I wasn't sure if we were talking about the entire CS3 or just inDesign. I spend most of my time in Photoshop. I don't use inDesign that much, but one problem that I have with it is that it often locks up when I start it up. I have to restart it a couple of times to get it to take. I haven't really used it enough to find any more bugs.

Here's the Photoshop and Bridge stuff if you want to hear that. Photoshop won't remember the palette positions in my workspaces. It happens often but not all of the time, and I can't figure out what triggers it. It doesn't seem to affect the key commands. PS also won't remember my tool palette settings. I'll hit the J key to bring up the healing brush, but the spot healing brush comes up instead because it's first on the list. It's supposed to remember the last one that you used. These aren't big problems, but they get annoying when they happen repeatedly over the course of a day. Another problem that I have is that sometimes when I open the Layer Style box I get a SBBOD when I close it, often whether I made any changes or not. Another one that's probably not a bug but just something that got overlooked, add noise doesn't randomly apply noise any more. It's exactly the same pattern every time. I'm pretty sure that CS2 didn't do that. There's only one particular application that that screws me up on, so it's not too big of a deal.

The caching in Bridge has gotten really screwy. I keep it set to export the caches to folders when it can. It seems that the cache files get corrupted or it just has trouble reading them. Lately I've had problems with Bridge creating thumbnails of PSD files.

MIDI Life Crisis · Post by **MIDI Life Crisis** » Mon Oct 29, 2007 9:39 pm

I'm using CS2 and if I recall, there were (are) problems with CS3, not CS2. Of course, CS3 will get the grease and CS2 will fall behind, but for the moment, I've been working in Photoshop, InDesign and GoLive with no 'issues.'

rcannonp · Post by **rcannonp** » Mon Oct 29, 2007 9:48 pm

I don't really remember having any problems with Photoshop or Bridge in CS2. Even under Rosetta it was just slower and not buggy. I was wondering if the problems that I'm seeing are Intel issues, but I see that MBM is using an Intel iMac. I think that the Macromedia merger stretched Adobe thin and some things just slipped though the nets.

MIDI Life Crisis · Post by **MIDI Life Crisis** » Mon Oct 29, 2007 9:58 pm

I suspect this will be long remembered as a major transitional period for us mac users. One day our shiny G5's will look like 8-track players or LPs and we'll wonder how we ever managed before the Universal Operating System for all holographic-quantum computing. In the mean time, I just wish Time Machine would work... Now I'm getting conflicting reports that it does use a file vs. a block system, so there is no good reason it should not do backups the way it's supposed to. <sigh> Maybe because I'm on a PPC?

Who knows?

ps- Bridge wasn't all that great in CS but works much better in CS 2. But with the new cover preview, who needs it now?

mikebeckmotu · Post by **mikebeckmotu** » Tue Oct 30, 2007 6:15 pm

I wonder if my install of CS3 (on a MacPro) is running better because I did NOT install bridge? In fact, I never have installed bridge in any version. I like to run as lean as I can, and I didn't see any benefit to how I work, so I left it out of the install process.
Hmmm.
For any troubles with desktop publishing apps, it's a good idea to clean font caches regularly. The font handling mess in OSX often causes crashes and weird behavior, mostly for those who are doing a lot of loading and unloading fonts (which I do a lot of). It's been made easy if you use Linotype's free font manager, called Font Explorer X. They have utilities in the menus for cleaning both application and system font caches. The font manager itself is mighty good, too.
I wish I had a clue as to why InDesign is giving you so much trouble, rcannonp. It's been very stable on my system, along with all the other CS3 apps.

mhschmieder · Post by **mhschmieder** » Tue Oct 30, 2007 6:21 pm

Have you tried OpenOffice (free from Sun) or the NeoOffice version that is native vs. X-Windows based?

I'm not sure what exact functionality you need, so it's possible it isn't covered, but it's worth taking a look. I think it's on version 3.3 now, and it keeps adding more documentation and presentation styles (spreadsheets, word processing, etc.) and templates.

Short of that, the new iWork '08 demo is a good recommendation as it has an intuitive interface and flexible workflow with powerful features and impressive visuals, but might not be as compatible for file exchange (if you need that functionality) as the OpenOffice product suite.

rcannonp · Post by **rcannonp** » Tue Oct 30, 2007 6:51 pm

mikebeckmotu wrote:I wonder if my install of CS3 (on a MacPro) is running better because I did NOT install bridge? In fact, I never have installed bridge in any version. I like to run as lean as I can, and I didn't see any benefit to how I work, so I left it out of the install process.
Hmmm.
For any troubles with desktop publishing apps, it's a good idea to clean font caches regularly. The font handling mess in OSX often causes crashes and weird behavior, mostly for those who are doing a lot of loading and unloading fonts (which I do a lot of). It's been made easy if you use Linotype's free font manager, called Font Explorer X. They have utilities in the menus for cleaning both application and system font caches. The font manager itself is mighty good, too.
I wish I had a clue as to why InDesign is giving you so much trouble, rcannonp. It's been very stable on my system, along with all the other CS3 apps.

InDesign is my least used app in the Creative Suite, so it's not that big of a deal. The issues with the other apps aren't major problems. They're just annoying. I've gotten so used to Bridge that I couldn't imagine not having it now.

I've already got Font Explorer X and I've cleaned my font caches with that and other apps. It's quite a bargain for free.