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Digital Media Software
Review: Adobe Creative Suite 3 Design Premium
5/30/2007
New Creative Features
There are three major new creative features in InDesign CS3. The first is the addition of live effects, similar to those in Illustrator (which we'll cover below). Live effects can be applied to any type of object, as long as that object's bounding box is currently selected. These effects include:
- Drop Shadow;
- Inner Shadow;
- Outer Glow;
- Inner Glow;
- Bevel and Emboss; and
- Satin.
In addition, InDesign CS3 also gains a few new live effects not found in Photoshop. All of them are related to feathering objects. These include:
Basic Feather creates a feather around the object, with settings for width, choke, noise value, and edge quality of the corners of the object (diffused, sharp, and rounded).
Directional Feather lets you to feather individual sides of objects (bottom, top, left, right, and combinations of each) and provides controls over choke, angle, noise, and shape (leading edges, all edges and first edge only).
The last, Gradient Feather, is similar to Directional Feather, except it's gradient-based, as you might expect from something called Gradient Feather. It provides controls over location (inside or out), gradient stops, gradient type (linear or radial), opacity, and angle of the gradient.
Live effects can be applied to whole objects or to specific elements of an object, including strokes and fills.
InDesign CS3 also gains enhancements to the Transparency palette. Adjusting the transparency of an object in previous versions of InDesign affected all of the elements within that object. But now transparency can be adjusted on an element by element basis, including fill, stroke, and text. Blending modes (overlay, multiply, screen, etc.) can also be adjusted independently. These blending options have been consolidated into the Effects palette.
The last class of new creative features falls into the category of importing images and other elements into InDesign.
First, InDesign CS3 allows you to assign fitting options to a picture box prior to importing (fit content to frame, fit proportional, scale proportional) and other options (such as crop), and these parameters can be included in object styles to simplify the process of creating multiple picture boxes whose content needs to be scaled.
It also now has a significant workflow-enhancing feature that allows you to import multiple elements of differing types (PDFs, text files, images, etc.) simultaneously and place them into text and picture frames. When multiple objects are placed, a preview for the current object is displayed next to the cursor. You can then cycle through the objects using arrow keys to select the object you want to place. Clicking it onto a picture or text box then places it, and the next object in the queue is then displayed and ready for placement. You can also delete individual objects from the queue. (It also supports undo, in case you accidentally place an element in the wrong container.)
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