Adobe InDesign supports creating digital and print documents such as flyers, stationary, posters, and other types of media, with rich graphics, images, and more. Adobe InDesign is available standalone or as part of the Adobe Creative Suite collection of media management and creation products.
$31.49
per month
Microsoft Publisher
Score 7.4 out of 10
N/A
Microsoft Publisher is a desktop publishing application available with an Office 365 subscription, or as a standalone download.
InDesign is simply put, the best out there for the design of print and e-docs.
Canva and Microsoft Publisher both have great features and benefits, but they don't have quite the robust tools and features that are sometimes necessary when designing an item. If you need something …
The others do not include the robust features of Adobe InDesign. Some of the subscription or pricing models are not affordable or would be an additional cost. Adobe has the most flexibility in regards to pricing. Microsoft Publisher is the least recommended product and is not …
First, Microsoft products are notoriously difficult to work with, so the bar is already set pretty low. In my limited experience with MS Publisher in the past, the tools were not intuitive and the files did not save / share well outside of MS platforms. It has been many years …
This product sits head-and-shoulders above a product like Microsoft Publisher. The layout of Adobe InDesign is far more intuitive, the functionality of the tool is far more robust, and the sheer efficiency of it's interface is lightyears ahead of what Publisher offers. As just …
Microsoft Word is probably the most popular word processor, and I've been using that since I was a little kid, but InDesign gives you all the word processing tricks and then some with the ability to arrange every small part of your layout.
Publisher and Quark both work, but they don't play well with Adobe products, which makes you waste a lot of time converting Illustrator and Photoshop files into bitmaps for use in them. This can lead to issues with image quality, on top of wasting time and energy. The …
Publisher is something that we as an organization used to use at the beginning phase of our organization, and, as we grew and the team grew bigger and the needs increased, we needed a more professional tool. That's where Adobe InDesign came in. With Publisher, there was limited …
InDesign is the most widely accepted layout software in the world. It has plugins for extending its abilities and has had a vast industry lead since Dethroning Quark almost two decades ago. Publisher is a Microsoft train wreck and just isn't cut out for heavy lifting. Affinity …
At the time I was not impressed with Quark Xpress. I always disliked PageMaker. I always considered it over-rated. I like InDesign and have always liked InDesign, if I have a need for more complex documents I'll go with InDesign over Publisher or Quark Xpress in a heartbeat. …
Publisher wins hand down. To be honest, In-Design can do things with more precision and perhaps a somewhat better final design. However, the learning curve is WAY too steep for In-Design. I have been using computers and publishing programs since the mid 80's. Publisher melds …
Microsoft Publisher is more for beginners, or for basic needs, anyone with some familiarity with the Microsoft suite should be able to use it easily. If you’re looking to create something more graphic and advanced, you’d probably want to look into something like InDesign, which …
Adobe InDesign is very well suited to image-heavy publications, such as children's books, cookbooks and coffee table books. It gives you almost complete control how to arrange these elements, and to be able to tweak them with precision. The software is an absolute necessity if one is developing interactive eBooks, especially for the Apple iTunes store. Unless coded by hand, I am not aware of any other tools to handle this. It is a powerful toolset, and can take on most anything publishing related that you throw at it. I personally have found that it doesn't do too well with reflowable eBooks (like for Kindle Amazon), but it retains that capability.
Microsoft Publisher is well suited for almost any situation. It is something that I'm sure has far more advanced tools than I use or am aware of, but it is also very simple for entry-level users to create professional documents quickly. I have used it for very involved brochures in real estate scenarios and I have also used it for very simple "Construction Zone" signs at a job site under construction. There are so many uses for this program!
Customization - With Adobe InDesign, as well as many other applications in the Adobe Creative Suite, I can fully customize my workspaces and save different workspaces. This makes it easy to navigate through my project and have the panels and tools I need easily accessible and configured based on my project needs.
Styles - Adobe InDesign has character styles, object styles, and tables styles. This speeds up my workflows and allows me to easily apply the same format across multiple elements. This is super helpful, especially when working with length documents.
File compatibility - I can easily export my files into so many different file types.
The Book feature - This feature is really helpful when creating books or very long documents with multiple sections.
Ordering the pages with dragging is a bit counter-intuitive
The "Links" section needs improvement - it might be very beneficial to have the links displayed (and saved) in the "links" sections for dragging and reusing without having to re-insert
I think the relinking option works well - Would it be possible to the automatic relink to work even if file was renamed? A prompt will be [shown] to the user to help them approve or disapprove of this action.
The greatest shortcoming is large (300+ page documents) that require lots of internal hyperlinks. While it can do it, I can tell, due to the way it bogs down, that I am pushing the program to its limits.
I would like to be able to work better with pdf's. I would like the ability to import a pdf of a graph, picture, or some other object directly into a Publisher document. Currently, I have to first convert the pdf to a jpeg and then import the jpeg. I have not found a way around this issue.
At one point, I thought I had the option to automatically turn off hyphenation. Somewhere along the way, it seems as if the default for everything is hyphenation is turned on. I detest hyphenation and turning it off on every box I create becomes cumbersome.
More options for graphics. Particularly the defaults that allow you to place "frames" and effects around photos. More options.
I've had great experiences with the product and plan to continue to use it. It has been my go-to product for designing and creating materials. I have had great luck with it and have been able to create all of the needed marketing materials that have been requested for our company.
If you know what you are doing it is an amazingly granular and powerful application. You can control pretty much any aspect of the design and layout of your documents and make changes globally and rapidly. But, if you don't know what you are doing...you will be staring at your screen in bewilderment for a long time. You can learn it, but be ready for a hefty time investment.
It has a great feature set but does not overwhelm me with its complexity. This is not an entry-level program, but it is also not one of the top of line graphic designer programs, like Abode In-Design. I can use Publisher to do 95% of what I need to get done. The other 5% I farm out to the graphics design person in the organization. It simply works and does so in a simple to use manner.
Adobe support is ok but not great. Chat support often doesn't initially understand the question at-hand and it takes awhile to get to the right agent. Phone support has long wait times, and though I've had more luck there, it does take quite a time investment if you are looking for help. However, Adobe does have some online learning solutions available as well as a knowledgebase for frequently asked questions. If you're looking to learn how to use the platform, there are lots of resources which can typically be found in a few Google searches. If you have a technical issue with the system, that's going to be a bit more of a time investment as far as getting a tech's assistance to resolve the problem.
While I have not directly used support for Microsoft Publisher, I have used their help files and found them to be useful. I have also found that most answers that I need can be found through simple web searches and chat platforms. In all though, there are very few times when the preloaded help files have not given me the answers that I need.
Microsoft products do not match the aesthetic tools that [Adobe] InDesign offers, cannot support the customizable options available for export, and do not produce documents with as high a degree of accessibility. That said, they do have their place in collaboration in a team- I'd consider Office to be the first step and [Adobe] InDesign to be the final product.
Microsoft Publisher is more for beginners, or for basic needs, anyone with some familiarity with the Microsoft suite should be able to use it easily. If you’re looking to create something more graphic and advanced, you’d probably want to look into something like InDesign, which is not as user friendly if you’re not familiar with it at all. For basic needs the average employee should be able to use Microsoft Publisher with ease.
Adobe InDesign has allowed us to tackle more projects in the same amount of time because of how well it integrates into our group's workflow.
For awhile, we struggled only with a slowdown in digital guides. Because, as I mentioned earlier, there is not a clear way to combine individual documents into one document quickly, some editors were forced to spend a long time transferring each page into the final document that would be used with Publish Online. We have since found a workaround that does not include using Publish Online.
Allowed us to created our own documents/educational material for patients. In previous practices I have worked we had to buy "pamplets and brochures" which were very costly.
