Excellent Toolset for Interactive and Fixed-Layout eBooks
Adobe InDesign is used to format various print layouts, mostly in the desktop publishing space. The software supports detailed design, …
Starting at $31.49 per month
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What is Adobe InDesign?
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…
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Reviewer Pros & Cons
- Master Pages - Again, when comparing to Microsoft Word, master pages in Adobe InDesign takes "styling" just a little bit further. It makes it much eas...
- Crashes - It is almost understandable because of how large the software is, but we have had issues with the product crashing randomly, more so than ot...
Marketing Operations Manager
Accentf(x) Marketing (Marketing & Advertising, 51-200 employees)
Pricing
Monthly Plan
$31.49
On Premise
per month
Annual Plan, Prepaid
$239.88 ($19.99)
On Premise
per year (per month)
Annual Plan, Paid Monthly
$251.88 ($20.99)
On Premise
per year (per month)
Entry-level set up fee?
- No setup fee
Offerings
- Free Trial
- Free/Freemium Version
- Premium Consulting/Integration Services
Product Details
- About
- Tech Details
- FAQs
What is Adobe InDesign?
Adobe InDesign Technical Details
| Deployment Types | On-premise |
|---|---|
| Operating Systems | Windows, Mac |
| Mobile Application | No |
Frequently Asked Questions
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.
Reviewers rate Usability highest, with a score of 9.
The most common users of Adobe InDesign are from Small Businesses (1-50 employees).
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October 24, 2019
InDesign your Life
The marketing and design department uses InDesign exclusively (versus things like Publisher or the ancient QuarkXPress). Overall, InDesign is used to create publications or multi-page layout documents. We typically use InDesign to streamline our efforts for marketing in multiple languages and master pages, layers, and a combination of other items allows us to export different marketing materials quickly and efficiently.
- Multi-page layout
- Publication Design
- Magazine Design
- Print Design
- Pre-Press
- Introduction to new tools
- Paragraph styles should be more intuitive
- Have pre-set document layouts for InDesign newbies
Adobe InDesign is our primary design tool for all the advertising work we do for our clients. We utilize it for collateral, publications, ads, billboards, etc. Our entire agency uses the tool. Our design team does the initial design in the tool and our other teams access the documents to proof projects and send to vendors.
- Strong design tools
- Can do small projects and large publications
- Pretty easy to use
- The tool is expensive
- It's a complex tool that takes a while to learn
- The interface can be confusing if you are not accustomed to using it
October 16, 2019
InDesign is a must!
InDesign is used by our creative team, a subset of the marketing team, to mainly handle print and PDF layout and design including printed materials like brochures and flyers, as well as fillable forms. It's the most compatible with vendors and the files generated are also the most compatible. Creative Cloud features make it simple to work at home or in the office on different computers.
- Design of printed materials--it's original use, after all.
- Design and layout of fillable forms with hyperlinks and Acrobat DC compatibility.
- Specifically, pro-level, old-school graphic-design functionality in digital form.
- Since it's in the cloud, it's often wonky. Things freeze up, odd things happen sometimes.
- It's expensive. Gone are the days of buying software.
- Used to be easier to create a new document than it is now.
October 14, 2019
The designers friend!
I would say it is being used throughout the organization but is dependent on job responsibility. If your title/role requires design then the software is enabled on the machine. It isn't an automatic install. The problem InDesign addresses are the design and layout elements for so many roles at Cook. Our marketing and communication departments use InDesign extensively.
- InDesign is my go-to for layout and design. InDesign is second to none when it comes to solid layout features.
- I always enjoy the integration with other Creative Suite tools like Photoshop and Illustrator. It's so easy to work across each of those tools.
- InDesign makes creativity with a layout so easy. It just makes sense to me. I feel sorry for people who use Word as a design tool. I get frustrated so easily with it as it isn't intended to solve the design element.
- Quick keys are my absolute favorite!
- The features and benefits of InDesign are endless but there are SO MANY options. It can be daunting to figure out what each of the buttons does.
- The help feature was much better in the past. I remember being able to get help online much easier than I do today.
- As an end-user, I would love to have a list of quick keys (other versions had this in place that was easy to find).
September 12, 2019
Platform of Choice for Designers
Adobe InDesign is used by several different departments across our company. It is a platform we utilize for website design elements, proposal documents, and various graphics to promote our services. InDesign is easy to navigate and allows our employees to easily create the graphic pieces we need for different projects across the organization and for our clients. It allows us to maintain control of creative aspects, rather than outsourcing to a 3rd party vendor and merely hoping for a viable piece of content.
- InDesign is perfect for piecing together different graphic elements with content. It allows you to create multi-page projects all at once, rather than having to construct one page at a time.
- InDesign is the perfect platform to use when creating projects that have text-heavy content. It gives users the ability to control and format large portions of texts and apply different features in a few simple clicks.
- InDesign has helpful grids and guides that help users to position different page elements.
- We have come across some issues with not being able to open PDFs to edit in InDesign.
- With so many tool features, it can be hard to find the specific tool you're looking for. A guide explaining each tool may be helpful for newer users.
- InDesign doesn't have the best features for editing creative elements like photos and graphics.
September 10, 2019
Fantastic product for multi-page or multi-asset design
Our creative services department uses it to design our bi-monthly publication, Bugle. Our marketing department uses it to design everything from video thumbnails to social media graphics to ads to emails. It is an easy to use solution to laying out designs more than it is applying creative styling and allows us to do so in a quick, efficient manner.
- Great design layout.
- Saved on our network drive and allows us to pass projects between one another.
- Doesn't allow multi-user editing at once. If it's open on one person's device and they forget to close it, you can't edit it. More a problem of network storage than the program.
- Isn't designed to apply creative stylings to photos/images/graphics.
September 10, 2019
InDesign brings all of our projects together!
Our entire marketing agency uses InDesign daily. We use it to layout most of our projects for clients. InDesign is usually where our final projects get put together from Photoshop and Illustrator.
- InDesign is ideal for multiple layout projects. We can see all the pieces of a project in one document.
- InDesign is where we put together pieces from Illustrator and Photoshop into one cohesive design.
- InDesign is not good at vector illustrations.
- InDesign is also not very good at photo manipulation.
September 05, 2019
Essential Industry Standard for Publishing Design
Adobe InDesign has been the primary document design application for Marketing since before I started 13 years ago. It is used almost exclusively by the in-house Creative Team I lead in Marketing, serving the design needs for the rest of the organization. InDesign allows our team to keep our collateral on brand with seamless integration with the other Adobe Creative Cloud design apps we use (primarily Illustrator and Photoshop).
- InDesign makes brand consistency easy with linked files, like logos and brand patterns. Any changes to linked files update across all documents that include them.
- InDesign's master page templates are essential for efficiency and consistency. They allow for easy addition of pages too long documents without having to set up guides and styles from scratch.
- InDesign's paragraph and character styles are particularly valuable for keeping long documents or series of related documents on brand typographically. When styles are properly set up, the need to manually format text is rare.
- I'm being pretty picky here about a product I love, but vector graphics copy/pasted from Illustrator often behave strangely and can be difficult to edit with InDesign's vector tools.
- Viewing documents in full resolution mode slows down the system far more than in other Adobe tools.
- No drawing or photo editing software (at least light tools for quick editing would sometimes be helpful).
August 29, 2019
Helps create new opportunities for professional creation
As a non-profit, we use it to design a lot of materials, from our student booklets to pamphlets, posters, instructional materials, etc. We all use it at our organization, but I am a documentation lead, which means I usually take our organization's ideas and then create drafts/ideas in InDesign and then get feedback from others and make edits as needed. I also help train others in our organization on how to use it.
- Ability to create professional media
- Has a lot of online resources to learn how to use it
- Fairly easy to use (but a large learning curve)
- Great tools/options
- Inserting tables is not super easy or intuitive: I feel like something that basic should be better
- Panels of all different options of tools, tabs, etc could be organized better
- Large learning curve for the general population: hard for people who are only used to Microsoft products to make the transition
- Expensive to get adobe suite. I'd love to have it personally and recommend it to more people, especially in the education world- but many can't afford in their budgets.
August 03, 2019
Great for Publishers and Graphic Designers of Print
Adobe InDesign is currently only being used in the marketing department, by the graphic designers. We are currently using Adobe InDesign for our travel magazines and brochures. Adobe InDesign is great for building and creating long-form magazines and hosts a master edit that will affect all pages, unlike Illustrator where you can design the layout of a magazine, but with no master edit, it takes a lot more effort and revision editing to make it work.
- Familiarity
- Organized
- Learnable
- More features
- Similar tool layout to Illustrator
- More real-world related tutorials
Adobe InDesign is used for a ton of different projects in the marketing department. We use it to create web & print ads, cut sheets, flyers, posters, postcards, stickers, invitations, trade show graphics, etc. I use this program in conjunction with Photoshop and Illustrator. This specific program is used by the entire marketing department. We do more design in house, which cuts down on cost and control for timely projects.
- Ease of use. I took one class on this program and self-taught myself the rest of the way through. It's extremely user-friendly.
- Works well with other Adobe programs. These programs all work extremely well together and is easy to get the job done fast.
- I can design literally anything. Whether it's online or for print, this program is extremely flexible for any marketing professional.
- To view your project as a PDF is easy, however, sometimes if the Transparency Blend Space doesn't match the PDF output, the colors show up dull on the PDF. You just have to make sure that these are the same.
- Sometimes when you pick a color, it reverts back to a different (very similar color). You have to go back in and change it multiple times to ensure that the color you actually want stays the same.
- Overall, I'm very satisfied with the overall functionality of Adobe InDesign.
I used to use InDesign in my previous role in another company. InDesign was the tool that I used on a daily basis. Over the years it has evolved and can handle a lot of interactive features and you can do online publishing from it as well. We also used it for e-publications and to create interactive PDFs. It is a lot more than a tool used for print designers.
- Flexible for creating interactive content
- Easy to learn, intuitive
- Great connection with other apps like Photoshop, Illustrator (for auto link updates)
- Can create live caption for images which is an excellent time saving feature
- E-publication was extremely hard to use not to mention expensive
Adobe InDesign is used across our whole company, but predominantly in the design department. Used as a platform for proofing client visuals and as a lightweight design program for larger documents such as brochures and magazines.
- Super fast design program. If you are used to illustrator give it a whirl.
- Handles typography and layout brilliantly.
- The go to software for magazine and book design. Proper Pagination.
- Interactive PDFs are old school, would benefit for an online option.
- Missing ability to open PDFs in InDesign.
- So so so many options for typography, can have conflicting settings.
June 21, 2019
Highly Recommend!
It is being used by my department. We use it to layout and design books for publication. It helps keep everything organized and in one place. It has many features that make it easy to manipulate photos and text to create our book covers and sponsor pages. Highly recommend this product.
- It addresses the needs of various design elements. Keeps things creative.
- It is very easy to use software that can compile a multiple page document.
- Allows you to use plugins and extensions as a way to input external data.
- It could pull some of the features from Adobe Illustrator, such as breaking apart graphics so you can use one program.
- I find the pen tool is a little challenging for me along with using masks.
- I would like to see more information available in the help menu.
June 07, 2019
Adobe InDesign is your go-to layout software.
It is used by the design department. As a publisher of magazines, we use it to lay out not only the magazines, but to create marketing materials, as well as setup for banner ads. It assists us in producing the 4 magazines a month.
- Great layout tool
- We use it with InCopy and it works seamlessly between the designers and the editors (who are both onsite and offsite)
- Handles fonts well. It has nice features that have improved over the years.
- There is still some ways to go with the concept of print to digital.
June 04, 2019
InDesign is great for agencies
Adobe InDesign is used in my organization to lay out letter and newsletter copy in an attractive, easy to use format. The creative department uses InDesign to give writers and designers access to these files in order to make quick changes to the copy and design.
- It's a great tool for laying out pages for publications, especially print.
- It's easy to customize your preferences for the InDesign features you use most.
- Creating layouts and templates is convenient.
- There are almost too many features, even for someone who's used the program for years. It can get overwhelming. Strong learning curve.
May 28, 2019
The best way to improve slideshows
At work we used Adobe InDesign more than 2 years ago, we used it to make templates and designs to present research reports that require visual support. What I like about the software is that it has tools that allow me to optimize my workflow and the same from my co-workers.
- It has paragraph styles that allow me to modify texts in all the pages and do not have to be searched one by one .
- The master pages are undoubtedly one of the best options, they allow me to add page numbers automatically, indicators, bookmarks, etc.
- The great variety of export formats, either PDFs in high quality for printing or reduced optimized formats for the web.
- The InDesign interface is not very intuitive and not friendly either.
- There are times that make the computer very slow despite complying with the recommended requirements that the software requests.
May 25, 2019
InDesign is the Industry Leader!
Only used in the Marketing Department for brochures, flyers, posters, billboards, email blasts, marketing, etc. It allows us to do design work in house instead of hiring an advertising company.
- Typography, I enjoy having a tool that allows flexibility.
- Page layout, particularly running from one text box to the next, creating style sheets, creating multi-page masters, etc.
- When doing a booklet, this layout program is invaluable (sales flyers, promotional tools, creating a manual for a product, it can do all of those).
- I was a Quark Express user for 15 years prior to making the brain switch. I love it now, took some getting used to but it does more than Quark did!
- I wish iCloud apps, in general, would allow for flexibility to be used in multiple platforms without striping options.
- My concerns are not with the tool when it's used on a Mac, but with it on other devices or platforms.
May 16, 2019
Essential Software for Professional Designers.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Adobe InDesign CC is being used only in the IT department in my organization. The biggest problem that has been presented to us is file saving with large programs can get tricky, especially if you use a shared location. All the materials for your files have to be stored locally and not moved, for InDesign to pull the information. This isn't tragic, but just have to make sure things are kept in the same location.
- It is cross-compatible with other Adobe products, and there are hundreds of online video tutorials to help you achieve the results you want.
- Contextual information at your fingertips.
- Superbly balanced interface.
- Requires a subscription. PDF comments integration needs polishing.
- This program has an art asset library, however, you must pay for a monthly art asset subscription to access everything.
- The cost of the software is high and any time a new teammate needs to be added to the plan, that's even more.
May 14, 2019
Design, test, and share pixel-perfect prototypes
Adobe InDesign is used by our Product, Design, Front End, and Back End departments. The Product team, specifically UX Design and Content Strategy, uses InDesign for pixel perfect prototypes. It allows us to design, build, and test new features before they go live on the platform. This reduces the potential for errors or mistakes once the feature is pushed live.
- InDesign prototypes are extremely easy to share. Different members of different teams can collaborate on a prototype.
- InDesign allows us to accurately preview how an interactive feature will appear on our product, so there are no surprises when it's pushed live.
- InDesign has a great grid layout functionality that makes it easy to create both horizontal and vertical guides.
- At least for me, there's a steep learning curve with InDesign. There are so many features and tools that I don't know how to use. Perhaps the onboarding process could be more helpful when using InDesign for the first time.
- InDesign is only available through subscription. I wish it was possible to purchase the software or purchase a la carte Adobe Creative Cloud products more affordably. (You either subscribe to one product, or all of them.)
- My computer sometimes runs slowly when I use InDesign. It can take a while to load prototypes.