Excellent Layout Software for Publishing Professionals
December 18, 2019
Excellent Layout Software for Publishing Professionals
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Overall Satisfaction with Adobe InDesign
Our company uses multiple Adobe applications within the Adobe Creative Suite; we have a Teams subscription plan. InDesign is used primarily for print layouts (periodicals, products, advertising, displays, etc.). Occasionally it has been used for design of graphics for a digital context (web banners, etc.)—although we tend to use Photoshop for that most of the time.
While multiple departments use Adobe apps, InDesign is primarily used by my department, and occasionally by others who need to use files we created. I would not consider it to be a great fit for people with very elementary design or publishing needs. But for people trained in graphic design, it is perfect. Our company also uses InCopy, which allows others to edit InDesign documents without getting tangled up in all the layout controls.
That InDesign works so seamlessly with other Adobe apps (Photoshop, Illustrator, Acrobat) is a big plus. I am a long-time user, since version 1, and consider InDesign to be the premier publishing app with the best selection of professional features. InDesign lets us create the kinds of designs we want with a minimum of effort, with fine control, and with great results.
While multiple departments use Adobe apps, InDesign is primarily used by my department, and occasionally by others who need to use files we created. I would not consider it to be a great fit for people with very elementary design or publishing needs. But for people trained in graphic design, it is perfect. Our company also uses InCopy, which allows others to edit InDesign documents without getting tangled up in all the layout controls.
That InDesign works so seamlessly with other Adobe apps (Photoshop, Illustrator, Acrobat) is a big plus. I am a long-time user, since version 1, and consider InDesign to be the premier publishing app with the best selection of professional features. InDesign lets us create the kinds of designs we want with a minimum of effort, with fine control, and with great results.
- InDesign has great control of text composition and flow. If spacing, kerning, leading, grouping text elements, hyphenation control, OpenType features, etc., are your thing, InDesign has got you covered.
- InDesign has great layout and design features built in. You can create a lot of your layout elements right inside InDesign without needing other applications.
- InDesign is not geared toward general office users. It has a complex user interface, and the level of controls could intimidate basic users. The workflow is more complex than creating something like a Microsoft Word or Apple Pages document.
- The software is expensive. You can acquire it only through a subscription license plan, and this will set you back hundreds or thousands of dollars every year depending on the number of users in your company.
- I do not have any hard numbers such as ROI. But Adobe apps touch pretty much everything that our company does. On one hand, you could say the cost of InDesign for us is basically zero, because we would be using the Adobe Creative Suite even without that. If you do factor the cost, we spend maybe $7–8,000 per year on Creative Suite subscriptions for all users in the company. But it's a small part of operations expenses that bring in millions of dollars of income yearly.
Do you think Adobe InDesign delivers good value for the price?
Yes
Are you happy with Adobe InDesign's feature set?
Yes
Did Adobe InDesign live up to sales and marketing promises?
Yes
Did implementation of Adobe InDesign go as expected?
Yes
Would you buy Adobe InDesign again?
Yes