Design software suggestions

wanko80

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Jul 31, 2006
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So I do pretty much all the marketing at my company. Currently I use MS Publisher to design all the ads and flyers and whatnot.

I'd like to go to a program that is more portable, so that probably means an Adobe product.

Question is, which one should I use? InDesign? PageMaker? Photoshop?
 
Don't mess with Pagemaker, not that it isn't good software, it's just that it was replaced with InDesign, and since you want portability you have to stay current - InDesign is great for setting up the frame work of your add page, you may even find it has more options than you need. While you could probably do everything you want with Photoshop CS, if money is no issue get the latest copy of InDesign and Photoshop - or maybe just price Adobe packages that have both in them
 
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Adobe CS2 Standard is a great package to get. It comes with Adobe Photoshop CS2, Illustrator CS2, and InDesign CS2 software with new Version Cue CS2, Adobe Bridge, and Adobe Stock Photos. It'll run you about $900. Though, if you are doing layout only and you won't be editing any photo editing or serious graphic creation, you won't need Illustrator or Photoshop. But since InDesign is $700 by itself, you might as well spring for the extra $200. It'll save you $950 on Photoshop & Illustrator. But I don't know how involved you are in the design and what you need.

InDesign is really powerful and nothing else is even close to it, not even Quark :barf:. It may be more than you need.

Adobe Pagemaker works for most business documents. It'll run ya $500 with a $350 option to upgrade to InDesign if you feel like you need a bit more.


You could also always add Adobe Acrobat 7 Standard to your current system and have instant portability for $300.


Just remember, get the right product for your needs and the right product for the job. Photoshop is for photo editing, not layout. It's a common idiocy for people to make layouts in PS. You have very little text control and it will seriously hurt your workflow. Making changes becomes laborious and printing will be an issue.

If you want more detailed help, shoot me an email spange (at) gmail (dot) com. I'm sure we can find you something that's more suitable for your needs.
 
I was leaning towards maybe getting the whole package. I do have Acrobat 6, so I can produce pdf documents, but I feel it would be handy to have our printers be able to edit the documents if needed.

Also, forgive my ignorance, but what is the difference between Photoshop and Illustrator? What would I do in Illustrator that I couldn't do in Photoshop?

Oh, thanks for the good advice.
 
wonko80 said:
I was leaning towards maybe getting the whole package. I do have Acrobat 6, so I can produce pdf documents, but I feel it would be handy to have our printers be able to edit the documents if needed.

Also, forgive my ignorance, but what is the difference between Photoshop and Illustrator? What would I do in Illustrator that I couldn't do in Photoshop?

Oh, thanks for the good advice.

You'll path your images from PhotoShop into Illustrator. PhotoShop is such a powerful image editting tool that you wouldn't use anything else for pictures and such. However, Illustrator does the rest of the page with grace and ease.

Ohh, and don't forget to budget for some training too. If you don't know how to use Illustrator and PhotoShop already, you'll be about as useful as a monkey holding a wrench! :tard:

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