InDesign or Illustrator?

Illustrator CS5.   I have been a prepress tech and graphic designer for letterpress exclusively for 6 years (the old Quark days through CS5), If I was working in the 4 color process world I would probably be more inclined to use indesign. If you take the time to learn how to use the Pen tool in illustrator, you will learn to love illustrator- 

Indesign has export limitations that make it my least favorite part of CS5- I convert and prepare files that come from lots of different designers and lots of different programs – Illustrator is the most RIP friendly – 

Bev Dittberner

Full Circle Press

I come from a raster background…Corel Painter kicks bootie hands down!- for painting.  Illustrator’s pen tool rocked, but I had read that InDesign was better with digital font when applied in letterpress…so I was curious. Thanks for sharing your experience Bev.

Illustrator is good for single page illustrations and layouts.

InDesign is best for multi page type based documents like brochures and magazines.

Both have limitations that you can overcome by creating in the other piece of software (including Photoshop) and importing into each other as they work pretty seamlessly together. (eg if you have all 3 open, you can drag and drop between applications.) Get the CS suite!

Thank you Davina for your insight. I will order the suite. I only know, barely, how to use the pen tool. I was told that a line width of 2 pts is minimum for a poly plate. Do you confirm? I would love to learn the limitations of a line drawing as processed in a plate. (i.e. line width, adequate space between lines (bridge?), and the best file format to transfer from a raster to a vector..)  I f any of you have links to sites that might be of help, please let me know.

 

Thanks again Davina!

Yes I think 2 point is smallest line and font sizes shouldn’t be too small either (I think about 9? but cant remember)

Illustrator has an awesome trace tool (converts raster to vector), and its as easy as ‘placing’ (file/place)  the image you wish to trace in an new document click on the ‘live trace’ button (which appears in the small menu palate along the top under the major menus (file,edit,object etc)

REALLY useful for vectorizing hand drawn illustrations and all sorts of things off the internet. works best with high res images but can be useful for low res as well. I’m not a fine art illustrator unfortunately, so it really comes in handy.

Youtube has some good videos but the suite comes with a fair ‘Get started’ turorial if you have the time to study it.

Good luck!

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