Adobe InDesign CS4

Adobe InDesign CS4 software breaks down the barriers between online and offline publishing. Create compelling print layouts, immersive content for playback in the Adobe Flash Player runtime, and interactive PDF documents. With customer-inspired enhancements, powerful new features, and streamlined workflows, you can now easily deliver sophisticated and engaging layouts across media.

Design professional layouts for print and digital publishing

Multichannel publishing
Deliver an engaging reading experience for print or screen. Export immersive SWF files for playback in the Adobe Flash Player runtime, interactive PDF documents complete with video and sound, or sophisticated layouts for publishing to print.

Integration with other Adobe design applications
Take advantage of tight integration with other Adobe Creative Suite 4 components to quickly design and deliver engaging page layouts for multiple media. Use common presets, color settings, and a standard user interface for a more efficient workflow.

Layout productivity tools
Quickly and precisely produce sophisticated page layouts with gorgeous designs using productivity tools that were created or enhanced based on the input of InDesign users worldwide.

Professional typography
Create beautiful, sophisticated typography for any media with the power of text and table styles, text wrap control, the Paragraph Composer, OpenType support, drop caps, and more.

Extensive creative tools at your fingertips
Explore creative possibilities directly in InDesign, resulting in more nuanced page layouts in less time. Powerful tools include built-in Adobe Photoshop effects, support for Photoshop artwork in 3D, integrated drawing tools, nondestructive effects, and finer transparency controls.

Preflighting and print controls
Use a range of tools, presets, onscreen controls, JDF technology, and live preflighting to fix errors while you work, so you can speed production, increase reliability, and deliver your document correctly for print - the first time.

Automation for long-document creation
Rapidly create complex long documents with cross-references, conditional text, automated bullets and numbering, dynamic page addition and deletion, and more, which minimize manual production, help ensure content accuracy, and enable consistent formatting.

Workflow automation
Create powerful automated workflows using standards-based XML features to automatically populate and lay out pages with text and images. Incorporate database-driven content for utmost efficiency while publishing across channels.

Extensibility
Rapidly build unique workflows and software solutions for custom publishing using InDesign Markup Language (IDML), an XML-based file format that enables developers to create or modify files using standard XML tools.

Adobe services
Tap into the creative community quickly, and collaborate smoothly with your customers, colleagues, and vendors. Share your screen, search for expert help, and get color inspiration through online services - accessed from within InDesign.

Top features of Adobe InDesign CS4:

Exciting new features and enhancements in Adobe InDesign CS4 help you reach new creative heights using tools that enable free-flowing expression, smoother workflows, productive collaboration, and reliable delivery of interactive documents.

Live Preflight
The new Live Preflight feature alerts you to potential production problems in real time--directly within your layout. Preflighting while you design helps you achieve better results, greater time savings, and lower production costs. Immediately identify and correct errors during the design phase of your project instead of waiting until the document is ready for print. When an error is detected, quickly navigate to the problem area, fix the problem, and keep working on your document.

The Preflight panel shows you exactly what's going on in your layout, such as instances of low image resolution or overset text. The panel suggests what's required to make the correction, and provides a link directly to the problem area. You can monitor errors across an entire document or constrain monitoring to a specific page range.

Custom preflight profiles take the power of continuous preflighting even further. Define a profile that checks bleed and slug parameters, transparency blending space, overprinting, minimum stroke weight, and much more. You can even share preflight profiles with members of your production or design team to further achieve consistent outputs.

With InDesign CS4, real-time preflighting is an integral part of your design process and no longer a separate activity right before you package your files for print. The result? You save time and lower production costs from start to finish of your project.

Customizable Links panel
When you produce complex documents, managing linked content effectively is critical. With the redesigned Links panel, you can find, sort, and manage all of your document's placed files. Link attributes and metadata displayed in a single, customizable panel means that information about your linked files is readily available just the way you want it.

The Links panel displays your placed files in a collapsible tree view. When your document contains multiple instances of the same file, the Links panel displays the filename once, with an expandible list so you can view all other instances. Update the parent file, and all instances with that filename are also updated automatically.

Each object in the Links panel is visually represented with a thumbnail image, so no more guessing by filename. Click on any thumbnail and view additional information about that link, such as scale, rotation, and resolution. And your Links panel is fully customizable, with preferences for choosing exactly which link details you wish to see.

Conditional text
Quickly deliver multiple versions of a document for different users and channels--print or screen. Build unique variants of technical manuals, student/teacher textbook editions, or multi-language publications within a single InDesign source file.

Simply select text you wish to show for a particular version of your document, and apply a condition to the selection. Then you can quickly choose to hide or show all text with this condition applied, throughout your document. For example, if you're building a file for publishing both in print and online, apply conditions to content that's appropriate only for the print version. When you want to edit or export content for print, click to show all text with print conditions applied. When you work on the online version, hide the print content.

Conditional text enables hiding text at the paragraph, word, and character levels without relying on layers. The visible text and anchored objects automatically reflow for smooth changes to layout. InDesign even removes blank pages that result from hiding conditional text. And if overset text is created as a result of a condition, a new page is automatically added so that the number of pages in your document is always correct for the content that's showing. Only the content that currently appears in your document will be exported and printed. Conditional text streamlines document updates, reduces the number of source files, minimizes review cycles, and allows you to deliver powerful custom content.

Cross-references
Improve technical accuracy and streamline production with cross-references that update when you change content or rearrange text within a document.

Manual updates have until now eaten up a great deal of time, especially when you have cross-references such as figure numbers or headings that are linked to multiple locations in a long document. Now your cross-references will follow your edits automatically.

Cross-reference updates also work for online documents. Hyperlinks to another section in your document, or to a section of text in any external document, can be set up just as easily as any other cross-reference.

You'll find the panel options for cross-references easy to use, flexible, and powerful. Spend less time on repetitive tasks and more time being creative while helping to ensure that your readers will be able to navigate through your print and online documents with ease.

Interactive document design with SWF file export
Transform page layouts into dynamic SWF files directly within InDesign. Insert hyperlinks, page transitions, and interactive buttons--all in the design tool you know best. When your document is finished, just export it as a SWF file and play it in Adobe Flash Player.

Build hyperlinks that quickly navigate to external URLs, launch an e-mail client, or jump to a section within the same or even a different document. The enhanced Hyperlinks panel enables quick creation of new hyperlinks and verification directly in InDesign.

Choose from a rich set of page transitions that include curl, wipe, dissolve, fade, and many more, using the Page Transitions panel. Experiment with speeds and direction.

Quickly create interactive buttons by using the new, intuitive Buttons panel. Design your own custom button--or drag a finished button, complete with effects such as gradient feathering and drop shadows--directly into your document from the Sample Buttons panel. Easily create an appearance for each button state, add predefined actions such as "Go to Next Page" or "Go to URL," and then apply that action to an event such as clicking or rolling over the button.

Adding rich and engaging playback options breathes life into all your online publications--digital magazines, digital brochures, digital catalogs, presentations, and more. Deliver high-impact, interactive SWF documents that leverage all the power of InDesign.

Export to Adobe Flash CS4 Professional (XFL)
One of the most exciting features in InDesign CS4 is its new integration with Adobe Flash CS4 Professional. Combine the page layout strengths of InDesign with the power of Flash authoring to create rich, interactive documents.

Export an InDesign document as an XFL file (an interchange format) which can be opened in Flash, where visual fidelity to each original InDesign page is maintained, with support for editing text and graphics.

Thanks to XFL, designers and developers can easily exchange data and collaborate. And if you're an InDesign user venturing into the world of interactive documents, you can now use your existing skills and the capabilities of InDesign to create complex layouts, and then take advantage of the tools in Flash to add animation and navigation for engaging online reading.

The new integration of InDesign CS4 with Adobe Flash CS4 Professional provides an ideal combination of the fundamental strengths of each tool for creating highly sophisticated digital publications in a straightforward, streamlined workflow.

Smart Guides and Smart Spacing
Smart Guides turn aligning and resizing objects into a fluid process. It is no longer necessary to open multiple panels, manually apply numerous grids or guides to a layout, or rely on the Control panel to accurately align and resize objects.

Quickly align, space, rotate, and resize multiple objects or align to the horizontal, vertical, or center of your page edges--in fewer steps. And quickly snap your selected object's edge to other objects in the layout, thanks to the visibility of Smart Guide readouts.

Smart Guides are dynamically drawn when you transform an object and then they disappear automatically. You can see dimensions, rotation, and X-Y coordinates of your selection as you work. When you stop, the guides vanish, leaving an uncluttered layout.

In addition, new Smart Spacing evenly spaces multiple items on your page by snapping objects into position without having to use the Align panel. Together, Smart Guides and its options that include Smart Spacing, Smart Dimensions, and more, enable ultra precise positioning with immediate feedback, right where you work.

Spread rotation
Tired of rotating your monitor (or your head) when working on a publication with vertical text elements? The new Rotate Spread View allows you to temporarily turn your document in 90 degree increments. Develop your layout in a more natural and comfortable position and reduce the time it takes to produce your best work. Spread rotation makes it easier to lay out calendars, packaging, annual reports, and other content types that requires vertical placement of text and images in your document.

Smart text reflow
Add text without interrupting your creative process, thanks to automatic addition of pages at the end of a story, selection, or document when text is overset. You will observe smart text reflow when implementing conditional text as well--conditional text becomes even more efficient because pages are automatically deleted or added when text is hidden or shown.

Additional productivity features in Adobe InDesign CS4:

InDesign CS4 provides a host of additional new and enhanced features that can increase your productivity. These include:

Interface enhancements
Work smoothly and swiftly within InDesign using several elegant interface enhancements that make it particularly easy to work among multiple InDesign documents at once. Explore the new N-up view, an application bar, an application frame, tabbed documents, and task-based workspaces.

Inline notes supported in tables
Add inline notes in tables to collaborate more effectively. Store alternate text, designers' comments, and other annotations in notes linked to specific text in a table.

Edit tables in Story Editor
You can now edit text in table cells in Story Editor. Editing your table content directly within the text flow allows you to quickly correct overset text without impacting table design.

Contact-sheet placement
Quickly create a contact sheet by placing multiple images in a grid arrangement, with a single click. As you drag to create the frame for placing your images, you can use your arrow keys to control the number of rows and columns in the grid. Multi-file placement. Speed document creation by importing multiple files at once or by dragging them from the desktop or Adobe Bridge CS4. Preview and place files in any order within your layout.

Proportional file placement
Drag to create a frame with the Place cursor loaded; files automatically fit to a proportionally sized frame, or according to the frame-fitting options you have chosen.

Power zoom
Use the Hand tool in to zoom out by holding down your mouse button (patient user mode). Continue to hold, and you can move the zoom area indicator across pages. Release, and the view returns to your original zoom level in your new location. Increase or decrease the zoom percentage using the Up and Down arrow keys.

Placed InDesign files
When you place one InDesign file into another, the source file remains an editable link. Now, when you initiate an edit, the linked source file opens to the exact point where you wish to make your edits, even if that source file is multipage or a complex, long document.

GREP support for character styles
Apply character styles to text using a GREP expression to find instances of a character or string of characters that occur in a specific context. Quickly apply your style to just those characters.

Nested styles
Use nested styles to dynamically apply complex character formatting to ranges of text within a paragraph. Now apply nested styles through the end of a line for even greater flexibility. Formatting remains unchanged when text is edited.

InDesign Markup Language (IDML)
InDesign Markup Language, an XML-based file format, allows developers to programmatically assemble and disassemble InDesign documents using standard XML tools and without having to open INDD files. Realize increases in performance, convenience, and flexibility when building applications based on InDesign CS4 page layouts.

System requirements:

• 1.5GHz or faster processor
• Microsoft® Windows® XP with Service Pack 2 (Service Pack 3 recommended) or Windows Vista® Home Premium, Business, Ultimate, or Enterprise with Service Pack 1 (certified for 32-bit Windows XP and Windows Vista)
• 512MB of RAM (1GB recommended)
• 1.8GB of available hard-disk space for installation; additional free space required during installation (cannot install on flash-based storage devices)
• 1,024x768 display (1,280x800 recommended) with 16-bit video card
• DVD-ROM drive
• QuickTime 7 software required for multimedia features