Using Adobe InDesign for album design...

[tbotello]

Hey all. I'm curious to find out if anyone around here uses Adobe InDesign to design their albums. I've come to find it's an awesome program for layouts and making templates. It's just that I have no experience with it and I'm just beginning to learn it. Anyways, if anyone here does use it, would you be willing to share any templates? I've found a few sites selling templates, but I'm trying to locate any free resources. Oh well, any help is appreciated.

[OsmosisStudios]

InDesign is great for certain things, but terrible at others.

If you've got a printing company that will accept the files, and you're having it printed then bound, then inDesign will work great. If you're just organizing an album of photos, there are MUCH better ways.

Note: Most "small" local printing companies dont take InDesign files and dont play nice with the PDFs that you come from them. Generally speaking InDesign is used in the printing business for the design and organization of books and the like.

[jdepould]

If your printer takes .indd or the ID PDFs, then you're golden. It's absolutely the right program to use.

If your printer doesn't take them ... then you're SOL.

[robnlauren]

It's true that printers often don't accept InDesign files, or pdfs. What you can do is save your album as a PDF in InDesign and then open the PDF in Photoshop and save out the high resolution JPEGS.

Album companies usually want hi res files of the individual spreads.

Cheers,
Rob

[smc1377]

If by "printer" you're talking about your traditional printing companies, then I disagree wholly. All printers, even small ones, accept InDesign files. InDesign is the design standard, why wouldn't they take them?

That's like saying that a photo printing company won't accept jpg's.

Just remember that if you're sending InDesign files, "package" your file so that it includes all links and fonts.

[OsmosisStudios]

Originally Posted by smc1377

If by "printer" you're talking about your traditional printing companies, then I disagree wholly. All printers, even small ones, accept InDesign files. InDesign is the design standard, why wouldn't they take them?

That's like saying that a photo printing company won't accept jpg's.

Just remember that if you're sending InDesign files, "package" your file so that it includes all links and fonts.

Sorry but that simply isnt true. It depends entirely on what you're making and who you're dealing with.

[robnlauren]

@tbotello We actually have some free InDesign templates to get you started!

You can download them here:

Awesome Album Template Pack | Photography Concentrate


@smc1377

The majority of printing companies want hi res jpegs. In an ideal world all album companies would accept pdfs exported from InDesign.

I'm my experience I have yet to encounter an album company that accepts .indd files. I would be a bit scared they might change my design by accident!

Cheers,
Rob

[smc1377]

Are you guys kidding me?

I've been working in the print industry for over 10 years and InDesign files are passed back and forth all the time between printers both local and national.

You guys MUST not be dealing with traditional printers like I said. Sounds like you're dealing with photo printing companies which is not a traditional printing company.

[OsmosisStudios]

Originally Posted by smc1377

Are you guys kidding me?

I've been working in the print industry for over 10 years and InDesign files are passed back and forth all the time between printers both local and national.

You guys MUST not be dealing with traditional printers like I said. Sounds like you're dealing with photo printing companies which is not a traditional printing company.

Nope: A full-on printer. I asked whether he wanted AI, PSD, INDD or what, and he asked for flat-out TIFF files. If I was doing multi-page documents (which InDesign is designed for), he wanted an InDesign-exported PDF of it.

[3bayjunkie]

Originally Posted by smc1377

Are you guys kidding me?

I've been working in the print industry for over 10 years and InDesign files are passed back and forth all the time between printers both local and national.

You guys MUST not be dealing with traditional printers like I said. Sounds like you're dealing with photo printing companies which is not a traditional printing company.

^^^ I agree with this guy, I was THE Prepress Designer for a small town print company for two years, the best in the county actually. And we used primarily Quark but also used inDesign (only when clients used it) So yes, even though we didn't use it as our primary design tool, we DID have the updated software. Any reputable print company should have all software that is used by anyone! Period. Otherwise bye bye clients.

Originally Posted by OsmosisStudios

Nope: A full-on printer. I asked whether he wanted AI, PSD, INDD or what, and he asked for flat-out TIFF files. If I was doing multi-page documents (which InDesign is designed for), he wanted an InDesign-exported PDF of it.

They either didn't use inDesign as their primary software and imported the tiffs into Quark express or they dind't have inDesign at all. Either way, if the customer wants to send an inDesign file and they tell them no, its plain poor customer service.