

Surprisingly, though, the application is also used for purposes that were not intended by Adobe. The increase in digital publishing has further expanded its use, seeing it used to design and publish eBooks and publications for reading on tablets. Advertisers found it useful for creating brochures, flyers, and even posters that had different elements that needed compositing.

The use, however, quickly spread to other designs that had multiple features. Newspapers and magazines, for example, benefited because it made it easy to manipulate text and images in a single application, helping to quickly tweak layouts. Historically, desktop publishing software was intended for work that would eventually be printed or published. The nature of Adobe InDesign means that it can be used for a lot more than Adobe originally intended. These would all come together in InDesign, which would compile the final layout of, for example, a magazine page. Photographs might be prepared in Photoshop, combined with art from Illustrator, and text written Word.

Originally, the class of software was intended to replicate the more traditional methods of design and publishing, such as typesetting or even the literal pasting of page elements in place.įor many, this makes InDesign the final destination for elements that are developed elsewhere. InDesign is Adobe’s desktop publishing and page layout software. But what is it really for? Our Adobe InDesign review covers its strengths and weaknesses. Like many of Adobe’s products, it is feature-rich and versatile and overlaps with other Adobe applications like Illustrator and even InCopy, their word processor. Inclusion in the core of Adobe’s suite of creative software soon helped to propel it to a leading position in the market, toppling the once dominant QuarkXPress. The successor to Adobe’s desktop publishing software PageMaker, InDesign was first released in 1999.

The Software as a Service includes, depending on subscription level, access to a range of creative products, including Adobe InDesign. Adobe’s Creative Cloud is often regarded as the benchmark for creative software.
