Our marketing person came to me asking what the best way to make brochures with product matrices was. She has been using Photoshop, so I think there could be something better that she could use. She has an older version of CS suite on her PC.
I suggested Adobe Indesign, and one of my ID friends from Uni said she uses Illustrator for her company. I use inkscape for technical diagrams for product design.
We want product pages for furniture with rows and columns with ticked boxes or dots as well as text and images to indicate features e.g. swivel base, lumbar support, upholstery materials. So imported images (probably jpeg), vector graphics, text and borders.
Any of Photoshop/InDesign/Illustrator will do the job. What I found when I was working on a large print project way back in the day was that each of the three products had one feature that meant I wanted to use a bit of everything to get the job done, and were also MISSING one vital feature forcing me to use a bit of everything to get the job done. You do kinda wonder “why are these separate products?”
InDesign is best for print. Better control of type, pre press settings , colors and spreads. Illustrator is for graphics or at best a 1 up single side layout.
Without a doubt indesign for the main layout and final print. You can certainly prepare all your other images /diagrams/pictures in photoshop and illustrator and save as working .ai or .psd files and just link these in. Means that when you are doing any further edits you can click the link and select edit original which will open it up in photoshop / illustrator… Doop d doop, play with it a bit, resave and auto updates in indesign.
Indesign will make sure your whole document / brochure, whatever will hold its integrity as you can create a master layout and apply all or bits of this to each page, making them all flow and become the same. Also an added amazing bonus with indesign is that you can hit a package button and this will create a folder with all your links / fonts / and any further info needed for press. You give that folder to your printers and bob’s your uncle…
I would not use PS or Illustrator for this, definitely Indesign. The other two are not made for this purpose. Anyway quick question about Indesign vs Photoshop (didnt want to make a new thread): why do my pdf’s come out different in terms of colour when the exact same file is exported from Photoshop or Indesign? Its a jpeg and I have no idea what im doing wrong. Same colour mode and everything. Im trying to send something to print but the colours dont match my previous runs. And my printer said that it could be because im exporting from a different app. Is that possible? My printer is print24.
