The Much Ballyhooed All-Adobe Workflow

For most of the 1990s, the design market was shared by three programs: page-layout software QuarkXPress, image editor Adobe Photoshop, and drawing application Macromedia FreeHand. (Some shops preferred Illustrator, but FreeHand tended to be the more popular choice of page designers.) This benefited users by inspiring fierce competition between the suitors, with each doing its dead-level best to remain on top in its respective market. But because the rivals rarely saw eye-to-eye, it also ensured a certain amount of cross-application friction. There was no such thing as consistent color. And throughout most of the decade, none of the programs supported the others’ native file formats. As a result, Photoshop and FreeHand had to export to standardized formats that didn’t take advantage of their most recent innovations, and XPress was left bottom-feeding from aging import technology and downright antique graphics-handling functions, many of which had been designed to suit grayscale graphics.

Today’s more progressive design market is increasingly dominated by InDesign, Photoshop, and Illustrator, all from a single vendor, Adobe Systems. Time will tell how Adobe handles its monopoly-esque position. Does it innovate to keep us buying its products? Or does it take us for granted, cut resources from its graphics and design development, and pursue markets that have nothing to do with us (and everything to do with our middle managers)?

It’s hard to predict, but for the present, things honestly couldn’t be better. InDesign, Photoshop, and Illustrator respect each others’ color profiles, so assuming consistent color settings, a shape that looks red in Illustrator appears in same shade of red in Photoshop and InDesign. The three programs share common tools and palettes, making it easy to flit from one program to another. And best of all, they recognize and fully support the PSD and AI formats, which are capable of saving every layer, transparency setting, and dynamic effect that Photoshop and Illustrator can dish out. This extraordinary level of support presents us with three practical advantages:

• Advantage #1: You no longer need to create two copies of your artwork, one in the native file format that preserves layers and a second in a cross-application standard that can be read by the layout program. Just save one file that supports all features of the program—PSD in the case of Photoshop and AI for Illustrator—and import that file into InDesign.



• Advantage #2: InDesign supports all layers and translucent objects inside PSD and AI files. This means you no longer need to trace the opaque boundaries of an imported image with a clipping path, the way you did when importing images into QuarkXPress. Consider the image files pictured here (you can click to enlarge). On the left is a knife that casts a shadow, as it appears in Photoshop. Knife and shadow exist on separate layers; the background is transparent. When I place the layered PSD file into InDesign, the transparency remains intact). On the right, the result is a photo-realistic composite with a tapering shadow, something clipping paths cannot come close to matching.


• Advantage #3: You can share complex artwork between Illustrator and InDesign via the clipboard. For example, just copy a group of paths in Illustrator, switch to InDesign, and paste. If you have the right options turned on, as shown here, you can even edit the paths in InDesign.

To increase compatibility between Adobe’s products, it is essential that you save your artwork properly from the originating application. Some advice:

• When saving a document from Illustrator CS3 in the Illustrator format, be sure to include the .ai extension at the end of the filename. When asked how to save the file, turn on all available check boxes, as pictured above right. The first, Create PDF Compatible File, makes the file readable by InDesign. The next, Embed ICC Profiles, permits InDesign to display the colors just as they appeared in Illustrator. And the last, Use Compression, makes the file its absolute smallest without throwing away any important data.

• When creating an opaque Photoshop image—which you can recognize by the lack of a checkerboard pattern—I recommend that you flatten the document by choosing Layer’Flatten Image before importing it into InDesign. This reduces the size of the file on disk. I also recommend that you save the image to the TIFF format. With LZW compression turned on, TIFF usually results in smaller files than PSD, and with no loss in quality.

• If you want to convey transparency to InDesign, as I did when importing my knife image, delete the Background layer in Photoshop and reduce the file to as few layers as possible. Then use the Save As command to save the image under a different name (so as not to harm the original). Use either the PSD or TIFF format.

So to those of you who’ve permitted the Creative Suite to swaddle you in the warm embrace of an all-Adobe workflow, rest easy. InDesign, Photoshop, and Illustrator work like cogs in a great, harmonious wheel.

For more information on getting consistent color across the Creative Suite, InDesign’s transparency and effects, and importing Photoshop and Illustrator files into InDesign, check out my newest book, Adobe InDesign CS3 One-on One. For more on leveraging layers and transparency in Photoshop, there’s a best-selling Photoshop version as well, aptly named Adobe Photoshop CS3 One on One.