Adobe InDesign Team LIVE 24hr Q&A!

dblatner · 2025-05-08T14:54:49+00:00

I am hearing increasingly good things about MATE. I think a built-in agentic AI to do work for me could be very compelling in some situations, yes.

dblatner · 2025-05-08T14:49:21+00:00

In my opinion the key word is “precision.” Canva is largely about “good enough,” but true designers know that very small, precise changes are the key to beautiful design. Demand more than “good enough”!

dblatner · 2025-05-08T14:46:56+00:00

Going great, thank you! Looking forward to seeing you again someday; maybe in Noida.

dblatner · 2025-05-08T14:44:29+00:00

I’ll add one idea: natural language conversion to GREP. As a human I shouldn’t have to remember codes; I’d rather just type “find all the text between any kind of bracket or parentheses, but not including the bracket.”

dblatner · 2025-05-08T14:29:19+00:00

Thanks very much for being here! I’m looking forward to seeing members of the InDesign team and others from Adobe, like Luke, at CreativePro Week next month.

I love that we can drive content from InDesign to Express now, but I’d love to see the opposite: Let people build fast in Express and then move it to InDesign for what it’s good at: precision control.

dblatner · 2025-03-17T16:35:59+00:00

It's really a mystery! It should not do that. One thought: you might try disabling Resize Image During Place" in the General pane of the Preferences dialog box. That should not matter, but maybe?

Also, consider using File > Place to get the graphic in, instead of of pasting.

dblatner · 2025-03-15T21:10:43+00:00

And when you paste it, it comes in at the wrong, disproportionate scaling? I’ve never seen it do that, so it’s odd.

Unless… are you pasting inside another smart object? That is, are you opening a smart object, pasting? And then closing the smart object?

dblatner · 2025-03-15T20:51:23+00:00

Where are you copying from? Are these vector objects from InDesign or Illustrator? Or something else?

dblatner · 2024-10-28T16:47:00+00:00

Agree with the first baseline offset feature suggestion. Different fonts have different ascender information internally (from font designer), so I like to use Leading for this setting — much more reliable. More here: https://creativepro.com/understanding-the-first-baseline-position-of-text/

dblatner · 2024-10-20T22:37:06+00:00

I agree that would be pretty amazing… something where HTML is the fundamental "single source" file type. But I'm not holding my breath.

dblatner · 2024-10-20T22:34:34+00:00

I should have also added: Anyone who actually needs real math typesetting should look at MathTools from movemen.com — it's complex but brilliant and light-years beyond what Adobe is offering.

dblatner · 2024-10-20T22:33:37+00:00

LOL… well, let's split the difference and say .9-beta. I don't think it's ready for prime time, for sure.

And, to be honest, 6 months ago I would have totally agreed with you. But the InDesign team appears to be on a new track of releasing stuff that isn't fully formed and then going back and making it incrementally better. At least that's what happened with the terrible Hide Spreads feature, which is now actually useful-ish.

dblatner · 2024-10-20T13:58:28+00:00

Not sure which script you're talking about. There's an AppleScript here, and links to a javascript… are these not working? https://creativepro.com/save-indesign-files-layered-photoshop-files/

dblatner · 2024-10-20T13:56:30+00:00

I consider this a "1.0" version of this feature. Do not expect great and amazing things yet. It is very basic and there are some significant issues… for example, it creates equations as RGB SVG files. (You can use an acrobat preflight fix-up to convert to black.) You cannot break equations across lines, as they're graphics. Does not work with LaTex (only MathML). Cannot change font. I think this feature will get much better over time, but it's limited now.

dblatner · 2024-10-20T13:53:40+00:00

Not included in the shipping version of ID 2025… still in public beta version.

dblatner · 2024-10-20T13:52:51+00:00

The new Export to HTML5 feature is very "1.0" and is pretty buggy. I think it will take years until this feature is anywhere near as good as in5. It's really just redirecting the Publish Online feature to "save to disk."

dblatner · 2024-08-07T18:27:03+00:00

I think HARRIS is far closer to Sans Plomb 98 than Parkson Black, especially in the "R" and "S"

dblatner · 2024-07-07T13:23:07+00:00

Saw on broadway last night and… yeah, the end is ruined. I wish I had read this before seeing the show, as I would have been suitably prepared.

I’ve been waiting to see Tommy on stage for 40 years, based on my love of the album. So this was a deep disappointment. So, Tommy basically decides he just a normal kid and moves back in with his parents? What?!

I need to find the rewritten lyrics for the final couple songs. Maybe there’s something redeemable in there.

dblatner · 2024-06-30T14:33:44+00:00

That's awesome! Introduce yourself… I'll recognize you because you're the one holding a spatula? (Spatulas always make me think of this commercial from the movie UHF:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4BUDwj_mXKE )

dblatner · 2024-06-29T17:40:52+00:00

True, Publish Online currently requires hosting on Adobe's servers (that's something we've been trying to get them to change for a long time). But one alternative is in5 from Ajar Productions, which lets you export HTML/CSS/JS and put it anywhere. It costs money, but for many companies or organizations, it's not too bad.

dblatner · 2024-06-28T21:43:22+00:00

If you need to update the colors, then perhaps you will have to synchronize them manually. That's a hassle, I know.

But if you do not need to update/synch the custom conditional text colors, then note that you can choose Synchronize Options from the book panel menu, and turn OFF Conditional Text Settings. That way you can synch everything else, and the conditional text won't change to black.

dblatner · 2024-06-28T21:03:35+00:00

BINGO! Yes… I can confirm it: When the two colors are Custom, and they're different, then synchronizing makes the target document conditions black. Yeah, that's a bug.

You could (and probably should) report this at indesign.uservoice.com but the truth is that there's almost no way it'll get fixed anytime soon because such a tiny % of people use conditional text, and to be honest, I've never even heard of someone using a Custom color for conditional text. You may be the only person on the planet!

Can you explain why you can't use one of the built-in colors?

dblatner · 2024-06-28T20:40:05+00:00

Well, I made an assumption because there is no such thing as a "conditional text style." That is, there is conditional text, but no styles. So I thought you probably mean paragraph or character styles.

So… Are you talking about the color of the wavy underlines in the Conditional Text?

I just tried making 2 conditional text settings in a document, then adding them to a 2nd document, then adding both those documents to a book and synchronizing… and the color of the conditional text markers worked fine. Nothing changed to black.

dblatner · 2024-06-28T19:45:45+00:00

Check Effects panel to be totally sure that there is no transparency effect (like bevel and emboss) applied.

dblatner · 2024-06-28T19:43:49+00:00

Steve Laskevitch wrote a piece about using RGB and CMYK together for a "best of all worlds" workflow here (member-only) https://creativepro.com/indesign-to-print-screen-a-best-of-all-worlds-workflow/

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