InDesign CS3 Demoed at the InDesign Conference: Master Class
Sorry for the delay in posts this week… Anne-Marie, Sandee, Steve, Pariah, and I have all been attending this week’s The InDesign Conference: Master Class in Seattle. Aside from some astonishing and record-breaking rain from the Pineapple Express, the conference was a great success. Over 300 people attended sessions as varied as “Fundamentals of XML,” “Transparency and Flattening,” “Styles on Steroids,” “PDF Workflow,” and so on. It was a blast, and I personally learned a lot at the show.
I especially enjoyed hearing presentations by the Adobe engineers who made the long trek from their offices (across the street) to join us — including Eric Menninga, Matt Phillips, Zak Williamson, Craig Rainwater, and many others.
One highlight was the first public demo of InDesign CS3 by Chad Siegel, senior product mgr for InDesign and InCopy. The short presentation — run on a MacTel machine to show that it was, in fact, a Universal Binary application — focused on the new transparency features of the upgrade. He first showed how a text frame could have different transparency (both opacity and blend mode) for a stroke, a fill, and the content.
Next, Siegel moved on to an even sexier feature: The ability to apply Photoshop-like effects to objects, such as bevel and emboss, inner glow, and so on. He selected the same text frame and applied a bevel effect, pointing out that the dialog box options were designed specifically to be similar to those we’re already familiar with in Photoshop. When he changed the stroke width and style, the effect updated immediately, of course. (He ended up with a thick dotted stroke in which each “dot” appeared to be a beveled bump.)
He emphasized that these features were only a tiny fraction of the cool stuff that would be in CS3, but for various reasons he could not elaborate on or demo other features. Deke McClelland and I finished the session with a description of other CS3 features that have been made public and some fun tips and tricks for InDesign and Photoshop.
There was much more to the conference, of course: Attendees could sign up for guided tours of the Adobe offices; there were focused half-day tutorials on Flash, Dreamweaver, Javascripting InDesign, InCopy, and other things… To be honest, there was so much going on at the same time (often 5 different sessions simultaneously), it was quite overwhelming. But I wouldn’t have done it any other way. Were you there? Let us know how you liked it!
Update on 3/27/07: CS3 information has now been released and posted here.
Sounds like great fun! Meanwhile in Europe, Amsterdam Adobe’s Dov Isaacs was showing us his thoughts on InDesign, Adobe, PDF, Export, OpenType, and ‘mom & pop’ printers.
I really like the fact Adobe’s going through all this trouble of giving us all this information. Way to go, Adobe!!! (PS Dov rules!)
Sounds like it was awesome. Wish I coulda been there… but I was, um… busy
I really wish I could have went too. I knew it would be awesome.
Would be great to be in the States!
Think we might need to try and see if we can build an Adobe office in Perth, maybe on the foreshore of the Swan River
the weather here is really nice, it hardly ever rains 
in other words… I’m green with envy
Woz was/is right.
The Dov Isaacs lecture at Amsterdam Adobe HQ was an absolute eyeopener. 3 Hours of myth busting by a very funny guy. Highly recommended… and he is touring the world.
I was really hoping Adobe would be adding more page layout features instead of Photshop/Illustrator features. It looks like magazines/advertising is still InDesign’s main market.
Oh, Fred, I don’t think you need to worry. Adobe is putting all kinds of cool features into CS3 — not just effects. They’re just not talking about them yet.
I’ve never heard Dov speak, but I’ve corresponded with him many times on the Adobe U2U forums. I can’t think of another major software company that encourages its senior engineers to interact with customers.
Did he mention anything about the forthcoming PDF Print Engine technology? Since I’m an EPP tech, I cringe every time I hear about enhanced transparency effects. We’ve gotten to where we can deal with about 95% of transparency flattening situations without incident, but the remaining 5% still causes quite a bit of grief. I’d hate to have new effects break our existing workflows. If it works as promised, PDF Print Engine will make all that go away.
Just out of curiosity what did they discuss on Javascripting InDesign? Is this more for the interactive PDFs?
Sounds very cool, I wished I would have been there also. Out of curiosity, do you guys pay privately to go to these conferences? I do have some funding from my employer, but it wouldn’t cover the entire cost. Just wondering how most of the people in the industry can afford to go
I second that question Michelle.
thank you