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Indesign V Photoshop For Posters...

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2Sticky

macrumors regular
Original poster
Mar 4, 2005
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UK
I am learning to use Indesign, have been following some basic tutorials, making a magazine layout etc, another one was doing a poster...

I followed the tutorial and wondered what benefits there are of using Indesign to do a poster as I would have thought it would be better to use Photoshop for such a thing.

Reasons and thoughts?
 
well I look at it this way, photoshop and illustrator are more graphic/design orientated, while indesign/quark are more text/layout orientated there's nothing to say one should be used over the other, its whichever works best for the end result, also its usually a case of being able to drag from one to the other anyways.
 
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Ahh ok, so if someone came to you and asked you to design a poster, the best way to do it would be graphics in Photoshop, then put it together and add text in InDesign?

I presume this would give the highest quality finish.
 
Depends on the graphics... for many posters, I'd use a combo of Illustrator (vector), Photoshop (raster) and InDesign to composite and output.
 
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Perfectly put Blue Velvet.

You mustn't look at it as one or the other, rather all three working together for different elements
 
Indesign is definitely the tool of choice for output.
Illustrator and Photoshop are ideal for creating graphical elements.
Indesign has more flexible text formatting tools.

Be sure to place Indesign text in the topmost layer of the document; if imported PSD transparency masks overlap your text (are above it in the layer stack), this may cause the text to be rasterized, rather than being rendered as vectors.

GL
 
Doesn't work, try it. Open up a photo in photoshop convert to cmyk then add some type at 100K, save as a photoshop pdf, close and open it and check the colour of the black with the info palette, yep it's still 100K isn't it. But it won't print 100K it will print 4 colour.

Open the same file up in Indesign or Acrobat pro and look at the separation preview, the "100K" type that you checked with the info palette mysteriously is now 4 colour black.

This can be a very nasty surprise.
 
dogbone said:
Doesn't work, try it. Open up a photo in photoshop convert to cmyk then add some type at 100K, save as a photoshop pdf, close and open it and check the colour of the black with the info palette, yep it's still 100K isn't it. But it won't print 100K it will print 4 colour.

Open the same file up in Indesign or Acrobat pro and look at the separation preview, the "100K" type that you checked with the info palette mysteriously is now 4 colour black.

This can be a very nasty surprise.
Click to expand...

I tried it and it worked as expected for me. (Black text only on the K plate.)

Perhaps the difference is that I picked my black using Photoshop's CMYK sliders in the Color Palette rather than using the black in the toolbar (which is RGB black and so goes through RGB->CMYK conversion)
 
dcr said:
I tried it and it worked as expected for me. (Black text only on the K plate.)

Perhaps the difference is that I picked my black using Photoshop's CMYK sliders in the Color Palette rather than using the black in the toolbar (which is RGB black and so goes through RGB->CMYK conversion)
Click to expand...

Did you open the file in Indesign or Acrobat Pro to check the K plate seps?
 
Photoshop is so unpredictable. I tried it again an the text came out 100k this time. Could be because I flattened the file before. But another bit of strangeness has cropped up, although the text is 100K it is rasterised even though it was left unrasterised on it's own layer when saved as a photoshop pdf with zip compression. What to make of that? At first, when I went to save a dialog came up saying a faux bold font would not save as a vector so I used a normal font and did not get that dialog but it still rasterised.

Is you 100K text rasterised when you magnify your pdf in Indesign or Acrobat?
 
I never have (and probably never will) produced an entire piece of artwork in photoshop.

I use photoshop to edit imagery which will then be used elsewhere like InDesign, Illustrator, Freehand, Quark etc.

Each package is designed to do one thing very well. Photoshop manipulates images, Freehand/Illustrator are for vector effects (logos etc) and InDesign and Quark are for layout.

That being said if I am doing a stationery set or something that requires only vector artwork I would probably stick with just Freehand. :)
 
dogbone said:
Is you 100K text rasterised when you magnify your pdf in Indesign or Acrobat?
Click to expand...

No, the text remains vector.

In your case, faux bold is a raster effect so it can't be saved in vector form. I don't know what your other rasterization issue would be.

I suggest making a CMYK={0, 0, 0, 100} color swatch and leaving it in your swatches palette so that it's easier to get non-rich black in your output.
 
dogbone said:
But another bit of strangeness has cropped up, although the text is 100K it is rasterised even though it was left unrasterised on it's own layer when saved as a photoshop pdf with zip compression. What to make of that? At first, when I went to save a dialog came up saying a faux bold font would not save as a vector so I used a normal font and did not get that dialog but it still rasterised.
Click to expand...
I didn't think text would output as vector from Photoshop (because it's treated as part of the image, not as "text" as we would expect) - it becomes dependant on the resolution of the output device.. Is this just when printing? I assumed it'd be the same on screen?
 
xfiftyfour said:
I didn't think text would output as vector from Photoshop (because it's treated as part of the image, not as "text" as we would expect) - it becomes dependant on the resolution of the output device.. Is this just when printing? I assumed it'd be the same on screen?
Click to expand...
If you save as PDF from PS, the results are interesting to say the least. Go ahead and save a simple shape or two and a text layer from there, and open it in Illustrator, and marvel at the strangeness. It's smart enough to preserve vectors in some form, but not enough to notice when a solid fill doesn't need to be converted to a bitmap.
 
@iMeowbot
...and marvel at the strangeness...

That's about the size of it. You can never be sure what's going to happen, and there's already enough things that can go wrong.

@dcr
If you read my post you will see that I used a faux bold font and got the 'will rasterise because it's faux' warning box, so I said I used a normal font. I then did not get the warning box, which indicates to me that PS was not going to rasterise it. But it did anyway. And I always use the cmyk slider to set the black, not a swatch. As iMeowbot implied, when it comes to vector type, Photohop is the bad boy of the CS suite.

I could if I wanted, wonder why photoshop said it would rasterise a faux font then rasterise a non faux font anyway, but frankly, why bother.
 
2Sticky said:
Reasons and thoughts?
Click to expand...

There is often overlap in products. And on the edge you *can* do things in one product that you probably should do in another product.

Office suites are often the same way. As you add just that one feature someone needs, all of the sudden people are making lists in excel, and presentations in word.

There is often no single right answer if you push the "logic" of things. Often if you don't stray too far, the most comfortable set of tools may be the right answer. Is the document going to be shared? Can you make the right sort of output.

Me, if I can make slides and t-shirts, I am golden. But that may be another topic!:)
 
Rich Black

Check under properties if black is set as rich black
or something like 40,40,40,100.

in any case it doesn't matter. when you go to plate it will produce what you have in channels
 
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