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About to buy InDesign... help?

B

bungiefan89

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Apr 5, 2011
565
76
I'm a university student. Going to purchase Adobe InDesign CS5.5 or whatever the latest version is... is this a good idea? And what do I get with my purchase? Do I also get access to Bridge or other software?

I don't want to buy this today and read how the next version comes out tomorrow. :(
 
What do you want to create?

The answer to your question of is it good idea to get In-design depends on what you intend to do with it. I used it to lay out the ads for, and the pages of, magazines and newspapers, and it is absolutely fabulous. If your looking to do page layout with integration of images from photoshop then by all means get it. But since your a student, get the whole suite and have it all.

Buying just In Design is like buying a glove with only one finger in it, and the others missing.

But it goes back to the original question, what do you want to accomplish/create.
 
yeah, I'm getting the Standard Design suite because they don't offer InDesign alone anymore with a student discount...

MAN these people at Adobe jerk you around! Their customer service and purchasing experience is TERRIBLE! I think they just led me around in a big circle for the past hour!
 
If you buy InDesign CS5.5 it will come with Bridge and the Adobe Media encoder.

I would recommend that you at the very least get Design Standard which includes: InDesign, Illustrator, Photoshop and Acrobat.

If you can afford it, it would be worth it to get Design Premium since you get everything in Design standard plus: Dreamweaver, Photoshop Extended, Flash, Flash Catalyst and Fireworks.
 
I believe Adobe stated they would be on an annual schedule for the Creative Suite now. So 5.5 was released around April/May of this year, so you might expect 6 the same time in 2012.

So, it is about halfway into 5.5's lifespan. As long as something doesn't change radically in the Mac OS, you can get many good years out of a release. I'm currently on CS4 and don't feel any need to update anytime soon.

I personally would avoid Design Premium. If you are interested in doing web design, but are a designer, not a programmer, Dreamweaver is useless. They lost a lot of customers over making that their standard and years later it's still a hot topic on some boards. The Flash stuff, well, that problem speaks for itself. (A good HTML5 alternative is "Hype" the in Mac App store.)
 
bungiefan89 said:
yeah, I'm getting the Standard Design suite because they don't offer InDesign alone anymore with a student discount...

MAN these people at Adobe jerk you around! Their customer service and purchasing experience is TERRIBLE! I think they just led me around in a big circle for the past hour!
Click to expand...

I would suggest you buy the Adobe Standard CS5.5 from your university or for many places online and not deal with Adobe. Customer 'Service' doesn't exist at Adobe!
 
TheTSArt said:
I believe I personally would avoid Design Premium. If you are interested in doing web design, but are a designer, not a programmer, Dreamweaver is useless. They lost a lot of customers over making that their standard and years later it's still a hot topic on some boards. The Flash stuff, well, that problem speaks for itself. (A good HTML5 alternative is "Hype" the in Mac App store.)
Click to expand...

Totally agree with this. Get Design Standard - Design Premium is wasted money really. I do web design and when I was in your place I actually found it easier to learn advanced HTML and CSS coding than to get Dreamweaver to do what I wanted. If you're not doing web, you won't need the extra apps, and if you are, there are much better alternatives than Dreamweaver & Flash.
 
I would never buy anything directly from Adobe. As many others have said, Adobe's customer service is terrible. I would have to say it is one of the worst that I have ever experienced.

Also, Adobe will charge you tax and shipping. If you buy it from an online retailer, you will only have to pay for shipping. It might save you a few bucks.
 
It is generally cheaper to buy off the shelf from your university bookstore than directly from Adobe or through an online retailer, especially if your school is part of a large state system (UC and Cal State have the best prices in California.) For example, this is currently $199 at the San Diego State bookstore. It's in the high $200's at online outlets. You save close to 50% by buying from your official school bookstore.

http://www.sdsubookstore.com/Bookstore/StoreInfo/ComputerDept/tabid/72/Default.aspx
 
DesignerOnMac said:
I would suggest you buy the Adobe Standard CS5.5 from your university or for many places online and not deal with Adobe. Customer 'Service' doesn't exist at Adobe!
Click to expand...

MechaSpanky said:
I would never buy anything directly from Adobe. As many others have said, Adobe's customer service is terrible. I would have to say it is one of the worst that I have ever experienced.

Also, Adobe will charge you tax and shipping. If you buy it from an online retailer, you will only have to pay for shipping. It might save you a few bucks.
Click to expand...

jtara said:
It is generally cheaper to buy off the shelf from your university bookstore than directly from Adobe or through an online retailer, especially if your school is part of a large state system (UC and Cal State have the best prices in California.) For example, this is currently $199 at the San Diego State bookstore. It's in the high $200's at online outlets. You save close to 50% by buying from your official school bookstore.

http://www.sdsubookstore.com/Bookstore/StoreInfo/ComputerDept/tabid/72/Default.aspx
Click to expand...
Where were you guys the day before yesterday when I needed you!? :(
It's ok, I don't blame you but I did learn my lesson the hard way.

On November 3rd, I spent three full hours online with their 'customer service. sales representatives, service representatives' and they lead me by the nose in a big circle before FINALLY letting me buy their software for $300 plus tax. Sure, I've got InDesign AND Photoshop now, but I don't know what to do with Illustrator and Acrobat Pro. It was probably the absolute worst experience I've ever had purchasing anything.

A warning to everyone: DON'T buy directly from Adobe! They don't want your money. They only want to jerk you around for hours before ripping you off.
 
bungiefan89 said:
I've got InDesign AND Photoshop now, but I don't know what to do with Illustrator and Acrobat Pro.
Click to expand...

  • Design with a pencil on a sketchpad
  • Create that design as a vector with Illustrator
  • Manipulate photos/raster art with Photoshop
  • Lay everything out in InDesign
  • Optimize/mark up drafts (PDFs) in Acrobat
 
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