I'm sort of curious about trying indesign for album stuff. Pardon my ignorance, but I'm going to ask somewhat basic questions. Is there a difference in image quality when inserting images in indesign vs using the free transform tool in photoshop? Maybe I'm obsessing too much, but when I try to fit a 30d image in a 19x13 spread at 300dpi in PS, I'm obviously degrading the image a bit. Is that something I even need to worry about when it comes time to print?

Anyway, I guess the encompassing question is, what are the benefits of using indesign vs photoshop for album design, other than ease of use?

Hey Phil,

This is a direct quote from Mr. Swan on another forum. I'm not going to add to it, but I think it gets at the crux of your question:

"InD is the most powerful/flexible design program on the market. It's an industry standard. However, it's also a little complicated for the unfamiliar. That's what prompted me to do the indesign video--so many photographers had the full Adobe CS, which included InDesign. They had it sitting on their hard drives, but they'd never used it.

Photoshop is the absolute worst solution for album design--but so many photogs use it because they're familiar with it. Photoshop has to open each image in full resolution--then you have to place those photos on a 300dpi, full-sized spread (like a 20x10), which is a monster, slow file. And you have to make a separate PSD for each spread. It's a slow, painful, torturous process.

InDesign works with preview images, so it's MUCH faster. You don't need to see everything in full resolution if you're doing layout. It also allows you to put all your spreads into one document that opens in seconds, saves in seconds, etc. You can resize images as much as you like in InD--bigger, smaller, whatever. It doesn't matter, because you're not editing the real image. When you export your JPEG or PDF out of InDesign, it will take the original and put it in the layout at the proper resolution for your final output.

There are so many advantages to using InD (or something like it) that it's amazing to me that people keep it collecting dust on their hard drives.."

No shameless plugging or paid endorsement here. I just recalled it as a great description of why InD is on my list of things to buy once I have the cash on hand.

thanks for the quote, that was definitely helpful. the psd files definitely make my old althon 3200 pc work, so faster files is definitely a plus.

here's a spread I made in photoshop using fundy's action set, maybe I'm pixel peeping too much and it won't be as evident when printed, but i can see a loss in quality because the image size was increased (using free transform tool) i didn't know if indesign had a better algorithm or whatever for upsizing the image, or if it uses the same mechanism.

sample spread

i'm trying to get this album stuff down now so I don't have to worry about it when I do real albums

I use both programs every day. For albums, Indesign just makes sense because yes it is faster and the fact that you can do multiple page spreads makes it easy to the entire album in one doc. Doing multiple pages in photoshop can get really tedious. As far as quality goes- the quality is directly dependent on the quality of the placed image and your export settings within Indesign.

If you are stretching out a photo for larger printing- Indesign and photoshop will give you the same result, except Indesign will do it way faster.

Phil,

Hi, if you stretch it a bit you probably won't notice in the print.

With my new set, the Fundy Album Builder Pro and EZ, the photo is auto resized.

When it is downsized it uses bicubic smoother and upsized bicubic sharper so it retains a bunch of the detail.

if you are very concerned you might want to look at some of the resizing programs available out there, but Photoshop's bicubic actually does a pretty dang good job.

Fundy
http://www.fundysos.com

I also have a question about InDesign. I have been playing with some templates and noticed that there is some saturation loss when copying files from Photoshop to InDesign. How do you compensate for that or is there another way other than pasting to get your images into an image box?

Thanks!
Candice

you can use the Place (FILE> Place) command to fill the box... is it actually outputting with low saturation or is it just how it looks onscreen inside ID?

If you go to Edit > Color settings... is those settings matching your files? is your working space the same?

Thanks for the reply. It is outputting the low saturation I will check those settings you suggested and post back it if fixed the issue. Thanks again!

Make sure your blend space is set to RGB before you export - InD defaults to CMYK and it will screw up your colors if you're in a full RGB workflow.

This was part of what was wrong. I guess I still need to work with it. To me the controls don't seem as intutive as photoshop's. I guess it is because I have been using photoshop for so long.