Right Tool for the Job?

November 25, 2008 7:59 AM

I have a couple of thousands coupon ads to make. Which is the right tool for the job: Photoshop, Illustrator, Corel, or Indesign?

- most of the ads are the same size, but not necessarily, and some of them will be different orientation
- I will be given photos in various sizes, shapes and color spaces
- some ads have lot of text, and some not
- there will be revisions
- I should be able to easily batch export the files to jpg, or png or whatever necessary
- I know all 4 of this programs really well

posted by leigh1 to Computers & Internet (7 answers total)

InDesign, no question.

a) Paragraph, character, and object styles will save you approximately one trajillion hours.

b) Different page sizes can be taken care of with the DTPTools plug-in available here: http://www.dtptools.com/product.asp?id=pcid. Not free, but worth it.

c) I don't know why on Earth you would need to export these to JPG, but InDesign will export each page as a separate file if you want.
posted by Optimus Chyme at 8:10 AM on November 25, 2008 [1 favorite]

Response by poster: Oh thank you, I didn't know about that plugin.
Batch export to jpg is needed so I can send the files to revision.
posted by leigh1 at 8:16 AM on November 25, 2008

I can see exporting to PDF for a printer, but probably not jpg. Either way, 2nd InDesign.
posted by Bunglegirl at 8:29 AM on November 25, 2008

If you're sending them out for proofs/revisions, I'd recommend a simple PDF output; if you're concerned about theft for some reason, just change the PDF security settings to commenting only on export. You can export a single page, all pages, or various ranges.
posted by Optimus Chyme at 8:56 AM on November 25, 2008

Yes, InDesign all the way!
posted by iguanapolitico at 8:58 AM on November 25, 2008

InDesign is best for design. You can set up a master page with the basic design elements and then tweak the pages to fit the different needs of the individual coupons. Right there, you're saving yourself huge amounts of time and energy having all your coupons in one place rather than having to open, close, export and modify a bazillion separate files.

Illustrator or Corel are distant second for this kind of work.

No one should ever set body text in Photoshop. Ever.

Judging by your export requirements, is it safe to assume that this is for web/email? I hope so, because if this is going to print you're going to want to send your printer the native InDesign files or PDFs.
posted by lekvar at 3:13 PM on November 25, 2008

Agreed. InDesign. (Assuming these are print ads, of course. Although even if they're not, the character & paragraph styles mentioned above do make it tempting...)
posted by timoni at 12:59 AM on November 26, 2008