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chasg · Sep 8, 2004, 05:03 PM

Hi All,

I've got a lead on a job to design and lay out an illustrated book, and I'm not sure what applications people usually use to do jobs of this size.

The book is about card games (yeah, I know), and will have lots of photos of cards and illustrations (at least 4 colours, perhaps a spot colour). From the copy I've seen, it looks like it'll be about 100 A5-sized pages.

Longest document I've done is a 10 page booklet, and I used InDesign, which is my usual page layout app (I once dabbled in FrameMaker _years_ ago, and I much prefer InDesign to XPress).

So, what app do people tend to use for books? Is InDesign capable of such a task? (fyi: my Mac is a rev.2 dual 2.0 with 2.5Gb RAM, so I'm not worried about horsepower).

Thanks in advance for any help!

Chas

godzookie2k · Sep 9, 2004, 03:27 AM

Quark or indesign (i prefer quark) but seriously, if you're asking this question you might want to pass it off to someone who knows what they're doing. a project of that scale when you don't know what you're doing is a disaster waiting to happen.

chasg · Sep 9, 2004, 04:14 AM

To be honest, I'm not that worried about taking on the project. The client is aware, and the learning curve is hardly steep.

I'm no newb to ID, and I'd find it hard to believe that building a book is more than an incremental step in ID functionality. I was only doing research on what the typical apps were for long documents (my earlier experience with FrameMaker left me with the impression that it was the long-document king, but that experience is outdated and it was time to see what fellow pros were using, thus my question).

Now that I hope I've established that I'm not a 15 year old warez collector, would you be willing to tell me why you prefer XPress to ID when building books? (I stopped using Quark back at version 4.0, I got tired of waiting for a carbon build, but I'd move back to 6 if it was more efficient at long documents than ID).

I'm sure the client would appreciate your caution, and I appreciate you taking the time to answer my first query.

Chas

Macola · Sep 9, 2004, 09:31 AM

Quark and ID seem to be about equal in handling long documents. However, you may be surprised to learn that all the techdoc folks around here, when dealing with 500+ page docs, use (gasp!) FrameMaker.

chasg · Sep 9, 2004, 06:10 PM

Yeah, I originally bought FrameMaker (a _very_ long time ago!) because I was contracted to build long technical documents (this was before the useful XML focus was hyped).

That long ago version definitely didn't hold a candle wrt layout ability to ID CS. Is FM much better now, or are its layout capabilities limited when compared to CS?

Bummer that Adobe has abandoned FM on the Mac, that sure would've p*issed me off if I was a FM Mac user (with nothing else to go to, except <gasp> FM on the PC)

Thanks for participating,

Chas

gautch · Sep 9, 2004, 07:49 PM

If your going to use Illustrator or Photoshop.. id have to say to use InDesign.. They work great together.. Especially if you have CS versions.

I cant stand Quark.

chasg · Sep 9, 2004, 07:57 PM

Yeah, I really do like how well illustrator and photoshop work with indesign :-)

The non-standard (and inconsistent) interface of quark drives me crazy (though they may have fixed that since I left it at version 4, but I doubt it...they're almost worse than microsoft)

Thanks for participating

godzookie2k · Sep 10, 2004, 12:13 AM

I prefer quark just because thats my preference, we can argue the merits and failings of it or indesign for weeks, they're pretty even. (at least CS is)

chasg · Sep 10, 2004, 06:59 AM

I thought that that might be the case (it's like the good old days of the "Illustrator vs. Freehand" wars, with each leapfrogging the other in features with every new version :-)

Thanks for writing back.

Chas

Randman · Sep 10, 2004, 07:13 AM

Use whichever you feel more comfortable with.

storer · Sep 10, 2004, 08:20 AM

Originally posted by Randman:
Use whichever you feel more comfortable with.

Exactly what I was thinking! This man speaks wisdom...!

gautch · Sep 10, 2004, 11:14 AM

Originally posted by Randman:
Use whichever you feel more comfortable with.

Agreed!

chasg · Sep 10, 2004, 11:39 AM

I think we've moved away from the original question into the beginnings of a "one app vs. another app" conflict.

Not my intention, I was only wondering what people were using these days to build books (and the feedback indicates: FrameMaker for really long docs, and ID and Quark for shorter books, with similar functionality).

Cheers!

Chas

eyevaan · Sep 10, 2004, 12:38 PM

did IDCS introduce a "story editing" function? This has always been Quarks limitation on large books. There is no efficient way to modify large blocks of copy without blowing the formatting all over the place.

PageMaker and FrameMaker both had the story editing feature and it saves hours of silly font/size/style tweaking, because you are simply editing a raw text doc.

Randman · Sep 10, 2004, 12:59 PM

Originally posted by eyevaan:
did IDCS introduce a "story editing" function? This has always been Quarks limitation on large books. There is no efficient way to modify large blocks of copy without blowing the formatting all over the place.

I haven't worked with it yet, but ID's InCopy handle that? I've heard good things about it, but more from a newspaper publishing pov.

sambeau · Sep 10, 2004, 02:00 PM

I have typeset three large academics books in my time.
The client insisted that I use M$ Word..

The last of the three had more footnotes than main content and some of the footnotes even had diagrams in them.

I say this not to enlighten you fine fellows, but more to inlicit gasps of sympathy.

(not to be recommended but it also shows that you can do it in almost anything).

sambeau · Sep 10, 2004, 02:02 PM

While I'm at it, freehand works fine for big graphical books. I've used this too for a 48 & 64 pagers.. so 100 should be possible.

I would worry about the OSX version crashing tho..

eyevaan · Sep 10, 2004, 02:35 PM

Originally posted by Randman:
I haven't worked with it yet, but ID's InCopy handle that? I've heard good things about it, but more from a newspaper publishing pov.

gonna have to check into that.
thx for the info.

inkhead · Dec 14, 2005, 05:39 AM

Check out CocoaBooklet, it turns normal pdfs, into booklet style, it's beautiful!

inkhead · Dec 14, 2005, 05:45 AM

Also here is a great collection of templates for making books in various formats:
http://www.psprint.com/creative/down...oduct_temp.asp

th3ph17 · Dec 14, 2005, 11:51 AM

I'd recommend talking to your printer.

chris v · Dec 16, 2005, 12:15 AM

I'd say no to Quark if you're building a book with a lot of illustrations. Quark 6 really chokes with any more than a few graphics set to full-res preview. We're talking serious beachballing, and slow screen re-draw. Having to switch each graphic back and forth between low and high res display would really suck.

production_coordinator · Dec 16, 2005, 10:31 PM

Be careful... having worked on books, if you don't nail down your client, you may have a run away project.

And if you don't know the ins and outs of style sheets, shoot yourself in the head now. ;-)

production_coordinator · Dec 16, 2005, 10:36 PM

My 2¢, use InDesign (as it's the program you are most comfortable with)... I'm a Quark man myself... so guess what program I would use

Don't fall for anyone telling you one is vastly superior to the other... They can both get the job done.

I would worry more about good fonts, a well thought out plan of attack, good scans, etc. etc.