Adobe InCopy Product Review

Pushing The Limits!

Adobe InCopy CS3 is a collaborative software, allowing designers and editors to work together in a congruous manner. The new features in Adobe's current version of InCopy, provides the user with even more flexibility to complete work with ease and efficiency. The well-organized workflow allows creativity to soar, which in turn, results in higher productivity featuring dynamic and innovative designs.

The new Adobe InCopy CS3 "e-mailâ€“based assignments" feature, provides editors and designers the tools to turn Adobe InDesign design layouts into shared InCopy CS3 editable files as e-mail attachments. This new feature opens up the collaborative field, making it possible for outside contributors (without access to the team's local server) to work within a team environment.

The improved functions of the "find/change" feature allows users to quickly change text and text formatting. The find/change function not only locates and replaces text, but also finds and changes punctuation and symbols. The new features within CS3 allow easy customization of complex searches within master pages, headers, footers, etc.

The bullets and numbering function has advanced to allow for easy creations of lists utilizing styles to insert bullets or sequence numbers to text. It also allows the import of bullets and numbering formats from Microsoft Word documents. Any function that makes usage less complicated is always a good thing.

My favorite feature is the "text variables" function, which lets the user efficiently automate items that are used on a regular basis. The function allows changes to be made throughout a document with only a few clicks of the keyboard. Text variables can be used to simplify and automate the use of repeating elements, such as headers, footers, product names, and date stamps. A text variable can be based on a document value such as page count, a system value such as the date and time, or custom text. It can then be modified, as needed, to update all instances of the variables throughout a document.

The basic philosophy of Adobe's InCopy, is that it allows designers to design, and editors to concentrate on editing. InCopy CS3 allows designers to create a basic design in Adobe InDesign CS3. Designer then assign permissions to specific sections, and then assign the sections to specific editors. Editors can then change text, as well as edit images (within the scope of the designer's permission settings). Team members can then work on specific area, without fear of changing the designer's basic page layout. This in turn gives the document designer additional time to work on other projects. Which frees him (or her) from being solely responsible for inserting all the needed changes. For this function alone, I would highly recommend InCopy CS3 for any publishing team effort.

Designers use InDesign CS3 to create InCopy CS3 workflow files, by assigning each editor a specific name along with a color code, allocating the editors specific areas to work within a single document. The editor can then check the files in and out as work is needed. That way, although several editors can work on a document, they can only access their assigned section, and each team member knows what the other member is working on. This is an invaluable function for a design/editing team. I wish every member of the now defunct Renderosity Magazine, would have had a copy of InCopy CS3. It would have reduced production time and increased proficiency, especially during final pre-press editing. Which without the use of a program such as InCopy, often turned into two weeks of ineffective chaos.

The main reason an editor would prefer working within InCopy, compared to editing in a word processor, as in Microsoft Word...InCopy, allows editors the ability to visualize how the text will appear within the overall finished design. Although many editors/designers use InCopy CS3 as their sole word processor, I personally could not envision forsaking Microsoft Word for Adobe InCopy CS3.

As an editing program, InCopy CS3 does an exceptional job in the realm of collaboration. Although primarily a shared editing program, if pushed to the limits, InCopy CS3 can also function as a standalone design program. In a bind, Adobe's InCopy CS3 could even be considered an abridged version of Adobe's InDesign.

To put InCopy CS3 through its paces for this review. I collaborated with fellow writer, Paula Sanders. We took turns creating and sharing files between InDesign and InCopy. Paula, subsequently, wrote her Adobe's InCopy CS3 review concentrating on how the program related to sharing files between InCopy editors and InDesign designers. I, on the other hand, wanted to explore what InCopy CS3 could do as a standalone program. I was curious to see if I could create a document utilizing InCopy, with the end results resembling a document that could have been produced in InDesign.

The InCopy CS3 feature that I utilized to appease my curious nature was the tables function. Tables have greatly improved in InCopy CS3, and can be used for importing Microsoft Excel spreadsheets directly into tables. InCopy CS3 also allows for the ability to use table and cell styles, to effortlessly configure complex tables, especially with the fore-mentioned advanced bullet and numbering functions. For this review, I wanted to keep things simple, and use InCopy's tables to create a flyer that included graphics and text for my upcoming novel.

Creating the basic document was a simple task. It was just a matter of setting up the initial document [File/Document Setups] to my size specifications. In the fly-out box, under text areat, I set the width to 7.5 inches and the depth to 1 page. I then set the page size to letter, with a width of 8.5 inches and a height of 11 inches.

Although, InCopy does an outstanding job of reconfiguring the size of an image placed within a document, I still wished to avoid the possibilities of image distortion. So, once the outer parameters of the document were set, I opened Photoshop and resized all the images, that I intended to use within the flyer, to the exact width and height for my specific design. I then saved the images to a designated folder for easy access.

Once I knew the sizes of the images that I wanted to utilize within my design, I was able to create tables to enclose both images and text, adjusting the tables to the image and text placeholders.

Placing the images was the easy part. However, inserting text proved to be a little tricky. It was a matter of trial and error to create the correct text flow within the designated "table cell" that I designed for the text content. Adjusting the header in the main text cell caused the text to overflow the cell...causing the table (including both image cell and text cell of the table) to automatically move to a second page (which was also automatically created). If additional text was placed within the second page's text cell, the little red overflow text indicator would appear. As a work-around to this dilemma, I overcame the program's limitations (or more likely, my limitations with the program) with creative editing.

A. Creative Editing to avoid text overflow.
B. Trying to adjust the text header caused the text to overflow, which in turn caused the table of the first page to move, to an automatically created second page.
C. View of second page that the program automatically created. Note the slight adjustment to the header text that caused the text overflow.
D. View of the same second page when additional text was added; again causing the table cells to expand and the text to overflow.

Another of InCopy's idiosyncrasies...when working within tables, the text can only be edited in the layout view. Compared to placing text outside a table, which allows for InCopy editing of text in any of the three views: galley, story, or layout.

The three individual viewing modes allows the editors to view, and work, within the layout in three distinct perspectives. The "layout mode" allows viewing of the actual layout design. The "story mode" displays the text content in a text display; allowing an editor to view information about paragraph and character styles, as well as track specific text lines through the viewing of column increments that run vertical to the text. The "galley mode" shows the text in a "story mode" view that is restricted to the specifications of the layout format.

Again text editing is normally not a problem when working with InCopy CS3. In fact, text editing is the main function of InCopy. Also, designers do not generally design in InCopy, or use it as a substitute to create InDesign-like documents. However, in a pinch, I was impressed with Adobe's InCopy CS3 versatility as a standalone program, and the document that I designed far exceeded my expectations.

InCopy CS3 may not function at the top of its class as a standalone design program, yet, the program deserves an A+ when it comes to its ability to share document design layout filesâ€”and the capability to control which sections of the layout each team member works on. These features make Adobe's InCopy CS3 a must have program for any team that is working on a publication: be it a small community newsletter, or a large full color magazine. Adobe's InCopy CS3 is an essential element to the workflow solution, and an invaluable tool for collaborative workflow for any design/editing team.