Graphic Design With Adobe Creative Suite

This seems to be the complete package if I want to design my own catalog. It even includes stock photos.

What tools and packages do you recommend for designing a catalog?

Yup. That'll do it.

Although I've tried Adobe Suite CS2 on my machine that is about 3 years old and even with a maxed out video card (128 MB) it still hangs. I find CS1 is a lot less memory intensive. CS2 also puts some nasty shit in your system tray everytime it starts up.

Most newbies use Photoshop for their entire brochure. Although that is not the professional way to do it, I don't see how it could be practical for a businessperson to learn ALL those programs just so they can use it every once in awhile to design something that'll last them the next 6 months at least.

Those three programs do different things. Illustrator is a vector drawing tool. I use something similar to draw those forum icons called Macromedia Freehand. InDesign is a fairly new program, and it is a page layout program, used mostly to manage text and make text look nice. I use QuarkXPress for that at work, which is similar. Photoshop is the big package that is for photo manipulation, but it is really so versitile you could probably do all three with it.

For my job (I do a hardware store flyer and a bunch of other 8.5x11" hotsheets) I use Photoshop to design the background and placement of the products, then import it into QuarkXpress to do the text. If I need an illustration, I use Macromedia Freehand. If I wanted to, I could design the whole thing in Photoshop, however.

If cost isn't an issue, then that package will fill all your needs, but it is expensive. If cost IS an issue, I would stick with Photoshop, as you will probably not have time to screw around enough to be effective with all three of those programs. If you really want to save money, get a second hand Photoshop off Ebay from a reputable seller. It will cost much less, and the learning curve will be not as steep. CS2 has literally a TON of features I don't even use or know what they're for. Plus, it is a memory hog.

Indeed. Since version 6.0, Photoshop has become buggy bloatware. I really don't know why I always upgrade, I don't use all the features it has. And: lately it's also catering to the digicam crowd too much for my taste. Isn't that what they have Elements for? Hm.

The program I use for layouting is Freehand. Should probably learn Indesign as Macromedia has been gobbled up by Adobe, but I haven't come around to it yet.

Creative Suite is a nice package.

I don't find Photoshop "bloated" at all. I've been using it since v1.5 and it's almost the only tool I use to do web graphics.

For vector drawing I prefer Canvas, formerly of Deneba Software. It's what Illustrator wants to be when it grows up. Freehand I've never particularly cared for. Some of its features seem too clunky.

InDesign is simply Adobe's replacement for PageMaker. A very slick package that I find slightly superior to Quark. But either of them will do, as they are almost interchangeable. I mean, there's only so many ways to lay out a page and have it be readable, Wired magazine notwithstanding.

Anyone have any favorite freeware plugins for Photoshop?

Nothing freeware, sorry. I currently have Kai's Power Tools 3,6, and 7, Eye Candy 4000, Xenofex, and a few others. I hardly ever use them except in the rare instances I need to create a fire or something, and I still don't like how it makes it look like the cover of a cheap Bollywood movie, IMO.

I use Photoshop 5.5 at work and Photoshop CS1 at home. After much bellyaching from the likes of me, my workplace finally got the latest version of Photoshop for me and installed it, but my machine wasn't powerful enough, so I don't even use CS2.

A lot of people say Illustrator is better than Freehand, but I find it really annoying to have to switch tools to add points, where in Freehand its just a control-click or alt-click. It's probably mostly due to my old habits during the time I learned how to use Flash. I found it easier to drag and drop Freehand drawings directly into Flash.

Here's something I made for the company you guys might find a lil neat:

Link

You must spread some Reputation around before giving it to Scorponok again.

You did that whole site? Congratulations! I like it!

Scorp, everyone, is there a magazine or site that profiles cool web sites, and gives detailed info on how the site was done?

Ermm, maybe not how each one is done but a neat showcase is here:

http://www.coolhomepages.com/


I think I am a registered member of the forums, but haven't visited there in years. They are nice to newbies too!

Thanks. Looks really good, IMO!

I'm not especially fond of Indesign. I really like the rest of the Creative Suite, especially now that they are starting to integrate the assets they acquired when the purchased Macromedia. If Quark is an option, I'd go that way.

Hey, Scorp, see? Sometimes, people do have the same good idea when they certainly haven't heard from each other. See the logo on this agency site for example. Red dot, red box ...