They’ve gone and done it again. Those folks at Adobe keep upgrading their Creative Suite software about every 18 to 24 months. And every time they do, the question is: “Is it worth it for me to go with the upgrade?” With CS5, the answer...again...is “Yes!”

Because most readers of this column are print-oriented, I’ll focus my attention on InDesign CS5 and its upgraded capabilities.

Here are some of the things I really like about the new InDesign:

SPANNING MULTIPLE COLUMNS: This may revolutionize the way we paginate. Since the introduction of pagination software, we’ve always had to create a separate box for a headline and the text type in multiple-column designs. Many of my clients found this particularly troublesome when creating multi-column captions. They need to place the photo credit and a caption headline in one leg, but the caption in multiple legs. No longer. Now it’s a snap to set the caption headline to span the columns. Better yet, you can place the setup in a library for whenever you need a multiple-leg caption. I’m willing to bet it can be set up as a style sheet, too, though I haven’t had the time to try that yet. For many of us, this is gonna be the “wow” feature of InDesign CS5.

MULTI-TALENTED SELECTION TOOL: When you’re working on a page, how often do you go back-and-forth-back-and-forth-back-and-forth to the tools palette? I try to use shortcuts (and a multi-button mouse) to save myself trips but there’s still a lot of mousing around to grab the proper tool for what I need to do. With CS5, I can use the one tool to select, rotate, resize, reposition, crop, scale frames and frame content, duplicate, and apply corner effects.

MULTIPLE PAGE SIZES: This may not matter much for issue-to-issue work on a broadsheet. But if you’re a tabloid—or working on a tabloid special section—it means you can keep the centerspread as part of your entire document instead of having to work on it separately.

ENHANCED LAYERS PANEL: The new layers panel emulates the layers panel in Illustrator. With it, you can hide, lock and arrange different elements on a layer. When you click the arrow next to a layer, you can drag an object to a different layer, move it in or out of a group, lock it or hide it.

OBJECT GRIDS: OK...this is soooo cool! Using the object grid shortcut, you can arrange objects in a column, a row—even diagonally—and duplicate the object as many times as you want. This will make those designs with multiple mug shots effortless.

DOCUMENT-INSTALLED FONTS: Just package a document with its fonts and—joy, joy joy!—InDesign will install those fonts when you open the document...and uninstall them when you close the document. So, you can make that hey-buddy-you’re-missing-some-fonts pink a thing of the past.

MINI-BRIDGE: A quick way to access the originals of photos and other elements for use in your document.

TRACKING CHANGES: With Track Changes turned on, highlights in Story Editor will indicate what text has been added, moved or deleted.

The way I count, that’s at least eight good reasons for you to consider upgrading to InDesign CS5. There are more...about a few dozen more...but for me, eight is enough.

CS5 scores again—with innovations and approaches that just can’t be matched by any other pagination software.

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FREE DESIGN EVALUATION: Ed Henninger offers design evaluations—at no charge and with no obligation—to readers of this column. For more information, check the FREEBIE page on Ed’s web site: www.henningerconsulting.com ED HENNINGER is an independent newspaper consultant and the Director of Henninger Consulting. Offering comprehensive newspaper design services including redesigns, workshops, staff training and evaluations. E-mail: edh@henningerconsulting.com. On the web: www.henningerconsulting.com. Phone: 803-327-3322.