Indesign or Photoshop?

good idea - especially since my computer is 8 years old, lol. I believe I hear the cries of dollars about to be sent away into exile in foreign lands far from home...

Correcting Color: You're always going to have to do some correction regardless as the camera will put its own interprolation on the capture. Some contrast adjustment, sharpening, and saturation adjustment usually helps also.

You might be able to do most of that with Photoshop Elements (substantially less than the full version of Photoshop).
Go back to the beginning of this thread and see rota's advice....find out what files your printer prefers. Do they want you to do the conversion to CMYK and if so, what profile? (or will they handle that conversion)

In a real and perfect world, you'd use Photoshop for the image manipulation and InDesign (or Quark) for the layout. The former is designed to work with pixel-based images. The latter is a typesetting and layout program and will also handle the fonts better than Photoshop. That said...we're also only talking titles and not large amounts of type so if your printer will accept tif files, you'd be ok with just output from an image program.

Yes, this is the tricky, frustrating part. But the bottom line is that you want your images to reproduce in accurate color and that takes some pre-prep work.

First, you may be able to hire a graphic designer to do this job for less than the cost of the software. This may be worth it to you given all the little technical details you will need to learn to successfully get your artwork from photos to finished cards without any printing snafus.

If you are set on doing it yourself... I'd say that if you can only buy one, buy Photoshop. You'll be able to add nearly any kind of border and title you want, AND do any corrections you need.

InDesign will be much more limited than that for graphics creation and manipulation... there are plenty of things it does that Photoshop can't (laying out multi-page documents for starters) but it doesn't sound like you really NEED to use it.

Go to the nearest Borders or Barnes and Noble, find the Photoshop section and look through the books... you'll find good information on basic color correction, sharpening, etc.

Most printers will want the final files in PDF form. If your printer doesn't accept PDF, run fast and far away and find a new one. Do you have a printer in mind already? They should be able to help you through a lot of the technical details.

Thanks for the advice so far, it is getting clearer in my head what needs to happen.

If I am doing scans and not photos, is there still a great need for color correction?

The great news is, a friend has an old computer with Photoshop on to lend me, and another friend has both Photoshop and Indesign and will help show me how to do some stuff - I just found out today!

I'm trying to do as much as possible myself, to save money for the printing itself.

I don't yet have a printer, but a third friend of mine and also a fourth person friend of my partner are connected to the publisher/printer industries, and have been sending out feelers. I haven't yet got as far as meeting with any printers though. But I feel lucky to have these friends to point me in the right direction.

Still need to finish the last round of cards though, but then things will start moving very fast in this direction. Scary and exciting!

Woohoo! Sounds exciting! I'm glad you're finding the support you need to get your cards done. Looking forward to seeing them.

Glad you are drawing the resources you need to you!

Babalon Jones said:

If I am doing scans and not photos, is there still a great need for color correction?

Click to expand...

So it's not just correcting colors that you may find you need to do... sharpening, contrast, etc... and the answer is yes, as every scanner has its own unique profile just like every eye sees the world slightly differently.

Scanning (or photographing) and then outputting to a printer is a set of translations from the original to the final output, and important things can get lost in those translations.

It will probably be worthwhile to pay for a hardcopy proof from the printer to make sure that you're getting final output you actually want. If there are problems with the proof, you will need to adjust some or potentially all of your files (or there may be adjustments the printer can make) and get another proof. Otherwise, you're taking a gamble and may be disappointed with the results... can be an expensive disappointment too.

Ahhh, good to know. I feel like I understand better now. thank you, from the heart of a novice!

EoMg said:

It will probably be worthwhile to pay for a hardcopy proof from the printer to make sure that you're getting final output you actually want. If there are problems with the proof, you will need to adjust some or potentially all of your files (or there may be adjustments the printer can make) and get another proof. Otherwise, you're taking a gamble and may be disappointed with the results... can be an expensive disappointment too.

Click to expand...

Oh GOD yes ! ALWAYS pay for a printed proof. Even then there CAN be issues, as we saw with the recent Bohemian Gothic fiasco.... But in my experience the printer can usually fix the necessary.

aja said:

Correcting Color: You're always going to have to do some correction regardless as the camera will put its own interprolation on the capture. Some contrast adjustment, sharpening, and saturation adjustment usually helps also.

You might be able to do most of that with Photoshop Elements (substantially less than the full version of Photoshop).
Go back to the beginning of this thread and see rota's advice....find out what files your printer prefers. Do they want you to do the conversion to CMYK and if so, what profile? (or will they handle that conversion)

In a real and perfect world, you'd use Photoshop for the image manipulation and InDesign (or Quark) for the layout. The former is designed to work with pixel-based images. The latter is a typesetting and layout program and will also handle the fonts better than Photoshop. That said...we're also only talking titles and not large amounts of type so if your printer will accept tif files, you'd be ok with just output from an image program.

Yes, this is the tricky, frustrating part. But the bottom line is that you want your images to reproduce in accurate color and that takes some pre-prep work.

Click to expand...

This post sums it up correctly.

To purchase InDesign just for borders and titles, would in my opinion be overkill. Photoshop will (at high enough resolution) do an adequate job in producing the text for the titles. Its a fallacy that text should only be done in vector based programs. If as you claim you do not enjoy or intend to work in the digital media and all this is just a necessary evil in order to finish off your project, then spending lots of money on the software seems silly. I suggest buying an earlier version of Photoshop, the price of which will be far far less. Photoshop is not easy to learn, but then you really only need to learn a very small part of it to achieve what you need. Although the issue of accurate color manipulation and reproduction is quite complex.

Another option if all this talk of resolution, color manipulation etc is confusing. Why don't you simply hire someone who is experienced in this to do it for you. It does'nt take that long to apply a title to each image and make some color adjustment, you might find a freelance graphic designer who is local, that way that you can oversee and direct any color modifications. This could work out less than buying the program and spending hours learning how to do it yourself (which could still result in you screwing things up on the color issue).

Thanks, cirom - my instincts and limited experience compared to yours told me that Photoshop should be OK on its own - but I only dealt with printers a lot for WORK stuff, and to be honest my bosses didn't care that much about exactly precise colour and the rest.

And I didn't want to land Babalon Jones in it by saying Photoshop will do it and then....!