Work Flow and Software to Publish Yearbook

[Helen]

Hi
This is not related to video editting, but I was after some advice and I know this forum is so good I thought I would try here first. I am in the process of making a yearbook for my daughter's school and need a little bit of help about the work flow and which software to use.
I started the yearbook in Publisher as I thought some of the other Mums would be designing the pages with me and they all have Publisher and we could then join it all together. Since then, it looks like I am designing the pages and the other Mum is writing sections and then passing them on to me to include.
At the moment I am editting the photos in PSE or Photoshop and then putting it all together in Publisher. I recently purchased the "Creative Suite 3 Design Standard" with includes "Indesign" and thought that maybe I should change to this programme. Is there a big learning curve to using this progamme or would I be able to muddle through. I normally pick up the basics of new software reasonably easily and have checked out a couple of quick tutorials and it looks like I would be able to cope.
If I did change, would I be able to import my Publisher pages into Indesign, or would I need to start again. This would not be too bad, as I find trying to decide on the layout of each page is what takes the longest and as I already have my pages made I could just import the individual text and images and place in the appropriate spots.
If anyone has any experience or opinions on this I would be interested in hearing them.
Thanks
Helen

[Doreen L.]

Hi Helen - I designed a yearbook for our boat club a few months ago. I used InDesign and it worked out great. I didn't find the learning curve too steep because of having experience with Photoshop (and PE knowledge helped). There's certain things that many Adobe programs have in common, so you're a bit ahead of the game. And it is easier going back and forth between PhotoShop and InDesign rather than between two unrelated programs (I used a lot of photos).

I don't know if you can import your Publisher pages in InDesign but I had copied and pasted between Microsoft Office (spread sheets and Word documents) and InDesign with no problem.

The other thing I found about InDesign was that printers liked working with it and the PDFs it creates. I was very, very happy with how the book turned out and I'm going to be doing it again this year.

[Chuck Engels]

I couldn't recommend anything more than Adobe Illustrator, and if you want to have it published most publishers will take Illustrator files.

[Steve Grisetti]

I'm a big fan of InDesign. It's very intuitively designed. It's not the no-brainer Publisher is -- but it's not got all that program's liabilities either.

In fact, InDesign has well overtaken Quark as the standard layout program of professionals. It shouldn't take too long to get up and running with it, and you'll find VIRTUALLY EVERY PRINTER IN THE WORLD supports it. (And, if not, you can output print-quality PDFs from it -- and those even Kinko's supports!)

[Helen]

Thanks for the info and I guess I will go ahead with InDesign. I found a book to help me this morning in case I get a little lost and I am looking forward to starting with the programme.

The only thing I am not to sure about now is margins. We do not know for sure where we will get it printed. One of the children's Dad is a printer, so we may be able to get a good deal through him, but it will depend on his workload. Otherwise, we may just output in PDF format and get it copied and then use a spiral binding. As we plan on giving the book as a graduation gift to all the children the printing costs will need to be kept to a minimum.
Do you agree that if I make the margins the size I would need if we used spiral binding it would be ok.

I also have lots of photos and I was up at school this morning taking a few more. We had a meeting with all the children and they are all excited about the project. This will be the first year they will have a yearbook and they are looking forward to the competition of designing the cover.

I enjoy learning how to use the new programmes and Illustrator is next on my list along with creating a web page for our family photos and news.
Thanks again
Helen