Los Angeles — With the arrival of iPad, content publishers are looking for software for creating apps for the iPad and other tablet devices. Adobe has recently announced the Digital Publishing Solution, the first phase of a new set of creative software specifically intended to help you publish interactive magazines in InDesign that can be output as apps for tablet devices such as the iPad and other mobile devices, including the desktop, the company revealed Monday.
This latest software, which will soon stamp its mark in the Creative Suite collection, which can be downloaded from Adobe Labs and comprises of tools that would reduce the gap between print-oriented InDesign and software for interactive formats.
According to Adobe, the company’s objective is to make it simpler for more publishers to create and profit from tablet magazines like Wired’s hugely successful iPad offering earlier this year and sold more issues than the newsstand version without cannibalizing print sales.
Wired created the apps with Adobe’s InDesign CS5, along with a combination of other software to make its product, which the company said today will be available on Adobe Labs later this summer. This indicates that more publishers will be able to use them and create their own digital magazines. Adobe refers to the set of technologies as The Adobe Digital Magazine Workflow.
According to a blog post by Adobe’s Dave Dickson, “Using this Digital Magazine Solution, these publishers can create impressive content without having to hire additional developers or invest in extensive retraining for staff.”
“Pages are designed as usual in InDesign, with interactive elements such as video and slideshows added using the current set of interactive tools without embedding code via InDesign and develop monetizable apps for the Apple iPad — with other platforms and devices expected in the future,” Dickson’s post read.
Once a project is finished, another separate application called the Digital Content Bundler restructures the InDesign project into a new format called .issue. This format includes vertical and horizontal magazine layouts, metadata, interactivity, images, and video. This file is then “rendered,” as the blog post puts it, and can be viewed through the Digital Content Reader app on the mobile device.
The new Adobe platform will concentrate on mobile hardware-specific needs, including 360-degree image rotation and pinch/swipe gestural navigation for panning and zooming. Currently, this is performed through an AIR utility, the Interactive Overlay Creator. In future versions of InDesign, the Interactive Overlay Creator will be an integrated feature.
Adobe mentions that it will be announcing the publishing applications involved in the magazine workflow, including the tools for combining enhanced interactivity and bundling content, on Adobe Labs in late summer. This will come with the appropriate documentation.
Adobe is also making it effortless to add mobile-friendly multimedia to slick, print-reminiscent layouts. From what is shown in a brief demo (below), it looks like designers will have a lot of fun taking an on-screen mockup to a .issue format magazine with relative ease. We cannot wait to try it out ourselves.
The Digital Content app has been developed for the iPad, but Adobe expects to create versions of it for other mobile devices (and the desktop) as well. It is part of Adobe’s Digital Publishing Platform, which spreads its net wider to include publishers of books, newspapers and catalogs.
Here is a summary of what Adobe is calling the Digital Magazine Workflow/Digital Content Builder: