Newspapers & Technology three months ago began its transition to Adobe Systems Inc.’s InCopy CS3, the word-processing component of InDesign. The goal: to further streamline the editing and production of the publication. With an in-office editorial team of three, we are keenly aware of both the benefits and challenges that are part of working with a small staff. Editors work in close cooperation with the production team. Prior to InCopy, our editorial workflow looked something like this:

1. Editors work independently writing their stories in Microsoft Word

2. Completed and proofed stories along with photos and/or graphics are made available to production via server storage

3. 2-day layout/design process

4. 1st proofread day–Editors read complete publication and mark up changes on printed pages

5. 1st correction day–Each editor, in turn, sits with production to do live corrections in InDesign

6. 2nd read/2nd correction day–Repeat steps 4-5, only faster

7. Editors take a final quick glace at pages and the prepress begins

For our small team, we hoped InCopy would help cut down time in steps 4-6 by allowing one editor (Tara McMeekin) to use the software to make corrections in one section of N&T while the rest of editorial made corrections in conjunction with the production department (Chere’ Martin). We met those goals and the transition went quite smoothly.

Preparing to use InCopy CS3

The production set-up was easiest of all with a simple install of the application which added export features to InDesign as well. For editorial, there was the extra step of adding all the fonts used in our publication in order to use the page Layout view supported within the program.

What follows is the perspective of both editor and designer in our transition to InCopy. We have tried to highlight many features of the app that we unearthed with this, our third issue, using the software.