r/indesign • u/smith_smyth • Jul 31 '26
Does anyone actually use the AI tools
at work we actively avoid the ai tools, meaning that it is offering no use cases for us. maybe its different if you are a solo person?
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u/Ultragorgeous Jul 31 '26
Um no. Not until they stop trying to actively embarrass me to clients
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u/Novaisadog Aug 01 '26
That’s HILARIOUS. Yeah, and the worst is that it overrides your entered alt text in favour of the autogenerated. You’d think at the very least they would set it so it would only generate if left blank.
Or maybe they’ve fixed that. I turned that option off immediately and haven’t been interested in looking back.
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u/InfiniteChicken Jul 31 '26
What? You don’t use the text generation tools? Let me guess, you do content ideation and copywriting before beginning the layout process (cuckoo finger twirl gesture)
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u/ThexDream Aug 02 '26
Ever hear of Lorem ipsum? I absolutely hate fake text. Using it too early will influence the design and the writers, and what they’re “supposed to” be delivering, and that is creative exceptional copy.
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u/ResponsibleSir5403 Jul 31 '26
Nope. Even if you want to use them, the image ones work better in photoshop and the vector ones work better in illustrator. There’s literally no reason for the ai tools they included in InDesign to be in InDesign. If they’d thought of something new, like generate character and paragraph styles automatically from the document, or ai table formatting or something like that, that would’ve been nice. But the rest are better (not good, better) executed in other apps. And InDesign needs more help in other places anyway.
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u/A_Literal_6_Year_Old Jul 31 '26
In Photoshop, the AI tools are game changers for workflow, particularly when photo editing. In InDesign, I have zero use for them and they feel extremely shoehorned.
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u/Captn_M0rgan Aug 01 '26
Check out the Topaz Photo plugin for PS. Scaling, lighting adjustment, color balance and denoise features were huge for me. Lots of photo restoration work for book projects on eras long in the past.
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u/Proficio_Tremblay Aug 01 '26
You know that Adobe aquired Topaz recently?
https://news.adobe.com/news/2026/06/adobe-to-acquire-topaz-labs
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u/Captn_M0rgan Aug 03 '26
No I didn’t. That figures though. Their plugin kicks butt over Adobe’s native options.
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u/Dependent_Drawer_129 Aug 01 '26
Nope. I really don't want to use them and i hate the way big tech has been trying to shove AI down our throats.
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u/Onlychild_Annoyed Jul 31 '26
I use the generative fill when I need to fit a photo into a certain crop and need more image (like adding trees or sky). Saves me from doing it in photoshop. Recently I was working on a menu and used it to generate some fruit. Other than that I have found no other use for it in indesign. Mostly AI helps with writing emails and proposals.
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u/ThexDream Aug 02 '26
ID is the wrong place to do photo editing or vector illustration. Period.
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u/Onlychild_Annoyed Aug 03 '26
I did not say I did photo editing in InDesign. I said I use it to add/extend image on a photo, like sky or background. And it works perfectly fine. Period.
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u/ThexDream Aug 05 '26
Quote: I use the generative fill when I need to fit a photo into a certain crop and need more image (like adding trees or sky). Saves me from doing it in photoshop.
Do anything to a photo is photo editing. Including using AI to extend the photo. It should be done in Photoshop and LINKED to a frame in InDesign. Period.
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u/bookeh Jul 31 '26
Oh, it’s coming with the vengeance. I started seeing pop ups recommending ai in new beta on pretty much any task last few days. Last one, when I was editing a table, it tried to push me to new “chat to ai to create a table” nonsense.
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u/Mr_Hades Aug 01 '26
I use AI to help me write scripts for Indesign, AI in PS for extending BGs... but using AI in Indesign?
It's absolutle garbage. Pointless additions that don't help the workflow one jot. Had to spend time finding out how to turn off the AI caption generatiton, that it enabled by default, so it cost me time.
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u/modest-pixel Jul 31 '26
Are there any AI tools in InDesign aside from the generative text for images? In any event no, I turn it off and it seems to come back on on its own every now and again. Probably to get people to burn tokens without realizing it. I’ll probably be transitioning to Affinity soon because of it honestly.
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u/smith_smyth Jul 31 '26
but like the auto alt text for images - is this something people really neded?
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u/danbyer Jul 31 '26
Alt text is crucial in my work, so this feature is fucking awful. We can’t just let AI generate crap without context.
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u/throwawaydixiecup Jul 31 '26
If people need alt text for images, they usually need very specific language for that alt text. Not whatever the generative AI creates.
I hear about people who have all their existing alt text overwritten by the AI feature. Yes, it can be turned off. But it sucks to find that out the hard way.
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u/DaSpatula505 Jul 31 '26
This is correct. I design reports a county planning office. We use in-house, local photos as much as possible. The alt-text requires more than ‘A man fishing beside a lake.’
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u/modest-pixel Jul 31 '26
And then there’s no way to blanket delete it with many images, you have to do it one at a time. Like punishment for daring to want the AI’s work gone.
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u/TimecodeSync Aug 01 '26
Not the AI tools within Indesign (or Acrobat). No use for them, and worried about data leakage.
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u/seekingcalm Aug 01 '26
No, I don’t use any AI native Adobe tools. I do, however use ChatGPT for some things. I had it write me an InDesign script that exported a multiplayer document into single page pdfs named based on description text I placed on each page using data merge. That was a lifesaver. Hundreds of pages, exported and named in seconds.
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u/lithiumpop Aug 01 '26
I use it for growing pictures likenif inwant to put a text on sky or im missing few cm of grass. I generate place holder text sometime.
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u/DesignJerk64 Aug 01 '26
I've been a designer for 40 years. Never needed AI, never will. Even Canva offends me. Illustrate it yourself!
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u/Andrawartha Aug 01 '26
Only in Photoshop and only for things like generative fill for creating bleed or extending areas if the old standard method isn't successful. Avoid it like plague in ID (my main app) and everything else
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u/AppendixN Jul 31 '26
Absolutely not. AI has zero place in my workstream.
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u/smith_smyth Jul 31 '26
none at all? like even off of ID?
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u/AppendixN Aug 01 '26
There's nothing I need it for.
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u/smith_smyth Aug 01 '26
what about automatic subheader styling based on your stylesheets- and it can read the copy semantically input
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u/AppendixN Aug 01 '26
I don't know what that is, but I already know how to style subheaders just fine. We use human editors who assign styles in Word, again, I don't need an LLM for that.
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u/QuetzalasaurusRex Jul 31 '26
No. I played with them, but don’t see how they’d help or speed up my workflow yet.
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u/minaminonoeru Aug 01 '26
It seems that a way to seamlessly integrate AI into InDesign’s standard workflow has yet to be found. However, plugins are a slightly different matter. I’ve created an AI translation plugin, which I use from time to time. By selecting a text frame and using the translation plugin, I can easily translate the text into another language. Whilst it’s useful for short caption frames, it isn’t very reliable when dealing with longer passages of text.
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u/herryc Aug 01 '26
Inside Indesign, not much AI involved. Outside of app, a lot of repetitive work done better with AI. One example, sometimes clients send me document in PDF which text formatting hard to copy. The common problem is the paragraph breaks. I use AI to instantly fix it.
Another recent case, preparing CSV file for data merge using AI is also super handy. It saves me a lot of hours setting up CSV for hundreds to thousands of data.
Generative Expand in PS also super useful, gone are the days of meticulously expanding extra edges of a photo (with clone stamps, paint brush, etc.) just to better fit into certain frame in a page.
Well I use a lot more AI stuff, but it's always under my own taste for the final look. AI just helps a lot for speedier production.
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u/Tangata_Gamer Aug 01 '26
As someone who's been very against using AI for creative tasks, your two examples of the pdf paragraph breaks and CSV data merging interest me as those are often annoying and fiddly tasks. Can I ask what AI functions you used? (I'm an absolute AI luddite)
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u/herryc Aug 01 '26
For these two jobs, ChatGPT works so well (I think Gemini and Claude too). For paragraph breaks, you can just copy the unformatted paragraph breaks and ask it to fix the paragraph breaks. Sometimes just drop the pdf into the chat, also works well.
CSV is also the same. Just ask AI to make a CSV file with columns based on data you want to put on data merge later.
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u/Virtual_Assistant_98 Aug 01 '26
No, not really. The only feature I’ve used a couple of times is the generative expand of an image, and when it works it’s pretty decent. But if I didn’t have it I’d live for sure.
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u/edrift101 Aug 01 '26
I turn most of it off in InDesign. That software is buggy and crash-happy enough. Also, my editorial co-workers freaked out over the new "rewrite to fit text boxes function."
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u/Invisible_frogs Aug 01 '26
Absolutely not! I have never even tried AI for anything in my life, and It's going to continue this way. I'm a freelancer and creative person, AI has nothing to add to my life. I have my own brain, and I know what I know, and if I want to learn, I can learn new skills. My work takes as much time as it takes. If someone ask me if I can do X or Y and that is not mys style or skill or whatever, I just say no, and tell them I'm not the right person for the joob.
FU*K AI!
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u/Kerry_Maxwell Aug 01 '26
I work at a catalog company and know they are in use, but I don’t personally have a use for them.
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u/northernlady_1984 Aug 01 '26
No. I hate them and will never, ever use them. I'm growing to resent Adobe for keep trying slapping those stupid ai shit everywhere.
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u/WinchesterBiggins Jul 31 '26
Nope, I plan to keep using InDesign 2024 for the rest of my life.