Adobe recently announced their Adobe InDesign Share for Review feature at the digital Adobe MAX conference.
Share for Review suits freelancers and creative individuals who want to share InDesign work in a single place and cut down time merging individual feedback.
It’s great for giving people the chance to see work in one place and make basic comments on it together.
It is, however, nowhere near the scale, power and depth of GoProof online proofing software used by small, medium and large businesses.
GoProof is way more than just Share for Review in Adobe InDesign and our good friends at Adobe will be the first to agree that, as they have witnessed and admired GoProof’s growth over the recent years that we have been partnering together.
Hey, they may even have borrowed an idea or two.
So now is a great time to take a look at why that is and compare how GoProof is so far ahead in the vision to deliver collaborative engagement, creative reviewing, automated workflowing and content editing in Adobe InDesign through a unified cloud ecosystem.
ADOBE INDESIGN SHARE FOR REVIEW FEATURES
Share for Review is a good step forward from sending PDFs out to people when you need them to see your work and make basic comments on it.
It enables creatives to share their document from inside InDesign with multiple members and allow the members to view a rendered version of the document on an internet browser without needing an InDesign licence.
Viewer access can be controlled using a public link, with or without password requirements, or via personal email invitation only.
The commenting functions include 5 proofing tools: pin, highlight, strike, replace text and draw. There is also @mentioning to collaborate in conversation.
Making comments is similar to Google Documents in as much as everyone can add and reply to comments and see if they have been marked as Resolved by the creative.
The creative sees the comments appear in their Review panel in InDesign as they are placed and can then make the necessary changes to the document. Once they have made changes, they update the share link.
Members need to refresh their browser tab to see the latest iteration from the creative designer.
Share for Review works well for InDesign documents where just a very basic commenting function is required and it offers a web-based alternative for Acrobat PDF markups.
GOPROOF’S FUNCTIONS FOR ADOBE INDESIGN
GoProof is one product in a combined ecosystem of proofing, collaboration and creative publishing workflow software powered by Oppolis Cloud.
Over the past few years, GoProof customers have shared a ton of ideas, inspiration and opinions with us on what they need in their increasingly remote workplaces to get marketing and creative work done faster.
GoProof’s functionality for Adobe InDesign and other apps through the GoProof extension for Adobe Creative Cloud is now fathoms deep and tailored for growing businesses. You can take a quick glance at all the key features to see why.
Now though, here’s a more descriptive walk-through of how GoProof compares to Adobe InDesign Share for Review and as all the features in Share for Review are native in GoProof such as editing copy, we’ll dive right in with the workflow process.
GoProof focuses on making the whole creative approval journey a completely natural flow from beginning to end, guiding everyone through sharing, engagement, collaboration, designer input, versioning, tracking and final sign off.
Creative designers use the GoProof extension in InDesign to manage their clients and projects and easily access their documents without having to browse through file folders.
When proof version one is ready to send for review, the user-friendly wizard guides the designer through a step-by-step process to deliver it to their collaborators in the way they want.
They can assign automated proofing workflows to move proofs through team group stages one after the other or just a simple one group review return. Work can be redirected to different creative designers when it returns too.
Each collaborator is given a role in the review depending on their responsibilities. So some collaborators can view only, some can comment and the highest access level called the Gatekeeper can request version changes, add others to the review and formally sign work off.
Creatives can choose to attach any files when they send the proof, including the original .indd or any other files like the brief or a print-ready PDF based on the exact presets stored in InDesign.
Deadlines and reminders can be applied to ensure work is returned on schedule and if those are missed, automatic actions such as requesting changes can happen to keep things moving.
On sending, collaborators receive proof invitations via email and mobile app pushes to view the proof. The clean browser-based GoProof web app layout has a ton of proofing and viewing tools to use on top of those in InDesign’s Share for Review.
Collaborators can rotate proofs (great for packaging!), use page flipper and spread views, zoom in hi-res, draw boxes and arrows, measure space with the ruler and combine multiple comments into groups.
They can add attachments to their comments too, so if the designer is using an old image for example, someone can suggest a replacement and share it via GoProof.
It’s easy to stay on top of engagement, as each collaborator invited to the proof has a status on them to show whether they have seen or not seen the proof and whether they have finished their review.
This is a huge feature for managing interactions and gatekeepers can quickly send a Nudge email from inside the proofing zone to those who are dragging their heels.
The proofs themselves have a status which flexes to show where the proof is in the approval process. The most commonly used ones are In Review, Changes Requested and Signed Off.
Collaborators and designers can manage their proof actions and time allocation effectively using the Proof Dashboard, which shows all the proofs they are tagged in or have sent out. Full details are documented on each one and there’s an advanced search function too easily find current or historic proofs.
Our customers love the Proof Dashboard. It’s been a game-changer for them and we’re constantly adding new shortcuts, filters and triggers to it.
Now back to the creative working in Adobe InDesign and the deep integration we have built into its extension panel.
When all comments are in and a Gatekeeper requests changes on a proof, the creative designer gets notified and receives them right back into InDesign.
They can see all the comments layered over the document inside the panel and can zoom in to check them out in more detail before deciding to make the changes.
A killer feature here is the ability to flow the text changes into the document without any typing, copying or pasting.
The edited copy in the text frames is applied in just a couple of clicks and the document is instantly updated.
A big feature favourite for designers when considering change requests is their power to choose Done or Not Done.
Sometimes if a request goes against the brand library or the template layout, then the designer will rightly refuse to do it. They can select Not Done and give a short reason why they didn’t make the change.
When they decide to go ahead and make one, they can log how much time they spent doing it. This is great for creative agencies who are asked to go way above and beyond their quoted hours on a job to make sure they don’t work for free.
The Insights reporting suite in GoProof provides the platform to view all that client and project data and track who’s been working on what and for how long.
Version control is managed seamlessly in GoProof. There’s no need to use Save As on documents or change names to add v2, v7, FINALfinal (right?) as it’s automatically controlled each time the designer sends out a new proof. There’s some extra power coming from GoVersion to boost it even deeper.
Collaborators can see all the previous version history with comments next to the current proof when they review it.
The Blink Compare button dances you back and forth from previous ones to see what’s evolved. Each version can be printed off with comments if a paper or PDF archive is required.
And right at the end of the whole review process, the Sign Off action taken by the Gatekeeper is definitive, indicating to everyone that the proof has been formally approved by the right person and it can move forward to publishing.
This locks the proof down and closes the review. Job done.
WHICH ONE SHOULD I BE USING?
It really depends on your own scale and process policy.
The first factor to consider is Share for Review is just in Adobe InDesign, whereas GoProof works with other Creative Cloud apps including Illustrator and Photoshop, as well as being used to review regular export files like PDFs, JPGs and MP4 videos.
Then there’s the workflow element. Share for Review is ideal if you’re an individual who just wants to send a bunch of people an online proof which they can all comment on and you see it inside InDesign.
Anything further than that including workflow stages, review rounds, roles, change management, company process control, version history, assigning work to different creatives in the team and more and you’re in GoProof territory.
So to summarise in a sentence, InDesign-focused freelancers and individuals normally use Share for Review, businesses and growing teams use GoProof.
We’re happy to demonstrate the comparisons at any time, so feel free to reach out and take a look into it.
After all, we’ve been an Adobe Developer Partner since the very first beta release of Adobe InDesign back in 1998.
We’re the right people to talk to.
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