There are some great plug-ins for InDesign CS5. Some are free and some are costly. One that is not free, but might be worth the money for those in a heavy production environment, is PDF2ID from Recosoft. PDF2ID reconstructs pages from a PDF file into document pages in InDesign, complete with independent graphic elements. Text frames are created, and paragraphs are formed with styles applied. Although it’s not totally seamless, PDF2ID also attempts to intelligently link frames based on similar type styles.

PDF2ID is available in Standard ($299) and Professional ($399) versions; both versions do everything listed above. The Professional version also includes:

• Options to convert images in PDF files to TIFF-CMYK
• Options to preserve native color space of PDF objects or convert to CMYK or Lab
• Parallel processing functionality to speed up PDF conversions on modern multi-processor/multi-core systems

The translation may not be perfect, and a lot will depend on how the PDF was created in the first place, but for those in the printing industry, this InDesign plug-in, PDF2ID, can be huge timesaver.

To hear about the latest Adobe news, blogs, and training, subscribe to our newsletter. Click here to subscribe.

To learn more about InDesign, and real-world production techniques, check out our InDesign training options.