Explore What’s New in InDesign 21.4 - Work Smarter, Design Better

My concern with recent InDesign releases is that Adobe seems increasingly focused on adding AI-powered features rather than solving the problems many professional users have been asking about for years.

InDesign remains the industry standard because it sits at the centre of complex publishing, accessibility, corporate, government, legal, educational, and regulated production workflows. Those workflows depend on reliability, predictability, auditability, and interoperability.

Rewrite

I struggle to see where this fits into most professional publishing workflows.

In the vast majority of environments I've worked in, designers do not write or rewrite approved content. Copy is supplied by authors, editors, clients, marketing teams, legal reviewers, translators, medical reviewers, or regulatory teams. Any changes normally happen outside InDesign and go through approval processes before reaching production.

Generating placeholder text is understandable, but AI rewriting approved content inside a layout feels like a solution looking for a problem.

Edit with Adobe Express

Again, I question who this is aimed at.

Professional designers already have access to Photoshop and Illustrator, which remain the industry-standard tools for image editing and illustration work.

Adobe's own documentation states that the feature only supports RGB assets and that edited PSD and AI files are exported back as PNG files.

PNG is primarily a screen and web delivery format. Professional print workflows typically rely on formats such as PSD, AI, TIFF, PDF, and native vector artwork because they preserve editability, colour management, production settings, and other information required throughout the design and approval process.

Converting industry-standard production assets into flattened PNG files introduces an additional workflow step, can remove important editability, and potentially creates version-control issues where multiple derivative assets now need to be managed.

I'm struggling to understand why a professional InDesign workflow would benefit from replacing native Photoshop and Illustrator files with PNG derivatives, particularly when Adobe already provides dedicated applications specifically designed for those editing tasks.

For quick social-media graphics this may make sense. For professional print workflows it feels difficult to justify.

Alt Text Improvements

The accuracy improvements are welcome.

However, my concern has never primarily been about accuracy. It has always been about workflow, consent, and document integrity.

AI-generated alt text is still AI-generated content being inserted into production documents by default. In accessibility, publishing, corporate, government, legal, and pharmaceutical workflows, that content may be reviewed, translated, audited, archived, or relied upon by assistive technologies.

Improving the quality of the generated text does not address the underlying concern that generated content is being added automatically rather than through an explicit opt-in workflow.

I've discussed this in detail here: https://indesign.uservoice.com/forums/601021-adobe-indesign-feature-requests/suggestions/51277426-generative-ai-alt-text-and-other-ai-features?page=2&per_page=20

More broadly, I would like to see Adobe spend more time addressing long-standing workflow issues and highly requested professional features, rather than continuing to expand AI functionality that many production users neither requested nor can easily incorporate into existing approval processes.

InDesign became the industry standard because it was trusted. Reliability, stability, production efficiency, accessibility tooling, automation, scripting, typography, and workflow improvements are the areas I would personally prioritise over additional AI features.

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The funny thing is that AI could be genuinely useful in InDesign if it was aimed at production work rather than content generation.

Looking at the direction Adobe seems to be going (Rewrite, Express integration, Alt Text), I'd rather see AI helping with tedious production tasks while leaving actual content under user control.

For example:

Accessibility Assistant
Instead of writing alt text automatically, scan the document and say:

37 images missing alt text
4 tables missing headers
2 reading-order issues detected
6 headings skipped levels

Then let the user fix them - or an AI resolve case by case or all in one if someone is feeling confident.

Preflight Intelligence
Rather than "image resolution too low", explain:

This image is 120ppi at final size
It may appear soft in print
Suggested maximum scaling: 68%

Or:

This RGB image is being exported to PDF/X-1a
It will be converted to CMYK on export
Potential colour shift expected

Copy-Fit Analysis
Probably the closest thing to Rewrite that would actually help.

Instead of rewriting text:

This story is overset by 17 words
Reducing tracking by -5 removes 8 words
Reducing leading by 0.3pt removes 12 words
Reducing font size to 8.8pt will fit all content

Leave the editorial decisions to humans.

Style Cleanup
AI could identify:

12 local overrides that look accidental
4 paragraph styles that appear duplicated
3 character styles never used
Possible style conflicts between chapters

Table Assistant
A huge one.

"Convert this manually formatted table into a proper table."

Or:

"Create alternating row styles."

Or:

"These 50 tables appear visually identical. Create a table style?"

Or:
Fit tables to the column width (a script I actually had to write) as tables have a nasty habit of popping out of text frames. 
 

Cross-Reference Checking
For long documents:

Figure 8 referenced but not found
Page reference outdated
Chapter numbering inconsistent
TOC entries don't match heading text

Packaging QA
Before packaging:

Missing bleed on pages 4-8
Black text built from CMYK
White objects set to overprint
Spot colour names inconsistent

Basically an intelligent preflight the preflight in InDesign is good but incomplete.

Translation Preparation
For multilingual work:

Text frame likely too small for German expansion
Possible truncation in French version
Hard returns may cause translation issues

Legacy Document Analysis
This would be incredibly useful:

"This document was created in CS6."

47 local overrides
12 obsolete transparency effects
3 missing fonts
4 deprecated settings

Would you like them repaired?

Notice the common theme:

The AI is analysing, checking, suggesting, and automating repetitive work.

It's not writing content, redesigning images, or making creative decisions.

Most production artists, accessibility specialists, technical publishers, and packaging designers would probably get more value from an AI that finds problems than an AI that creates content. That's where InDesign has decades of workflow pain points that AI could genuinely help solve.

Hmm... yet another helping of AI clutter, but apparently fixing the GPU rendering bug is still too much to ask.

I just updated to the newest version and now I couldnt align multiple options to one another anymore. When I clicked on one object and then on another, i could simply click on the object i wanted it align to. Now its not possible. Please revert the change. Thank you