We have seen the tremendous response designers gave to Adobe’s question about which iPad app customers may want, in this post titled, “Adobe Illustrator and InDesign for the iPad coming soon? Adobe asks for feedback..” Now we read 70% of readers of Sue’s Graphics Software Blog on About.com want this tablet device from Apple and many desire it to offer creative applications such as photo editing and digital art tools:

Source: http://graphicssoft.about.com/b/2010/01/27/poll-will-apples-ipad-appeal-to-digital-artists.htm – Sue’s Graphics Software Blog

Do you want an Apple iPad when it ships next month?

Display, Image Pro, Photolab are indeed all early pre-release product names for a very popular software application which literally, along with Desktop Publishing, helped change our world. Watch the funny way product names (Imaginator anyone?) were chosen and quickly abandoned 20 years ago:

Yes, in case you do not have time to watch the video, which is very nice, that product became better know as Adobe Photoshop…

“The founders of Adobe Photoshop – John Knoll, Thomas Knoll, Russell Brown, and Steve Guttman – tell the story of how an amazing coincidence of circumstances, that came together at just the right time 20 years ago, spawned a cultural paradigm shift unparalleled in our lifetime.” See: http://tv.adobe.com/go/photoshop-20th-anniversary

John Knoll, co-founder of this image processing tool, thought that Photoshop would be best bundled as a file format translation utility in the early days! Very interesting. (source)

Last but related; What was an early name for Adobe Illustrator?
Adobe Artifactory:

I have been monitoring the Adobe blogs for a while and never have a seen a post generate so many comments and excitement than this one from Jack Nack:

If Adobe made an iPad app…

“…or apps for other tablets and/or smartphones, for that matter, what would you want it to be?”

Source: http://blogs.adobe.com/jnack/

We reported last week that we should not count out the iPad just yet (iPad iFail). The iPhone should have provided us with a good lesson. And if I see these enthusiastic comments, then surely the iPad has an interesting future amongst creatives, a market many see as key for a launch of any Apple product:

“…Adobe Creative Suite is another app I would like to see (on the Apple iPad), but only Photoshop, Illustrator, Dreamweaver, and InDesign. These four application makes mobile print production absolutely possible on the go, and provides the ability for company and clients to make print production on the fly, on the go...”
Kento Ito — 7:01 PM on January 29, 2010 Reply to this comment
Source: http://blogs.adobe.com/jnack/2010/01/if_adobe_did_an_ipad_app.html  Read more... (284 words, estimated 1:08 mins reading time)

Urban designers are a niche within graphic design that I personally find quite interesting. If you read some of what they do on a job description, you’ll see that many not only get to layout and design with InDesign, Quark, Illustrator and CAD programs (point 7), but also often have a hands-on duty with planners, community leaders and local governments. Basically each position varies, but in a nut-shell they help plan our towns, cities and landscapes!

Urban Designers, the rest of this post is just for you! Recently we helped an urban designer with a bad or corrupt Adobe InDesign file. Through that contact, we decided to look deeper into what we as a provider of software productivity tools could mean for you, the user of graphical representation software…

URBAN DESIGNERS GRAPHIC DESIGN SURVEY
A few Quick Questions…

We have a few simple questions to ask of you in this easy to complete online survey. Your feedback would be much appreciated to help us better understand how we can serve urban designers and architect firms:

http://www.surveygizmo.com/s/231245/urban-designers-survey

Preflight oder Postflight

PREFLIGHT
Prozess des Analysierens von nativen Dateien bevor sie in einen Prepress-Workflow eingespeist werden. Damit wird sichergestellt, dass die Daten für den jeweiligen Verwendungszweck aufbereitet sind. (Adobe InDesign, Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop, QuarkXPress, Microsoft Publisher, etc)

POSTFLIGHT
Prozess des Analysierens von bereits verarbeiteten Daten (PostScript, PDF, DCS2, etc.) zur Qualitätskontrolle in einem digitalen Prepress-Workflow.

MARKZWARE
Markzware bietet Ihnen sowohl Preflighting von nativen Daten wie auch Postflighting von PDF-Daten in verschiedenen Ausführungen (unterstützt mehr als 40 Dateiformate.) Was auch immer Sie tun, am besten stellen Sie sicher, dass das Preflighting in Ihrem Arbeitsablauf so früh wie möglich geschieht.

http://www.markzware.com/preflight/

— — —>

FlightCheck PROFESSIONAL v6.5 NEU !

Desktop Preflighting und Postflighting mit dem mehrfach preisgekrönten selbstständigen klassischen Programm.

• PDF/X, Pass4Press und andere PDF Ground Control Sets
• Native Dateien-Ground Controls
• In deutscher, englischer, französischer und niederländischer Sprache
• Mac OS X, Mac OS X Snow Leopard 10.6.1
• Führt Sie zu einem spezifischen Problem in ihrer Datei
• Funktion „Job sammeln“ ermöglicht es Ihnen, alle Datei-Elemente in einem Ordner zu sammeln
• Einfach zu benutzen und Sie werden schnell davon profitieren!

Eine Vollversion kostet € 499 (Special limited Price nu €399). Mehrfachlizenzen sind möglich.  Read more... (249 words, estimated 60 secs reading time)

I caught this article, “Top Ten Articles on Digital-Engineer.net” over on Graphicstart, which had one, very interesting piece in it’s top ten list:

7. Preflighters around the world: This is you

If we click on that preflight article above, we see it is about an Enfocus survey on preflighting (As Tele2002 accurately said in the first comment, that is more “postflighting“, but anyway.). It is the last comment which I also wanted to share, for it brings home the importance of education;

Marco Kramer |
Yes I suppose so! I didn’t know about Prepressure and have bookmarked it. Looks like I’ve got me some reading to do! Great info about JDF as well.

The boys from Markzware also wrote about this topic: PDF Preflight Problems; same as fifteen years ago -Enfocus survey results
http://www.markzware.com/blogs/pdf-preflight-problems-same-enfocus-survey/2009/06/26/

Source: http://www.digital-engineer.net/archive/entry/preflighters-around-the-world-this-is-you/#comment-12

On that note, don’t forget that FlightCheck Professional, the tool for both the native file preflight as well as the postflight or check on the resulting PDF document, is out as version 6.5. Check out all of the new features and functions for Adobe Illustrator, InDesign, Acrobat PDF, QuarkXPress and more here:

http://www.markzware.com/flightcheck_professional

As we have read here in the past, “On the Evolution of PDF; Adobe PDF/X-5g with OPI type prepress workflow“, there are seemingly enough PDF specifications out there. With that in mind, here is an interesting development:

Adobe to host ‘landmark’ PDF meeting

Simon Nias, printweek.com, 02 October 2009

“Adobe Systems will host a “landmark meeting” of the Ghent PDF Workgroup (GWG) later this month that is expected to prove pivotal to the development of PDF automation specifications.

Members of the GWG attending the meeting, which will be held at Adobe’s San Jose headquarters from 29-30 October, will discuss specifications based on the latest PDF/X-4 release.

GWG chairman David Zwang said that the 2009 GWG specifications would result in “some of the most profound advancements in automated PDF compliance”….

“….Those present at the meeting will also discuss and extend ad ticket support for electronic ads and insertion orders, and solidify spectral colour considerations for spot colour identification.”
Source: PrintWeek.co.uk  Read more... (229 words, estimated 55 secs reading time)

Soft proofing and ad preflight have long gone good together; sort of like white wine with fish. Thus it was with interest that we read of this newly revised product offering from Vio for magazine and newspaper publishers:

Vio relaunches Certified Soft Proofing software as part of Adsend

printweek.com, 01 October 2009

Vio has redeveloped its Vio Certified Soft Proofing (VCSP) software, which is now being offered as part of its Adsend browser application.

In addition, the software, which is designed to enable advertisers to deliver display advertising directly to a publisher, has recently been adopted by the Guardian and the Observer, Vio has said.

The new software enables publishers to mandate a soft proof or to offer it as an option by publication or even by advertising type, the company said.
Source:
http://www.printweek.com/Vio-relaunches-Certified-Soft-Proofing-software-part-Adsend/

Markzware FlightCheck Professional v6.5 is newly released with a host of new features and functions, including Quark 8, Adobe InDesign Illustrator, PDF CS4, Adobe CS 3 (including Adobe CS 3 Master Collection), Adobe CS 4, and other tweaked file format support- more than 50 of them. A soft-proof is only as good as the preflight report and a quality assurance check done on the layout before the Acrobat PDF output was performed. (Acrobat or any flavor of print industry standard PDFs.). Just as Jon Warner from Trade Press Media Group told us last month in this interview…  Read more... (254 words, estimated 1:01 mins reading time)

The now shipping FlightCheck Professional v6.5 for Macintosh is filled with new features. Some exciting ones this premiere Preflight Upgrade includes:

1. - Support for InDesign CS4 documents
2. – Support for QuarkXPress v8 documents
3. – Drag and drop batch preflight – with mixed file formats
4. - Improved handling of Adobe Illustrator documents
5. * Also Packages fonts and placed images for you!
6. - Improved detection of small point size font or fonts
7. – Improved ability to read additional Quark & Illustrator files

You can Upgrade any FlightCheck v5.x or v6.1x to this new version 6.5 and of course full versions for only 399 (normally 499!) can be bought either online or via a reseller in your area.

Still not sure? Hear what a couple customers have to say:
Preflighting with FlightCheck and Acrobat; a customer interview

Pat Berger of Mercer Color on how he uses FlightCheck for years..

Watch FlightCheck Professional v6.5 demo here:

Color management is like colour management only spelled differently. That about sums up color for many in print media; it is the same color on that screen as on my printed brochure, only it looks different, cries the corporate customer, to the prepress operators dismay. In this tutorial video we get into the deep details on how FlightCheck Professional (Out any day now with CS4 and Quark 8 support) can help you in preflighting color …

… and for that matter preflighting colour (ok, enough jokes with words, but some do call it color preflighting) in a detailed fashion -

a full transcript is below: In this movie I would like to address some problems you might encounter when you work with InDesign layouts QuarkXPress, Adobe Illustrator (YES, FlightCheck does preflight Illustrator files and package all fonts and images too! Video: How to preflight Adobe Illustrator files…) or any other layout application in which you are able to use colors. Let’s dive in…

 Read more... (980 words, estimated 3:55 mins reading time)