Read over on PrintWeek an interesting development in the area of “preflighting,” which will be shown in May at IPEX 2010 in the UK. Interesting, for we have been saying for years just demanding a PDF file in a certain flavor does not work:

Enfocus unveils PitStop Connect pre-flighting tool

Barney Cox, printweek.com, 09 March 2010
Enfocus has launched PitStop Connect – a software tool that printers can supply to clients to ensure files are produced to their specification so that there are “no more headaches” for creatives.
Source: http://www.printweek.com/PreMediaWeekly

The reason it is even more interesting, is for the fact that preflighting does not start with checking a PDF!  No, it starts with checking native artwork and Quark, InDesign or Illustrator layouts. That is what FlightCheck Professional and it’s exportable Ground Controls or preflight profiles offer. The ability to share what to check for, BEFORE a PDF is created. The fact that just jamming a PDF spec down the throats of the designers has not worked, as you’ll read in the article, also does not surprise me, for we have been seeing and saying that all along! We read in part:  Read more... (500 words, 4 images, estimated 2:00 mins reading time)

For the recent Amsterdam InDesign User Group meeting, Markzware was going to donate a Q2ID (QuarkXPress to Adobe InDesign conversion Plug-in), but that would be too logical. So this time we got Gabriel Powell, Chairman of the Netherlands InDesign User Group,  a FlightCheck Professional v6.5, which can preflight 50+ file formats, as a stand-alone preflight and packaging tool, including Adobe Illustrator, PDF and of course InDesign. And the winner was… drum-roll please:

Peter van der Zon
Mediacollege Amsterdam
docent GV
(graphic arts teacher)

To learn more about what they discussed at that meeting and for future events about Adobe InDesign in Holland, see:
http://www.indesignusergroup.com/chapters/amsterdam/

They also offer a very informative and handy publication for their Dutch members:

“Het nIDug Magazine is het eerste digitale magazine dat gewijd is aan InDesign en de bloeiende gemeenschap van InDesign professionals in Nederland.”

InDesign Dutch Forum:

http://www.indesignusergroup.nl/forum/punbb/

Markzware Utilitários & Produtos – Portugal

PageZephyr Desktop Search and Extract

Permite:
Indexar a informação armazenada no Macintosh
Pesquisar conteúdos de documentos Adobe inDesign (.indd) e no QuarkXpress (.qxp)
Editar conteúdos pesquisados sem precisar do inDesign ou do QuarkXpress
De uma forma fácil a extracção e exportação de conteúdos de texto para RTF e TXT
Importar conteúdos Adobe ou Quark para o Wordpress blog

E também tem opções avançadas de pesquisa, e muito mais.

Clique neste texto para mais informações…

— — —         — — —         — — —         — — —

FLIGHTCHECK

excelente ferramenta de preflight

(verificação e correcção)

Todos os profissionais de Design, Arte-finalistas, Paginadores, Departamentos de Produção e de Pré-impressão das Industrias Gráficas e de Edição, tem nesta ferramenta enormes vantagens tais como:

Verificação de ficheiros dos mais diversos formatos, tais como QuarkXPress, Adobe InDesign, Acrobat PDF, Adobe PageMaker, Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Photoshop, Adobe FreeHand, Microsoft Office, CorelDRAW, EPS, TIFF, etc;

Verifica e detecta o problema exacto, fornece feedback e controlo de todo o trabalho;

Poupa tempo e dinheiro ao evitar as re-impressões
Encomende já!!!

Clique neste texto para mais informações…  Read more... (359 words, 6 images, estimated 1:26 mins reading time)

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)

A crashing Adobe InDesign or large .INDD document that will not open is truly a bummer. First of course you should try the basics, like making sure your general operating system is running fine (no corrupted fonts or other issues; on a Mac try Cocktail for general system maintenance, for example..) and to look at the InDesign application itself. For instance, it could be a corrupted set of preferences within InDesign, try; Restarting (or starting up) InDesign with the cmd+alt+ctrl+shift keys held down – (tip via @rufusd) now this may help you if the problem is a corrupted InDesign preferences file. However, what if it is something bigger and badder?

Fix Bad Adobe InDesign Documents – a service

Markzware, the makers of CS3/CS4 plugins like Q2ID (Quark to InDesign), FlightCheck and the new content search tool for InDesign, PageZephyr,  has a “no fix, no pay” InDesign File Recovery Service it is offering. This method of repair has a high success rate, working about 80% of the time. It costs only 99 USD/EUR and you can email sales AT markzware.com for more details and the location on where you can submit your bad Adobe file. See:
http://www.markzware.com/blogs/bad-corrupted-adobe-indesign-software-docs/2008/09/15/  Read more... (430 words, estimated 1:43 mins reading time)

We reported back a couple weeks ago in a post titled, “Adobe drops Print Service Provider Program – a Quark opportunity?” the news that was seemingly not going over well with printers and print-shops around the world. Since then, we have seen it turn to outrage, such as this piece (Adobe, you’re breaking my heart) from print-industry guru Frank Romano.

Thus, in all fairness, it is good to also get the Adobe side of things. Which you can in this article from WhatTheyThink.com, who has offered excellent reporting on this news byte:

http://members.whattheythink.com/articles/article.cfm?id=41758

Now, we all know that the Apple tablet is to be announced today (With or without epub format support is the question! [good Q Roelof Janssen!]). Could it be that Adobe sees print drying up and all publishing switching to Steve Job’s latest innovation? I doubt Adobe PDF or InDesign will be dropped soon at all and as a matter of a fact, what moves Apple makes with this new “iSlate” (I hope it is not called that really, as many are saying) could rub Adobe’s hairs the wrong way.  Read more... (254 words, 1 image, estimated 1:01 mins reading time)

DTP software ripens at 25!
anno 1985…

There is a little discussion going on over at the Linkedin Group called, “Group of Prepress, Print & Color Management Professionals“. Had to do with this post we did, “Quark caters Quickly to gap in service to printers left by Adobe“. Basically, those users that commented are fine with Adobe and it’s service level, even though many others, such as Frank Romano, who are a bit peeved at Adobe neglecting the market that formed DTP really. Then there was this neat little comment on that Linked in Group, which got me thinking about the interesting history of page layout applications and desktop publishing in general:

“Quark is the modern day Aldus!”
Quote by: Willie Soto Freelance Graphic Designer

If that is so, then the circle of Desktop Publishing (DTP) is near completion! Especially when you look at the history of this all important field…  Read more... (768 words, 4 images, estimated 3:04 mins reading time)

History of Desktop Publishing or DTP software -
Aldus, Adobe, Macromedia and Quark – 25 years in the making…
—

• 1985 – Aldus Corp releases PageMaker for the Macintosh in July 1985, and relied on Adobe’s PostScript page description language.

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

We reported last week about how Adobe dropped their service program for printers in a post titled, “Adobe drops Print Service Provider Program – a Quark opportunity?“. Today we see an interesting offer from Quark via their Quark Alliance program for printers:

Adobe Service Network members are invited to join QuarkAlliance and Quark Promote output provider programs at no cost

Quark is offering Adobe® Service Network (ASN) members, current QuarkAlliance™ members, and all printers interested in Quark Promote the opportunity to join Quark® output provider programs at no cost. This special offer will expire on June 30, 2010, so act now to take advantage of member benefits that can include:

• Priority technical support
• QuarkXPress® 8 or upgrades
• Increased market visibility
• New potential revenue opportunities

“At a time when some in our industry are moving away from print, Quark is aggressively maintaining its investment in this community,” said Cyndie Shaffstall, director of QuarkAlliance.

Continues – read more: http://www.quarkalliance.com/

Printers- is this interesting for you? What’s your take on this?

A post for our Dutch speaking publishers (uitgevers), document managers and any grafi-media user with archives of InDesign or Quark files…

From:        Aad Metz <ametz AT metz-opleidingen.nl>
Subject:     Re: InDesign - nieuwsbrief januari 2010
Date:        January 15, 2010
To:          David Dilling <david AT markzware.nl>

David,
Ja je mag zeker het verhaal op je blog zetten:

Teksten uit InDesign halen

Natuurlijk is het mogelijk om via de Export optie binnen InDesign teksten uit een InDesign document te halen. Hiervoor moet echter het programma InDesign open staan en het document. Met het programma PageZephyr, is het mogelijk om teksten uit een InDesign bestand te halen zonder dit te openen. (mij notitie: U kunt ook keywords zoeken; het is een zoekprogramma.)

Binnen dit programma is het InDesign document zichtbaar met de daarin aanwezige tekstketens.
Deze kunnen per stuk worden geselecteerd en als tekst bestand worden opgeslagen.
Eenvoudig en erg handig…:)
Meer info en trail zie:
http://www.markzware.com

Ik ben freelance docent grafische applicaties met specialisme InDesign.
Zie ook http://www.metz-opleidingen.nl/

Iedereen die mij mailt met een vraag over InDesign, neem ik op in
mijn mailinglist. (Very nice, informative emails, I will add.)

met vriendelijke groeten,  Read more... (209 words, 1 image, estimated 50 secs reading time)