First we realized Desktop Publishing itself turns 25 this year, then it was Photoshop that also turns 20 in 2010 and now this:

Adobe InDesign 10 Years on the Creative Desktop!

http://www.indesign10anniversary.com/

Need to preflight or convert to or from Adobe InDesign, then Markzware is your source to free your content. Adobe InDesign Plug-ins and world-class applications that have been with InDesign and DTP every step of the way… Markzware.

Happy birthday InDesign!

SONDERPREIS MIT
RABATT VON  22%

im FEBRUAR  2010

Markzware bietet fantastische  zweiundzwanzig (22)% Nachlass auf seine gesamte Palette an Preflight, Umwandlungs- und Such- bzw. Extraktionssoftwareprodukten im Februar 2010. Dieses Angebot gilt NUR für die Vertriebskanäle (Markzware Vertriebspartner oder Zwischenhändler – ComLine GmbH) und ist bis zum 28. Februar 2010 gültig. Greifen Sie heute zu; wenden Sie sich entweder an einen reseller in Ihrer Nähe oder senden Sie mir eine Rückantwort per E-Mail und ich kümmere mich um Ihre Bestellung über unser Händlernetz.

Klicken Sie hier für Informationen zum kompletten Umfang der Markzware Softwareprodukte; direkt im Anschluss finden Sie einige unserer beliebten Productivity Tools für Graphik-Designer, Layoutersteller und gleichermaßen sämtliche Bearbeitungen vor der Drucklegung! All dies mit 22% Rabatt im Februar 2010:

Q2ID QuarkXPress zu Adobe InDesign

199 Euro – Macintosh/Windows
* SONDERPREIS MIT RABATT VON  22%  im FEBRUAR  2010 = nur 156,- Euro pro Einheit!
5-er und 10-er Pakete bzw. variable Unternehmenslizenzen zum Rabattpreis erhältlich.
Ein großartiges Plug-in für jeden Adobe InDesign Nutzer.
Öffnen Sie mit einem Klick Ihre QuarkXPress Dokumente direkt in Adobe InDesign;
mit dem vollständigen Layout, bereit zur Bearbeitung und Nutzung!
Video (Q2ID in Deutsche) Demonstration anzeigen lassen:…
Upgrade von v2 bzw. v3 normalerweise 99 Euro – jetzt nur 78,- Euro im Februar  2010!  Read more... (582 words, 4 images, estimated 2:20 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.

A bit below on this entry is what I just posted in our Group within the Linkedin.com professional networking site. If you are a free participant of Linkedin, please become a member of our open graphic arts group today. First though, it may be good for those not 100% familiar with this site, to see why it is so important.

Here is a practical article about “why” Linkedin, which also highlights Moo.com a print media company and the CEO, Richard Moross:

“Moo.com is a printing and graphics company. Its CEO has a LinkedIn professional profile that lists his professional affiliations, which demonstrate his expertise in printing and graphics. There’s also an “I Love Moo.com” profile at LinkedIn (accessible to LinkedIn account holders) for customers of Moo.com.”
Source & full Article: Use LinkedIn To Promote Your Online Store

If you do not have a profile on Linkedin.com yet, I highly recommend you join Linkedin today (check this out too). Righty-o, onto how you can join up with Markzware there and connect with us personally as well:

LinkedIn Groups

Markzware User Group for Graphic Design, Publishing and Print

Subject: Announcement from Markzware User Group for Graphic Design, Publishing and Print  Read more... (421 words, 2 images, estimated 1:41 mins reading time)

Found this article via a Tweet from @driessen over at Océ and just had to share it. The death of print (Link to an actual study.) has always been exaggerated, but in all seriousness, outputting onto new and exciting (yes, this may be on the exotic side of glossy) materials will likely see the printing industry “growing” again one day…

New Device Prints Human Tissue

Invetech has delivered what it calls the “world’s first production model 3D bio-printer” to Organovo, developers of the proprietary NovoGen bioprinting technology. Organovo will in turn supply the devices to institutions investigating human tissue repair and organ replacement.

Keith Murphy, CEO of Organovo, based in San Diego, said the units represent a breakthrough because they provide for the first time a flexible technology platform for organizations working on many different types of tissue construction and organ replacement…. Article continues…
Source: http://www.livescience.com/technology/091229-3d-bioprinter.html

Sure hope they heard of the concept of preflighting before output… heck, got me thinking, do they use PDF/X-1a or  PDF/X-3 PLUS? They most likely in this case, print right from the native application!

Just also read today that the Five-year forecast predicts high growth in digital textile print. So it is clear, certain segments of the printing market will “grow.”

Markzware would like to wish you a very happy and healthy near year; a fantastic new decade!

We look forward to serving your preflight, layout conversion, file recovery and DTP desktop search and content extraction needs for 2010 and beyond!

Take care,
Markzware

We all have our mental or even physical check-lists for preparing print files and hopefully you use a true preflight software to help with that process. (Preflighting is helpful for a print checklist or printable checklists). Here is a good check list, in this article titled, “Digital Prepress Checklist.” This one section of it, is what I wanted to highlight:

Design & Pre-Press Checklist:

• Do not use Publisher or Quark. Stick to Adobe Products.
• Remember, Photoshop is for photos. Illustrator is for illustrations. InDesign is for Page Layout.
• Do not enlarge images beyond 120% of original size when placing it in your document.
• Do not use images downloaded from Google. Read second sections of post.
• Do not use compression methods (i.e. LZW or JPEG) on placed images for output.
• Do not use RGB images whenever possible. Convert them to CMYK.

Source: http://www.printedbyerik.com/2009/11/digital-prepress-checklist/

Wow. Is this someone Adobe sponsors or did I miss the boat and is Quark no longer used by thousands and thousands of publishers and layout artists? In any event good tips for the rest and, we offer data conversion tools for ALL of the above. If it is in InDesign you need to be from a Quark or Microsoft Publisher file, then just check these tools out, including our newly released search and extraction tool for page layout content:  Read more... (283 words, estimated 1:08 mins reading time)

The supposed Chinese proverb, “may you live in interesting times“, is perhaps true for those in  publishing (Newspaper, book and magazine publishers), printing and for that matter graphic design, as we read:

Condé Nast and Adobe collaborate on digital magazine app

Relax News

Saturday, 21 November 2009

Publisher Condé Nast and Adobe Systems are developing a digital-magazine application to be compatible with laptops, netbooks, smart phones, and upcoming electronic slate devices.

Wired magazine, which covers tech news and information, will be the first to adapt the app, which will produce full-color, high-resolution images to replicate the experience of reading a print publication with the convenience of the internet.

This collaboration will bring magazine content into digitalized form for devices available in 2010. The companies hope to create a technology that will be applied to the publisher’s other magazines and adopted throughout the industry.  Read more... (299 words, 1 image, estimated 1:12 mins reading time)

I love analogies and here is one that was a perfect fit for FlightCheck Professional or preflighting in the generic:

RT @OphieLuStudios @aj_mitchell: Oops…New highway ramp too steep. To be torn down and rebuilt at Design firm’s expense. http://bit.ly/8kstZd

Construction or laying out roads is no different than designing a new newspaper or yearbook layout in Adobe InDesign, QuarkXPress or Microsoft Publisher. Yes, perhaps the costs and processes are different, but I would guess the percentage in terms of money is similar. Re-working costs time and money. First preflight than PDF. The original article says:

“The brand-new never-opened Fairfax Road offramp of westbound Highway 178 must be demolished and rebuilt because of a design flaw, the Bakersfield public works department confirmed Monday.”
Source: http://www.kget.com/news/local/story/New-Hwy-178-ramp-is-huge-safety-issue-1-million/

“Design flaw.” Graphic designers have had it pretty good with printers really. Did you notice in the article that the “design firm” had to pay the nearly 1 million dollar fee to re-do it all? A good prepress department is worth it’s weight in gold really. (And gold is expensive these days!)

What is your favorite preflight analogy?  Read more... (209 words, 2 images, estimated 50 secs reading time)

There was a great tip, out of necessity really, about what is effectively a bug in Adobe Illustrator CS4, where Markzware’s FlightCheck Professional can be very handy to assist with. Here is a nice blog post from Bittbox.com which explains it best:

“If you’ve ever run into this annoying little Illustrator problem, it can be very frustrating, but it has a simple fix. Every so often you may find that no matter what color you select, Illustrator converts your selection to grayscale…”
Source: Illustrator 101: The Annoying Grayscale Color Problem

FlightCheck Professional can easily catch if your colors are set to Grayscale, RGB or CMYK. On top of that, FlightCheck can thus of course preflight AND package your entire Illustrator layout or design! Packaging includes all fonts used and placed images; all into a folder with a copy of the original .AI file, even compressing it! OK, back to how to fix this issue, which of course is simple and Bittbox has a nice graphic on how to do it on the link below, but in a nut-shell it is as easy as:  Read more... (278 words, 1 image, estimated 1:07 mins reading time)