*** From the Archives ***
This article is from September 3, 2003, and is no longer current.
Plug-Ins and XTensions: Photoshop Image Sharpeners, InDesign Data Catalogers, QuarkXPress Picture Managers, and Acrobat Text Imp
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Each month Design Tools Monthly reviews some of the best plug-ins and XTensions on the market. Most of the mentioned products can be purchased through The PowerXChange.
- Import Text into PDF Fields
Lantana’s Variform PDF ($199) is a plug-in for Acrobat 5 or 6 that lets you populate form fields in a PDF document using text files from a database or spreadsheet. You can even specify the font to use in each field, and either directly print the resulting pages, or save them to a PostScript file for Distilling into a new PDF.
- Easier Catalogs in InDesign
WoodWing’s Smart Catalog v2 ($999) lets you link data between a database and an InDesign 2 layout, automating the process of creating and updating catalogs and price lists.
- InDesign Palette Manager 2.0
Palette Manager ($70) from Teacup Software is a plug-in for InDesign 2 that locks palettes to document windows. Palettes follow documents and page items as they are moved or resized. Context Sensitive mode creates different locked palette sets for graphics, text, and paths. Non-Context Sensitive mode uses one set of locked palettes and offers faster performance. It integrates with Workspace manager, also from Teacup.
- Grain & Noise Reducer
Kodak’s Digital GEM ($80) is a plug-in for Photoshop that removes noise and grain from highlight and shadow areas independently, maintaining detail and allowing sharpening at the same time. The plug-in also removes JPEG artifacts and line screen patterns from digital images. A free trial version is available at www.asf.com.
Electronic Printing Systems, Inc.
- Sharpen Individual Colors
Asiva’s Sharpen+Soften ($69) is a plug-in for Photoshop that provides precise control over sharpening and softening of images to create more natural results without complex masking. Instead, you can choose a color range to sharpen or soften via a sampler tool, affect individual channels in 8 or 16-bit RGB and CMYK files, and modify HSV components.
- List of XTensions for QuarkXPress 5 & 6
ThePowerXChange has a Web page that lists all the commercial XTensions that are currently compatible with QuarkXPress 5 and 6. See those for QuarkXPress 5 here and those for QuarkXPress 6 here.
- ContactPage XT
Badia’s ContactPage XT 1.5 ($60) is an XTension for QuarkXPress 4, 5 or 6 that quickly creates contact sheets, along with captions, for entire folders or volumes of pictures. You can use it to create an index of clip art, photos, or logos, with control over page size and margins, grid layout, picture and text box dimensions, and caption info.
- Open QuarkXPress 6 Files in QuarkXPress 4
Problem: QuarkXPress 6 can only save downward to version 5, but you’re using QuarkXPress 4. Solution: Markzware’s MarkzTools 5 ($199) is an XTension for QuarkXPress 4 that lets it open documents that were saved in QuarkXPress 5 format. MarkzTools also has other features, such as warning you when you’re about to save a document created by a lower version into a higher version — the XTension works in QuarkXPress 5 as well as 4. It can check documents as they are saved, to be sure they aren’t corrupted, and salvage text or graphics from corrupted documents. It can save files on the local Mac before saving them on a networked server, replace picture previews with gray boxes (reducing file size), add the XPress version number to the document’s icon and Comments field, and also display it in the title bar of an open document.
- The Best Picture Manager
Badia Software’s BigPicture XT 2.0 ($90) is an XTension for QuarkXPress 4, 5 or 6 that lists all pictures in a project, and shows all vital information about them (color model, format, file size, resolution, compression, scaling, angle, date modified, fonts, colors, etc.). It also lets you select all pictures in a document that match your chosen criteria (for example, all RGB images). It shows thumbnails, each picture’s document location and hard drive location (you can click a location to go there in the Finder), edit a picture with any appropriate application (BigPicture recognizes changes as soon as you save the image), and rename a picture (BigPicture updates the link in QuarkXPress). You can save a report of this info as well. You can search for missing pictures and have BigPicture automatically link files it finds, update all modified pictures in one step, unlink all pictures, relink pictures in a different folder (great for swapping high-res and low-res pictures), and replace any picture with another while maintaining original transformations such as scaling and cropping.Badia SoftwareThis article courtesy of and copyrighted by Design Tools Monthly. For a free sample of the printed newsletter, email [email protected].
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