A Pair of Plug-Ins for Photo-Heavy Magazines

Publishers using InDesign to produce photo-heavy magazines now have two plug-in options that aim to enhance the photo identification and style conversion processes.

Woodwing has launched Smart Image, a plug-in for CS4 users that automatically creates caption and credit text frames containing the embedded metadata stored within the photograph. The new functionality is touted as a significant time-saver for publishers, and helps ensure accurate identification. Preferences are stored in the InDesign document so caption/credit frame styles are saved and created automatically.

“The associated metadata refers to the XMP or IPTC information contained within most images,” CEO Dave Luther said. “This includes things like the caption and the credits for the image which are then used by Smart Image to create a customizable caption and credit text box grouped with the image box.”

Smart Image costs $199, Woodwing said.

Photo-Sensitive File Transfers

Production software company Markzware released an upgraded version of its PUB2ID plug-in for CS3 and CS4, which enables users to convert native-application Microsoft Publisher files to Adobe InDesign files while preserving content, styles and formatting.

The plug-in, according to Markzware, translates the details of the content within a Publisher document and re-creates it within InDesign, converting page size, positioning, fonts and styles, text attributes, layers, and linked text boxes, as well as automatically extracts images embedded in the Publisher file.

Magazine publishing clients include the National Publishers Group and Rockwall, Texas-based Living magazine. According to AlphaGraphics lead graphic designer Bruce Harris, using the updated plug-in saves him between 15 minutes to an hour. “I especially like how it exports the images to a separate folder automatically.”

The upgrade costs $99, Markzware said.

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