Stone Design, the original Mac OS X software house with over 19 years of experience, today announced immediate availability of new versions of Stone Studio which let you professionally publish to the web and to print, and much more. With easy to use toolbars, Stone Studio includes a powerful new version for Create® (the three in one illustration, page layout and web authoring application). Also updated is PStill™ – the complete distillery which converts PS to PDF, combines files, shrinks PDF and much more. These are available for download individually or as part of the Stone Studio™, the flagship suite of applications designed from the ground up in Cocoa to take advantage of Mac OS X. There is no upgrade charge for current users of any Stone Studio application or StampInStone following the Stone philosophy of “Free Upgrades For Life!” Try the applications out for 30 days free.
According to CEO Andrew Stone, “This is the fifth year of providing free upgrades to our registered users – and the apps just keep getting better. Just see how fast you can build a website by dragging and dropping from Safari into Create®! It’s our 17th year working with the original Mac OS X technology -aka NeXTStep”
This release features Create® 12.3.3, Stone Design’s drawing, page layout, and web page authoring application. With a totally customizable toolbar, Create® is the most powerful and easy to use OS X design and publishing powerhouse.
Create® 12.3.3 features LInkBack support: LinkBack is a powerful new technology that allows users to create graphics in Create®, paste them into another LinkBack application, and later call upon Create to re-edit those graphics with just a click. Because Create is both a LinkBack Server and a LinkBack client, you can also paste data from LinkBack enabled applications for page layout in Create, and then later re-edit those graphics in the original application. To learn more about LinkBack and LinkBack enabled applications, visit The LinkBack Project page.
PStill™ 4.1, which converts PostScript files to Portable Document Format (PDF) files as well as repurpose PDF, can now create CMYK and Spot Color separation plates. Also included in this release is an additional expert module for creating a bona fide composite PDF out of individual separated plates. PDFs are smaller than ever and includes these recent features:
- Expert PhotoShop DCS to PDF expert module embedded into application
- Expert Separations to Composite module embedded into application
- Color management module – make spot colors and map CMYK’s.
- Module to suppress any stroke, fill, text or image combination.
- Handles Adobe inDesign CS files
- Handles PS Level 3 by optionally preprocessing with pstopdf
- Better font subsetting for smallest possible PDF file sizes.
- New PDF Separator – create CMYK and spot separations quickly!
- Redesign of application architecture to run much faster in smaller memory footprint
- PDF output should now be smaller and uniform for all platforms.
- Adds support for Acrobat 6.01 generated EPS using two-byte fonts
- PDF transcoding now takes over bookmarks (outlines)
- Concatting PDFs preserves bookmarks (outlines)
- Instant access to Job Option sets from main interface
- Create “Secure” PDFs (See Conversion -> Security…)
- user and authoring passwords
- 40 or 128 bit encryption (128 requires Reader 5.0 or greater.)
- protect printing, copying, modifying and annotating independently
- Transcode encrypted PDF if you have the password
- Type 4 fonts now supported
- Ability to normalize for prepress any file to PS or EPS
- You can set the version to PDF spec 1.5 (Acrobat 6) as well as earlier versions
- Image transparency respected in transcoded PDF
- You can turn watched folders into other purposes, such as Normalization or Tile Postering
- New keys and hidden defaults to suppress elements
- Job Option sets and Preference Sets are indicated in the UI with a checkmark when selected
- Many other fixes and enhancements
PStill also has automatic PDF workflow direct from any application’s print panel! There is full support for creating large tiled posters, manage preference sets, and merge multiple PostScript and PDF files into one PDF document. PStill can also redistill Mac OS X PDF files, shrinking the size of the files by up to 70%. High end prepress features such as turning text into outlines, overprinting and spot color processing have been added, as well the ability to output pages 2, 4, and 8 pages up, add page numbers, and more! The online and printable manual have been revised for the new feature set.
Stone Design CEO, Andrew Stone, notes “If you only want to spend $149 for a complete publishing to print and web solution, Create® is for you! Imagine being able to do all of your desktop publishing, design and page layout in one easy to use, Native Cocoa application! And you can make entire websites with the click of one button. Because we’re a small and responsive software house, all of our users are important and we listen to them. And because we don’t charge for upgrades, current users can always download and install the latest versions and take advantage of their ideas and our work.”
Stone Design has released a free plugin for iPhoto 2.0 that makes it easy to export iPhoto images to PhotoToWeb, giving users greater control over the appearance of web sites created from those images. Stone Design has also released StampInStone™, a PDF watermarking and stamping application. StampInStone licenses are included at no charge with Stone Studio™ purchases from Stone Design’s online store.
This article was last modified on January 18, 2023
This article was first published on April 8, 2005
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