Better InDesign Automation with Output Factory

Theresa Stone

You can now try out the public beta of Output Factory 1.0 from Zevrix Solutions. Output Factory is designed to work with InDesign to facilitate automatic printing, exporting, and post-processing. The Mac-only app works with InDesign versions CS3 through CS5.5.
Output Factory also interacts with the Acrobat Pro preflight engine, provides file delivery capabilities, and integrates fully with the Finder. You can keep working with other programs while Output Factory processes InDesign files in the background.
Output Factory supports printing as well as exporting to PDF, PostScript, EPS, Flash, INX, IDML, EPUB and several image formats. It offers the following features:
* Print and export hundreds of InDesign files with a single click
* Output files as single pages
* Save desired group of output settings as workflows (new to Output Factory)
* Update modified links automatically
* Assign complex variable file names
* Compose variable names interactively using tokens (new to Output Factory)
* Output sequence of document layers or their combinations (new to Output Factory)
* Preflight documents using InDesign preflight or built-in settings (new to Output Factory)
* Skip files with specific errors (new to Output Factory)
* Preflight final PDF automatically with Acrobat Pro droplets
* Send output files over Internet and locally with email notifications
* Detailed processing history with preflight results and error log (new to Output Factory)
Zevrix has not yet announced pricing; however, the company says that qualified beta testers will get discounts on Output Factory or on upgrades from BatchOutput, should they already own that software.