Canto® Software announced today the immediate availability of BrandAssistant, offering professional digital asset management right from within QuarkXPress 7.
Designed for Brand Managers, who need absolute control over the assets they manage, BrandAssistant reduces production and approval delays, decreases time to market and increases asset security and distribution control.
“BrandAssistant offers layout artists easy access to their asset libraries right from within QuarkXPress,” explains Canto CEO Ulrich Knocke. “Users can find and place what they need fast, without ever leaving the application they know best.”
Quark Strategic Partner Business Manager, Eric Silver, adds: “This partnership with Canto provides our customers with the best in digital asset management by enabling designers to work more efficiently in workgroup scenarios.”
In addition to finding cataloged files and composition zones (and using drag & drop to place them in layouts), BrandAssistant enables layout artists to catalog new layouts, autocatalog assets used in those layouts, and even mark files ready for review, without ever leaving the QuarkXPress environment. The complete text used in layouts can be cataloged as searchable metadata, making it easy to find files based on their content. The asset-relations tracking technology first introduced with Cumulus 7 is included, enabling users to find assets based on their relationships with other assets: contains/is contained in, references/is referenced by, and more.
PDF variants of layouts can be created automatically by BrandAssistant, making the review process easy for those without access to QuarkXPress.
BrandAssistant is based upon a full version of Cumulus 7 Workgroup, offering complete, version-controlled digital asset management, even for projects outside the QuarkXPress workflow. All file formats are supported, and Cumulus offers enhanced metadata support for the most popular file formats, including PDF, Microsoft Office, Photoshop, Illustrator, TIF and many more. From within QuarkXPress 7, users can access and place any file format supported by QuarkXPress, including text, images and composition zones.
Outside QuarkXPress 7, users can access asset libraries using the feature-rich Cumulus Native Client included for Mac OS X and Windows.
Using this Client, users can catalog assets, edit metadata, and take advantage of the powerful permissions scheme native to Cumulus systems.
Permissions settings can ensure that layout artists access approved assets only, and that clients don’t see each other’s files. Full version control is available for all asset types and check out/in ensures asset updates aren’t overwritten.
Clients can connect and access review files using the new “Web 2.0”-based Cumulus Web Client, which offers advanced capabilities and requires no plug-ins or special software. All popular browsers are compatible, including Firefox, Internet Explorer, Opera and Safari.
Once a project is complete, BrandAssistant can transfer all output files to the Print House via ftp, or the Print House can log into BrandAssistant to access the files remotely.
PRICING AND AVAILABILITY
BrandAssistant can be purchased from authorized Canto resellers at an introductory cost of EUR/USD 5,995 until 1/31/07, and afterwards at EUR/USD 6,795 for a 3-user license. (BrandAssistant’s Web access for clients ties up no user licenses.) Each system comes with a year’s worth of Software Maintenance, offering free updates and expert technical support. Additional user licenses and option products are available.
The BrandAssistant Server is available for Mac OS X (Universal Binary) or Windows (2000, 2003, XP). Cumulus Client software is available for Mac OS X, Windows and the Web.
QuarkXPress is sold separately by authorized Quark resellers.
More information and detailed product tours of BrandAssistant and Cumulus are available online: https://www.canto.com.
This article was last modified on January 4, 2023
This article was first published on December 15, 2006
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