InReview: Output Factory 3

Output Factory, by Zevrix Solutions, automates the printing and exporting of InDesign files. The program, which is compatible with multiple versions of InDesign on the Mac, is also extremely useful for processing single documents for layer versioning, variable naming, file delivery, and more.

By selecting a tab at the top of the Output Factory window, accessed from the Zevrix menu, you can adjust relevant options for the output file (Figure 1). The program supports batch printing, and batch exporting to PDF, Postscript, EPS, HTML, EPUB, IDML, INDD, and various image formats.

Figure 1. The Output Factory window

Inside the Factory

Groups of Output Factory settings can be saved as Workflows, so you can save specific settings for each output format, e.g., for Print (lo-res grayscale printer for proofing; hi-res color printer for final output), PDF (grayscale export for print; color export for online), or Image. You can export and import these Workflows to share with others.

You can create Actions, which combine a sequence of Workflows into a one-click method of sequentially outputting your files in multiple formats. You might use an Action to save a file as a hi-res PDF, a lo-res PDF, and a JPEG.

You can set the location of your output files and organize them into nested subfolders. Output Factory enables you to customize the subfolder name, as well as use tokens—variables like the date, Workflow name, user name, and so on—that you can drag into the field to compose the subfolder name. Likewise, you can specify the name of your output files and instruct the program to add a numeric sequence to the output filenames. Between the numerous tokens available and custom text, the output naming options are near limitless.

Output Factory can activate layer versioning to output each layer (or a combination of layers) of an InDesign document as a single file.

You can preflight your InDesign documents before output using either InDesign’s built-in tools or Output Factory’s basic quality check, which covers only missing or modified links, missing fonts, and overset text. You can also instruct it to automatically preflight final PDF files using Acrobat Pro preflight droplets.

You can instruct the program to run AppleScripts or ExtendScripts before, after, or before and after output on the document, the page (when exporting as single pages), or the layer (when layer versioning is enabled).

The Delivery tab allows use of the Zevrix products Deliver or Deliver Express to automatically send output files locally or over the internet via FTP, SFTP, Amazon S3, WebDAV, and other services. Registered users of Output Factory can request a free copy of Deliver or Deliver Express, which offers automatic email notifications, file compression and encryption, detailed history, and other advanced options.

The bottom portion of the Output Factory window lists your InDesign files to be processed. You can click icons to respectively add files from a system dialog box, add the active InDesign document, add all open InDesign documents, or remove files from the list.

Another button brings up a History window with a log of processing information about each file, such as why its output failed.

Factory Upgrades

Output Factory 3 introduces some new features.

Combining PDFs

When exporting multiple PDFs, you can now instruct Output Factory to combine them into a single file (Figure 2). You can name the new combined PDF and specify whether to delete the source PDFs.

Figure 2. The new Combine PDF option is a terrific time-saving feature.

Page order in the combined PDF will be defined by the order of the original InDesign files in the queue. I find this to be a great time saver over having to fire up Acrobat and combine them manually.

Workflow organization

You can now organize your Output Factory Workflows into folders for more efficient and convenient workflow management (Figure 3), e.g., for clients, for printers, for archiving, and the like.

Figure 3. You can now group Workflows into folders.

Support for Cloud Documents

Output Factory 3 can automate the output of InDesign Cloud Documents, Adobe’s cloud-native document file type (INDDC) that can be accessed online or offline directly from InDesign.

Whereas Output Factory can access and output InDesign files stored locally on your hard drive without them needing to be open, you will need to manually open any Cloud Documents before running Output Factory.

Paragraph and character styles in variable output names

To its already robust file-naming system (Figure 4), Output Factory 3 adds Paragraph and Character Style tokens, which can use text from your document to which a specific style has been applied.

Figure 4. Output Factory 3 gains new Paragraph, Character, and Random Number naming tokens.

Output File Number and Random Number tokens

Along with the new Paragraph and Character Style tokens is a Random Number token, which can generate a number of three to eight digits and add it to the filename.

Upgrade Information

Output Factory 3, like version 2 before it, costs $169. Upgrades from version 2 cost $84.97.

Zevrix also offers a Lite version for $99.95 that allows batch printing as well as PDF and Postscript file creation. A related product, Output Factory Server, for multiple users on a network, also incorporates another Zevrix product, LinkOptimizer, designed to automate the process of downsampling linked images in your document.

If you routinely need to batch process InDesign files to PDF or any of the other formats it supports, Output Factory is worth a serious look. Zevrix offers a fully functional 30-day trial, and over the years, I’ve found support has been excellent. This is one factory you will want to tour!

Output Factory 3

Zevrix Solutions

$169.95 for macOS 10.9–15

Adobe InDesign CS6–2025

Rating: 5 stars