Each month Design Tools Monthly reviews some of the best plug-ins and XTensions on the market. Most of the mentioned products can be purchased through The PowerXChange.
- Package Mockups in Illustrator
Comnet’s FoldUP-3D ($380) is a plug-in for Illustrator that lets you preview package designs. You create die-lines or import them from a CAD system, apply your artwork, and then let FoldUP-3D create your carton. You can rotate the carton in 3D space, change background colors and lighting properties, reposition your artwork, show and hide layers, and export snapshots. A free viewer also allows clients to see your carton in 3D space.
The PowerXChange
- Contact Sheets in InDesign
Cacidi Systems’ Contact Sheet Pro 2.0 ($149) is a plug-in for InDesign that automatically creates single- or multi-page InDesign documents filled with pictures from any folder(s), optionally creating a text label for each picture. You can define any number of rows and columns and the space between items, or create your own layout for a “picture package.”
Cacidi Systems
- Helpful Features for InDesign
alap’s InTools for InDesign ($99) is a plug-in for InDesign that lets you create starbursts, add crop marks around items, print portions of pages or save to disk in several file formats, nudge items, combine objects to create compound shapes (similar to QuarkXPress’s feature), and modify all the attributes of an item by using one dialog box.
alap (a lowly apprentice production)
- Batch-Convert to InDesign
Cacidi Systems’ Q-to-InDesign Batch ($65) is a plug-in for InDesign that batch-converts QuarkXPress and/or PageMaker documents to InDesign.
Cacidi SystemsPhotoshop- Better Enlargements
Human Software’s XFile 1.0 ($50) is a plug-in for Photoshop that offers higher-quality enlargements and reductions than Photoshop does. Their website provides convincing examples.
Human Software
- Convert InDesign to QuarkXPress
Markzware’s InDesign To QuarkXPress (ID2Q) ($199) is an XTension for QuarkXPress 4.1 or 5.x that converts Adobe InDesign 1.5-2.0 documents into QuarkXPress. It can convert across platforms (Windows InDesign to Macintosh QuarkXPress, for example), and supports all features in QuarkXPress.
Markzware
- Better Enlargements
- Quality Control Now Free
Gluon’s QC System (Quality Control System), formerly $149, is now free. It is a remarkable XTension for QuarkXPress that helps you find and fix problems in a document long before “collect for output”, and it collects all fonts. - Rather than focusing on “output” problems, it looks for common typographic, layout, alignment, and picture problems that a designer can easily fix, then takes you to the problem, and presents the appropriate dialog box to fix it. Or, it can fix it for you. Examples:A space before a comma, excessive paragraph returns or spaces, styled fonts, altered style sheets, incorrect ©, ® and ™ characters, rule weight, text running off the page, suppressed items, missing EPS fonts, ink oversaturation, images with inappropriate resolution or color mode, colored text at small sizes, unapproved colors, slightly misaligned items, consistency of frame and rule weight, covered items, items on the Pasteboard, blank pages (and there are dozens more).
The System also includes QC Collect, which can collect multiple documents for output at one time, gathering all the fonts and pictures without gathering multiple copies of one font or picture, and re-linking the pictures to the documents.
Gluon - Miracle Cure for QuarkXPress
Markzware’s MarkzTools 5 ($199) is an XTension for QuarkXPress 4.1 to 5.x that can rescue a project.- It lets you save your documents in a format that can be opened in earlier versions of QuarkXPress, and can warn you when you’re about to save a lower version document up to a higher version. It also can add the XPress version number to the document’s icon and Comments field, and display it in the title bar of an open document.
- It lets you open a document saved in a higher version of QuarkXPress from within a lower version: for example, open a QX5 document in QX4.
- It can repair or “salvage” a QuarkXPress document. Let’s say some text has gone bad because of a corrupt font, or a picture has gone bad. MarkzTools 5 lets you open the document, but remove the font or picture information.
- For preventive care, it also can automatically verify documents as you save them and temporarily save a document locally before saving it across a network.
- Its “gray previews” feature can convert full color picture previews into gray pictures, greatly reducing the document’s file size.
Upgrades from previous versions are $99.MarkzwareThis article courtesy of and copyrighted by Design Tools Monthly. For a free sample of the printed newsletter, email in**@**********ls.com.
This article was last modified on December 14, 2022
This article was first published on March 5, 2003
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