The SCSI Awards

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A
quiet hush falls over the massive auditorium as
the lights dim and the last few tuxedoed gents
escort their bejeweled ladies to their seats.
Centre stage, a lone figure steps into the spotlight and clears his throat…“Ladies and
gentlemen, tonight the Academy of Premedia and Prepress Software Arts and Sciences would like to
welcome you to the 1st Annual Software Academy Awards
– The 2013 SCSIs.”
The crowd goes wild and rises to their feet in anticipation of the pending announcements. Who will win best
Supporting Utility? Best Media Manager? The suspense
is palpable. Disliking long, drawn-out award shows I
fidget, trying to get comfortable in my formalwear while
hoping the acceptance speeches are mercifully short!
Let’s face it, 2012 wasn’t exactly a banner year in the
premedia software multi-verse. Aside from the much
anticipated launch of Adobe CS6 back in May 2012,
most new software releases during the past year
tended towards incremental improvements rather
than life-altering features. That’s not necessarily a bad
thing – after all, modest progression is better than entropy in the software world.
And at some point we have all been guilty of neglecting to keep our collection of aging software current, stoically holding the status quo. It’s easy for busy
professionals to miss incremental improvements in
their favourite applications, especially given the evolutionary nature of the software industry. Consequently, it’s good to catch up with old friends in the
software world once in a while – even if that means
wearing an ill-fitting rental tux to some cheesy awards
ceremony.
The usher leans over me and asks me to quit mumbling as the emcee makes his first declaration.
has undergone substantive changes to
reflect the new digital
content landscape.
Perhaps most significant of these is
support for Web
fonts in Fusion 4.0.
When
embedded
within a Webpage or
specified in a cascading style sheet, Web fonts enable the display of fonts not
present on the end-viewer’s computer. Fusion users can
now access the entire Google Web font collection
through Suitcase, enabling greater typographic control
of online content. Similarly, Suitcase Fusion connects
Suitcase Fusion's Font
Panel shown here in Adobe
Photoshop.
to WebINK, Extensis’ commercial Web font site with
thousands of fonts from well-known foundries. Users
can browse and utilize the entire WebINK collection
free of charge while designing online assets, only paying
the appropriate licensing when the site goes live. This
added capability to work with Web fonts ensures that
cross-media designers will be able to better match their
print and online work.
Also new in Fusion 4, Extensis Font Panels bring font
browsing and management to Adobe Creative Suite applications including InDesign, Illustrator and Photoshop. Besides being able to search and preview
typefaces without leaving the host application, users
can also activate new fonts. Custom Font Digests enable
users to build font collections containing fonts from
any source including both local and Web fonts that will
work within any of Extensis Font Panel. When a designer builds a Font Digest in Photoshop for example,
it will be available in both the Illustrator and InDesign
Font Panels.
The Suitcase Fusion 4.0 application features user interface improvements including the addition of new
toolbar commands, custom preview colours and the
ability to create font sets from selections within the Fusion interface. Additionally, users can now specify particular fonts as “Favourites” for easier access. Similarly,
users can create automatically updating Smart Sets of
fonts determined by a variety of states and attributes,
similar to the Apple iTunes Smart Playlist feature.
All in all, the newest version of Suitcase Fusion delivers an enhanced user experience, streamlined workflow for Creative Suite users in addition to full
cross-media font management and production tools.
Thankfully that went fairly quickly; sometimes those
font people can go on and on. The emcee steps back into
the spotlight as the applause subsides.
“In the category of Best Font
Manager, the winner is…”
Suitcase Fusion 4.0
www.extensis.com
Full version US$99.95
Upgrade US$49.95
Free full function 30-day trial
Extensis has been around for nearly 20
years and some version of Suitcase has
resided on my prepress workstation for
nearly as long. The current incarnation
of this respected font manager was born
of a synthesis of Diamondsoft’s Font Reserve and Extensis Suitcase back in 2006,
validating the ‘Fusion’ suffix. Last reviewed in the July 2008 issue PrintAction,
the 2012 incarnation of Suitcase Fusion
Suitcase Fusion's Mac interface (left) and web font integration mean designers can embed fonts into Webpages,
ensuring design consistency between on-line assets and print.
12 • PRINTACTION • FEBRUARY 2013
application, the user is presented
with the intuitive Layers interface
flanked with an image browser to the
left of the workspace and familiar
Navigator and Layers panels on the
Perfect Photo Suite 7
right. The workspace contains basic
www.ononesoftware.com
editing tools including transform,
Full version from US$149.95
crop, trim, mask, retouch, move and
Upgrade from US$79.95
zoom tools. Within this environFree full function 30-day trial
ment, users can jump to each of the
When last reviewed in PrintAction
suite tools by selecting the clearly
(August 2010), OnOne Software’s
marked function in the menu bar,
impressive Plug-in Suite 5 promised to make digital
automatically repopulating the workphotography “faster, easier, better”, and in most ways
space with applicable tools. Aside from combining all
lived up to the promise. Since then, the crew at OnOne
the plug-ins in a harmonized interface, OnOne has
have been busy improving an already robust photo edspent considerable time and effort improving each of
iting product aimed at the imaging professional who
the products.
needs just a little more than Photoshop can provide
Perfect Mask greatly improves on the masking caon its own.
pabilities first introduced in Mask Pro with a range of
Being a plug-in developer can be a tough job when
powerful tools, including Keep, Drop and Refining
Photoshop is constantly evolving to hold its spot as
Brushes, Automatic Background Removal, as well as a
top pixel editor, especially when its newest features are
variety of cleanup tools to enable users to mask very
often ‘inspired’ by the very plug-ins it hosts! While
complex images such as hair with relatively little effort.
Perfect Photo Suite 7 functions can still be accessed
New to Photo Suite 7, Perfect Portrait provides reindividually through the plug-in architectures of Photouching and correction tools specifically designed for
toshop, Elements, Lightroom or Aperture, it’s evolved
dealing with the imperfections of human skin. Addiinto a powerful standalone workflow for improving
tionally, users can adjust eye and teeth whitening as
images, applying artistic effects, precise masking,
well as detail – far easier than a trip to the dentist!
creative focus and black-and-white conversions.
Perfect Effects brings everything from antique film
Additionally, the Genuine Fractals image enlarging
grains through edge manipulation and artsy frames to
technology has been incorporated into Perfect Resize
your image editing workflow with real-time previews
within the latest iteration of the suite.
and bespoke controls to make each effect unique. The
When first launching the Perfect Photo Suite 7
Perfect black-and-white plug-in steps users through
an archive of historical monochrome print processes, again allowing each to be customized in a
variety of ways to suit any taste.
My favourite suite plug-in is FocalPoint 2 that enables users play
with focus in order to recreate the
look of very fast lenses and to precisely control depth of field, especially when used in conjunction
with Perfect Mask. It can take a bit
of practice to get the hang of using
OnOne’s innovative FocusBug to
adjust size, blur and vignette but
it’s worth the effort. Once you get
FocusBug, Photoshop’s Blur Tools
seem downright primitive in comparison. In addition to circular
focus adjustment, FocalPoint 2 includes planar focus necessary to
create the trendy tilt-shift miniature effect.
Historically, OnOne Software’s
best-known application has been
Genuine Fractals, its renowned
image enlarging software. Now rebranded as Perfect Resize 7.5, the
app still harnesses OnOne’s proprietary fractal-based interpolation algorithms with much faster
processing speeds than earlier versions. In plain English: It makes
pictures bigger and sharper more
quickly! Additionally, Perfect Resize offers presets covering everything from social media and video
through massive gallery wrap canTop: Perfect Effects provides a vast array of film grain, vignette and filter
“And in the category of Best
Imaging Plug-in Suite...”
effects in addition to borders, frames and edges.
Bottom: Perfect B&W simulates hundreds of different monochrome film
and print processes.
vases. In a prepress workflow, this tool can be invaluable for improving those horrible 72-dpi images your
customers keep asking you to throw on press.
As well as the customary user guides, OnOne University holds more than 100 online video tutorials, as
just one part of a vast knowledge base. For my money,
this is far more useful than a PDF. Each plug-in is
available for purchase individually should you only require a single function, but buying more than one can
quickly out-price the standalone version of the entire
suite. At $499, Plug-in Suite 5 (2010) was a solid product at a good price. Starting at $150 for the standalone
version, Perfect Photo Suite 7 (2012) represents an astounding value that can add profitable new capabilities to the prepress department with a relatively short
learning curve.
Nice, I had my fingers crossed for Perfect Photo Suite
7! I squirm in my seat and consider loosening my bowtie.
“This past year has seen some tough competition in
this next category”, the emcee proclaims.
“The 2012 SCSI award for Best Supporting
Utility goes to…”
Parallels Desktop 8
www.parallels.com
Full version US$79.99
Upgrade US$49.99
Free full function 14-day trial
Like it or not, few in the prepress business can exist
solely in a Mac ecosystem. Whether running a
Windows version of
Creative Suite to maintain your customer’s file
integrity or opening the
odd file in CorelDRAW
(or even worse, Microsoft Publisher), prepress pros need to
regularly access a PC
Workstation. When I
first reviewed Parallels
v4.0 for PrintAction (July 2009), virtual machines
had just crossed the line from sluggish emulators to
marginally useful tools for running a guest operating
system and its applications. Since then, Parallels has
steadily improved to the point where even processorintensive Windows apps run briskly alongside Mac applications performing on current hardware.
Released in September 2012, Parallels Desktop 8
leverages all the power of the latest Mac configurations
and OS X 10.8 (Mountain Lion) to bring virtual machines near to workstation performance. Parallels
claims up to 30 percent faster performance for Desktop 8 and, as a regular user, I would have to concur. At
this point, I should mention that running a Parallels
Desktop 8 VM on a solid-state drive (as found in the
Macbook Air) is blazingly fast. If you use virtual machines often, consider taking the SSD plunge – you
won’t believe how fast they run!
Aside from the speed bump, the latest Parallels software includes support for Mountain Lion’s dictation
tool in Windows apps, as well as the stunning retina
display found in the newest Macbook Pro configurations. And while on the topic of graphics, Desktop 8
features greatly improved performance for graphicsContinued on page 22
FEBRUARY 2013 • PRINTACTION • 13
BUSINESS FORMS
Bolan
Continued from page 13
Parallels Desktop 8 handles all current operating systems and can even run them
concurrently.
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intensive applications such as gaming or
video editors. Users can now assign up to
1GB of video memory to their virtual
machine.
Also, Parallels’ new presentation wizard makes short work of configuring Microsoft
Powerpoint
presentations
running in your virtual machine to a
connected projector. Windows apps are
also better integrated into the Mac OS –
for example, Windows apps now appear
in Launchpad and Mission Control
alongside Mac apps and an “Open current page in Internet Explorer” button
appears in the Mac Safari toolbar. Moreover, Parallels Desktop 8 integrates Windows with the OS X Notification Centre,
creating a truly Mac-like user experience.
As with previous versions of Parallels,
Desktop 8 enables virtualization of legacy
operating systems such as Windows XP,
Vista and Windows 7, as well as the latest
out of Redmond – Windows 8. Parallels
also supports a variety of Linux operating
systems, FreeBSD, OS/2 and Solaris in
addition to older Mac operating systems.
Taking full advantage of the latest Mac
hardware and operating system, Desktop
8 assures fast file transfers through the
new USB 3 inputs and allows users to
utilize Mountain Lion track-pad gestures
in Windows apps. In short, Parallels is a
powerful and stable solution for running
guest operating systems on your Mac that
just gets better with age!
Nice to see these utilities get some attention – the big name Premedia stars always
steal the headlines! Like the rest of the
audience, I’m wondering if there could be an
upset in the hotly contested image management category. A hush falls over the room as
the emcee announces the final winner.
“And finally, in the Category of
Best Media Manager, the SCSI
goes to…”
Media Pro
www.phaseone.com
Full version US$199.00
Upgrade from US$59.00
Free full function 60-day trial
In the early days of digital asset management, photographers and imaging professionals had few options for organizing,
cataloging and managing large collections of visual assets. So when I stumbled
on iView Media Pro more than a decade
ago, I immediately recognized a powerful
media manager with a simple, yet effective interface and I’ve been using it ever
since.
Microsoft acquired Media Pro in 2007
and morphed it into part of the ill-conceived Expressions software suite – effectively taking a perfectly good application
and interfering with it. Rebranded as Expressions Media, the product was shortlived with Microsoft dropping it from the
suite in 2009. Thankfully, though no
longer officially supported, my original
iView Media Pro kept on running until
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22 • PRINTACTION • FEBRUARY 2013
Media Pro defly handles large image collections, displays detailed EXIF information
and performs many image editing functions and batch processes.
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Phase One pulled this capable application from the Microsoft dumpster in
2010.
So why would you pay for a media
manager when you likely already have
Adobe Bridge or iPhoto? Simply, Media
Pro creates catalogues of images with detailed EXIF (EXchangeable Information
File format) information and previews,
whereas Bridge shows the contents of a
directory while iPhoto kidnaps your images into a cache. Neither of these strategies works well with very large image
collections, something Media Pro has excelled at for more than a decade.
The current version of Media Pro
manages photo and video files in more
than 100 different formats and can import directly from a variety of sources including disks, URLs and directly from
tethered cameras. Once imported, images
can be batch renamed, scaled, rotated,
moved, duplicated and otherwise modified in a variety of ways. Media Pro has
powerful light table viewing capabilities
in addition to presentation and slideshow
features built into the application. Media
Pro can also automatically generate contact sheets or custom Web galleries that
can easily be uploaded to any Web server.
While not a household name in the
prepress world, Phase One has long been
recognized as a leader in the professional
medium format digital camera and
workflow software market. Phase One
brings considerable image-processing experience to Media Pro, which now features an Image Editor panel full of tools
to adjust saturation, create duotones and
remove grain among other functions. Although not as robust as Photoshop, these
tools cover a large percentage of everyday
image processing tasks. When necessary,
users can also direct any image within the
catalogue to Photoshop or any other user
assigned pixel editor.
In addition to Media Pro, Phase One
also provides a free Media Pro Reader application for viewing catalogues and
slideshows created in the full version. The
catalogue creator can choose to either
embed full resolution images that can be
extracted through the reader, or include
previews only to prevent unauthorized
usage. A fully functional 60-day demo of
Media Pro can be downloaded from the
Phase One Website, giving you plenty of
time to see if this image management
strategy works in your world.
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NUMBERING MACHINES
Teaching Old Apps New Tricks
The stage lights dim on the 2013 SCSI
Awards. As the crowd files out of the auditorium and the A-listers disperse to their exclusive SCSI after-parties, I reflect on the year in
software and worry about getting my tux
back to the rental place before it closes.
I have reviewed most of these products
for PrintAction at some point in the past
and I’ve been using them all on a daily
basis for years. While it might seem odd
for me to re-visit these premedia stalwarts, these old software friends have
seen significant improvement in 2012
and warrant a second look.
The inclusion of new features, streamlined workflows and in some cases significantly better pricing have put all of these
apps right back on the top of my list of
favourite premedia tools.
Zac Bolan’s blog: blog.softcircus.com
FEBRUARY 2013 • PRINTACTION • 23