Creative Suite 3.3 and Acrobat 9 are now available

Following up our story from 2 June (Adobe Announces Acrobat 9), Adobe is from today now shipping Acrobat 9 in all its editions. Creative Suite has also been updated to version 3.3 to include the software in Design Premium, Design Standard, Web Premium and Master Collection editions.  Mac and Windows editions in English, French, German and Japanese are being shipped. Pricing of Creative Suite 3.3 is as follows:

• Creative Suite 3.3 Design Premium – £1,249 + VAT
• Creative Suite 3.3 Design Standard – £1,051 + VAT
• Creative Suite 3.3 Web Premium – £895 + VAT
• Creative Suite 3.3 Master Collection – £2,313 + VAT
• Upgrade Creative Suite 3 to 3.3 – £135 + VAT
• Upgrade any Creative Suite Design Premium to 3.3 – £1,089 + VAT

Repeating Paragraph Styles for listings in InDesign

Here’s a little Adobe InDesign trick that might help you accelerate the laborious task of styling up repetitive text listings. It works with InDesign versions CS2 and CS3.

In my example, I have a long, multi-page listing of website articles. Each item has a title, a brief description and a website address, and I want to style them differently. Now, there are various ways I could do this. For example, I could style up the first item, then copy and paste the styles one by one using the Eyedropper tool. If I create Paragraph Styles, I could use the Paragraph Styles palette or use Quick Apply to apply them, one by one again. But that’s too slow. Here’s what I’d do, step by step:

1. Create new Paragraph Styles for your items. In my case, I need four Paragraph Styles: heading, body, URL and empty line. If some of these styles are already used elsewhere in your layout, duplicate them and rename them ‘listings head’, ‘listings body’, etc. This way, you can continue to fine-tune your listings later without interfering with the rest of your publication.

2. After creating the Paragraph Styles, re-open the Paragraph Style Options window for the first style (in my case, ‘listings head’). You can do this by holding down Ctrl-Alt-Shift (Windows) or Command-Option-Shift (Mac) and double-clicking on the style name in the Paragraph Styles panel.

3. In the Paragraph Style Options window, click on the Next Style pop-up and choose the Paragraph Style that you want to apply to the second line (paragraph) of your listing item (in my case, ‘listings body’). Click OK.

4. Repeat steps 2 and 3 with the other Paragraph Styles for your listing, each time choosing the appropriate Next Style. The final style (in my case, the one for the empty line) should point back to your first style (in my case, ‘listings head’), completing the loop.

5. Select the listings text. In the Paragraph Styles palette, right-click (one-button Mac mouse users should Ctrl-click) on the first style and choose Apply “firststyle” then Next Style.

6. Blimey, your entire multi-styled listing has been formatted in a split second.

Vanity-publish your own magazine

HP Labs is running a beta programme for a magazine production and fulfilment service called MagCloud. You upload your PDF for free, then HP prints it ‘on demand’ when someone wants a copy, and sells it online for you. Once HP had recouped the production costs, you start to earn money on any further sales. MagCloud sounds similar to some book publishing schemes that lock authors into a digital printing-on-demand retail agreement. This would take control and profitability out of your hands, but it would also protect you from high production costs that you might not otherwise ever recoup alone. When HP reveals more information, we can tell you about it.
Thanks to Adam Dewitz (Print CEO Blog) for the heads up.

News Magazines will close, incredibly enough

The publisher of Britain’s biggest circulation magazine is going to be closed by its parent company, News International. News Magazines currently produces SkyMag for Sky subscribers (more than 7m circulation), the Sunday Times travel supplement, and a women’s magazine called Love It! At a time when magazines are struggling to maintain readership, it’s quite amazing that the publisher of the most successful magazine in the UK can’t make an honest profit. But then, the editorial appeared to comprise dull press releases and non-interviews with stars, so perhaps it was inevitable after all. The company was not helped by having the worst web site in the world.
www.newsmagazines.co.uk

Extensis makes font management Universal

Extensis has launched a new version of its server-based font management system, renamed Universal Type Server. It can be used not just to handle distribution of fonts to client computers but also to manage licences, classifications, foundries and keywords in shared environments. Administrators are able to manage the server and clients remotely via a web-based interface, and the system incorporates automatic backup. Mac and Windows, $1,800 plus $165 per client.
www.typeserver.com

Ultimate wood-free paper: it’s made of stone

PrintWeek has reported from DRUPA that one exhibitor, Taiwan Lung Meng Tech, has invented a type of paper made from stone rather than wood pulp. Known as ‘rich mineral paper’ or RMP, it is composed of limestone powder and a non-toxic resin. It is said to be environmentally friendlier in its manufacture than conventional paper, and the product has some interesting properties such as not getting wet - you can even write on it under water with a pencil.
http://community.printweek.com/blogs/printgeek/archive/2008/06/09/drupa-stone-age.aspx
www.taiwanlm.com.tw

Epson launches two 11-ink wide-format proofers

The Stylus Pro 7900 and 9900 large format inkjet printers, just launched by Epson, make use of 11 inks and support a spectrophotometer option for upgrading the devices into accurate colour proofers. Strictly speaking, the printers use only 10 inks at any one time but they can switch between photo black and matt black cartridges automatically, making a total of 11 cartridges loaded in the printer. In addition to either black, the other ink colours are: light black, light light black, cyan, light cyan, magenta, vivid magenta, vivid light magenta, yellow, orange and green. Epson refers to these as “UltraChrome HDR (high dynamic range) fifth generation pigment inks”. The two printers also support an optional tool called Epson SpectoProofer (based on an X-Rite spectophotometer) for calibrating and certifying colour fidelity for high-end proofing.
www.epson.co.uk

Corel WordPerfect Office X4 edits PDFs

Corel has upgraded its WordPerfect Office suite to version X4. Among other things, it advances the software’s existing support for Adobe PDF files. As well as being able to export to PDF (which the suite has been able to do since version 9), WordPerfect Office X4 can now also apply basic security options to its PDFs, embed tags and export straight to PDF/A for archiving. The suite can open PDFs for editing too, according to Corel, although this is achieved through an internal scanning function that reads the text and pictures in a PDF and converts them to an appropriate WordPerfect Office format. The suite supports Microsoft Office 2007’s XML formats - DOCX, XLSX and PPTX - as well as the open source ODF formats. Windows only, £276 (upgrade £135).
www.corel.co.uk

UK paid-for newspapers suffer a decline in sales

Newspaper circulation is increasing worldwide, but not in the UK or most of Europe, according to a report issued by the World Association of Newspapers (WAN) in Goteborg, Sweden. While the global sales of paid-for newspapers rose by +2.57 percent in 2007, the circulation of paid-for dailies in the UK had contracted -3.46 percent. Looking back over the last five years, UK sales had slumped by -10.14 percent. Elsewhere in Europe, despite increases in a number of countries such as Bulgaria and Moldova, most Western European countries were suffering a decline in sales of paid-for titles. Overall, European circulation figures fell by -2.37 percent in 2007 and by -5.91 percent over the past five years.

On the other hand, free daily newspapers continued their expansion, especially in Europe where they now account for almost a quarter of all newspaper circulation. The three largest free dailies in the world are all European: Leggo in Italy (1.95 million copies), Metro in the UK (1.37 million copies) and 20 Minutos in Spain (1 million copies).

The WAN report also confirms that print remains the world’s most popular advertising medium, consuming 40 percent of the expediture in the advertising market.

www.wan-press.org/article17377.html

Inkjet digital press uses cut sheets

At the commencement of DRUPA, Screen Europe was showing off the world’s first inkjet-based digital press to work with ordinary cut sheet paper rather than reels or specially formulated inkjet stock. The Truepress Jet SX uses water-based inks on either coated or uncoated paper, and is said to be capable of printing up to 1,600 sheets per hour. This kind of speed, and its support for regular cut-sheet stock, puts it on a reasonable par with small offset litho presses, but with the added bonus of variable printing (it will incorporate Adobe PDF Print Engine 2). The first Truepress Jet SX units should be available next year.
www.screen.co.jp/ga_dtp/en/news/pdf/NR080529E.pdf