Task Tools for Adobe InDesign

Wonderful as Adobe InDesign is there are many tasks the program doesn’t perform. Tasks that predictably soak up too many valuable hours each time you do them.

Rorohiko Workflow Resources has developed a whole range of task tools, so you can slash hours of mind numbing work down to minutes. The InDesign-compatible tools cover a variety of repetitive pre-press chores that we, or our customers have identified as missing from InDesign.

Check them out to discover where you can slash valuable time.

Workflow Automation – Custom Design and Build

Pre-press systems automation is all about achieving significant productivity efficiencies and ultimately profit improvement. The automation unites the multiple programs you are using, such as InDesign, InDesign Server, Acrobat, Photoshop, your web or FTP server, your output devices, WordPress, or a host of other software, into one logical workflow. Or it can streamline a single labour intensive task.

Having understood the various elements of your current process Rorohiko Workflow Resources designs your tailored workflow software. The customised automation then gives you a start-to-finish integrated system linking each step and stage to monitor tasks and manage progress.

The massive time and money saving potential is evident in these case studies of our custom automation work.

Developer Training

The Adobe range of products present a host of time saving opportunities – that’s why you have them. Rorohiko Workflow Resources can help you make the most of your Adobe products more rapidly with on-site, over your shoulder training. We cover ExtendScript, ActionScript, InDesign, Flex, C++ and many others.

We tailor training or mentoring programmes that suit your specific needs. The optimal group size is up to 10 people but we will fit with your circumstances.


News

YeShore 0.0.6 – second public beta released

February 20th, 2010

YeShore enhances the built-in Live Preflight function in Adobe InDesign CS4.

Version 0.0.6 fixes an issue where the ‘Get License…’ button remained disabled.

With Live Preflight, you can easily avoid numerous expensive mistakes and ruined print runs. Our YeShore plug-in enhances Live Preflight a great deal. It adds a set of additional powerful design rules to the available rule set.

For a limited time, during the beta-testing period you can purchase licenses to YeShore at a reduced rate of US$49 (instead of US$69).

Click here for more info:

http://www.rorohiko.com/wordpress/yeshore/

Meet us face to face, May 12-14, Seattle

February 16th, 2010

Invest a few days of your time, gain them back a thousandfold. Spend a few days in Seattle at The InDesign Print and ePublishing Conference, and quickly gain that time back by using your newly acquired knowledge.

http://indesignsecretslive.com/conference.html

David Blatner and Anne-Marie Concepción did it again. You’ll not only learn about how to be a more efficient InDesign user, you also get to rub shoulders with a host of world-renowned experts and the people of the Adobe team that built InDesign.

We’ll be there too – Kris will be roaming the conference, and he’s always ready for a chat, kudos, ideas, wishes,…

If you can make it to Seattle, May 12-14, make sure you don’t miss out and enroll at:

http://indesignsecretslive.com/conference.html

Soxy 1.1.0 has been released for Mac OS X and Windows.

February 13th, 2010

There’s a common problem when there are multiple versions of applications like Adobe® InDesign®, QuarkXPress®, Adobe Illustrator®… installed on the same computer.

Double-clicking a file’s icon will often cause the wrong application version to launch. As a result, you might unwittingly re-save a document into a more recent file format, which could be a bad thing. Maybe it’s a customer file, and the customer might not be able to open the updated file when you e-mail it back to her.

Soxy has now officially been released for both Mac and Windows, and is available for US$19 per computer. Site licenses are also available.

For more info and to download a 20-day fully functional demo here:

http://www.rorohiko.com/wordpress/downloads/lightning-brain-soxy

Workshop – Getting Started With The InDesign SDK

January 20th, 2010

If you’re involved in automation around the Adobe Creative Suite, you need to mark the week of May 3 to May 7, 2010 on your calendar – there’s another Adobe Creative Suite Developer Summit (aka CSBU Developer Summit) coming up in Seattle, at the Adobe Fremont Campus.

For the third year in a row, we’ll be running our acclaimed Getting Started With The InDesign SDK workshop during the summit – click this link for more info:

http://www.rorohiko.com/wordpress/workshop-getting-started-with-the-indesign-sdk/

(Photo courtesy of Mark Niemann-Ross)

Familiarizing yourself with the InDesign SDK takes many months of hard work and study. This workshop will slash a substantial amount from the time it takes to gain a good understanding and get properly started. Make sure you enroll as soon as possible – there is only room for 12 participants!

More about the Adobe Creative Suite Developer Summit can be found here:

http://www.adobe.com/go/2010csbuDevSummit/

Soxy 1.0.7 is now available for Mac OS X

January 13th, 2010

We have added a new feature to help work around a Finder issue in Mac OS X Snow Leopard which occurs when you double-click an InDesign document that has a ‘#’ character in its name.

Read more about it on the Adobe forums by clicking here

Download our latest version of Soxy:

http://www.rorohiko.com/soxy/

ShowPaths 1.0 for Macintosh Released

January 7th, 2010

ShowPaths for Macintosh is a very simple app, with only one purpose: give you easy copy/paste access to the file path of a file or folder.

It’s released as donationware.

Have a look here for the download link:

http://www.rorohiko.com/showpaths

Distinguishing Photoshop EPS From Illustrator EPS

January 4th, 2010

Soxy 1.0.4 for Macintosh adds support for EPS files. Thanks to Soxy, one can double-click an EPS file icon in the Finder – and any Photoshop EPS file will open in Photoshop; any Illustrator EPS files will open in Illustrator.

You can download Soxy from this page:

http://www.rorohiko.com/wordpress/downloads/lightning-brain-soxy/

When that CD filled with EPS files arrives, there’s no more guessing. Simply double-click any EPS file’s icon – and Soxy will take care of it!

Here’s a small demo of how it could go.

I just upgraded my workstation to Soxy 1.0.4, but I have not configured it yet to handle EPS files.

Let’s do that first. The Soxy preferences screen can be accessed by simply double-clicking the Soxy application icon.

I now tick the Open with Soxy checkbox for the EPS file format – and from then on, my EPS file worries are over!

I have a disk with some images that originated on from a PC; when I mounted it on my desktop earlier, before I installed Soxy, I saw this:

With Soxy installed and configured, I can now simply select the two EPS file icons and double-click:

In a unnoticeable split second, Soxy analyzes both files, and hands them over to the proper applications. At the same time, it also updates the file icons to show which is which.

Turns out image1.eps is a Photoshop file, and image2.eps is an Illustrator file.

Try Soxy out today – once you’ve tried it, you will have a hard time imagining how you ever lived without it!

http://www.rorohiko.com/wordpress/downloads/lightning-brain-soxy/

TextExporter 2.1.3 Available

January 3rd, 2010

TextExporter is a plug-in for InDesign CS, CS2, CS3 or CS4. It allows you to export all the text from an InDesign document concatenated into a single RTF file, while following a natural reading order. Text files and InDesign Tagged Text are also supported.

The latest version adds support for properly exporting the bullets or numbers that are created by using bulleted and numbered paragraph styles in InDesign – normally, these bullets vanish from the resulting RTF file when exported.

Read all about it at

http://www.rorohiko.com/wordpress/indesign-downloads/text-exporter/

FrameReporter 1.0.7 Available

December 4th, 2009

FrameReporter uses little non-printing labels to display interesting info about selected page items, right in your work area.  Normally InDesign makes you click around and find various palettes to dig up the info – which disrupts your train of thought.

With FrameReporter, the relevant info is displayed exactly in the area where you are working, and you can immediately see the necessary info for multiple items in the blink of an eye.

For example: FrameReporter will show overset text warnings on the edge of any text frame that is part of a linked set of frames.

This latest version adds a ‘character count’ feature, and fixes a potential crash of InDesign for users of CS and CS2.

Check it out – click here for more info:

http://www.rorohiko.com/framereporter