New Software Stuff: August 2009 Archives

XMPie uDirect 4.6.1 finally supports InDesign CS4. I installed the update without incident this afternoon. It is very nice to be able to now be able to use CS4 for variable projects. I can't find an announcement on their site, so talk to your sales rep. I am sure they will be demonstrating heavily at Print 09 in September.

I have always liked the XMPie workflow and its ability to make variable campaigns accessible to designers. Too often, variable workflows depend on a key programmer who works in proprietary applications, and often must disassemble a campaign piece in order to build it back up again. uDirect allows the designer to drive the process, providing either ready-to-run applications, variable print streams (via PPML, VIPP, VPS etc.) to the presses, or composite PDF or Postscript. In either case, the designer can see and accurately proof the results of campaign decisions directly in InDesign.

CS4 support in XMPie uDirect will certainly drive more marketers finally to upgrade their Creative Suite licenses. Adobe should be happy with this silent upgrade.
I am installing Adobe Creative Suite 4 Master Collection from DVD media. Of course, because I deal in disk images through Adobe Licensing, it's a little more complicated. It's easy on a Mac; just mount the images and go. Since Windows wants specific paths, mounting all of the images leads to confusion and incomplete installation, at least for me. Writing these DVDs proved to be more of a challenge than I had anticipated. The images are all UDF images, and I am a Mac guy with Parallels. Toast will write UDF DVDs from images, but apparently it doesn't like it if the images are mounted over a network. I cooked a few drink coasters before realizing that, and then it was off to the races. If the race was between a snail and a slug.

I started the process yesterday afternoon, let it run overnight, and here it is almost noon, and we're finally on disk 4. I can't wait until the updating process begins! I suppose that the reward for my patience is that I can use MC CS4 on my Windows personality, which is necessary for some of the work that I do. I wonder if a new Windows laptop would be more convenient?
OpenID accepted here Learn more about OpenID

About this Archive

This page is an archive of entries in the New Software Stuff category from August 2009.

New Software Stuff: July 2009 is the previous archive.

New Software Stuff: October 2009 is the next archive.

Find recent content on the main index or look in the archives to find all content.