Adobe Systems Inc, Mountain View, California has announced the latest versions of its PageMaker desktop publishing software and PhotoShop photo design and production tool, for both Apple Computer Inc’s Macintosh and Windows95 and Windows NT desktop systems. According to the company, it has identified three shifts in the use of desktop systems over the last two years within its customer base, namely: a move to high-end desktop publishing that demands more color and higher resolution graphics, the rise of the Internet and intranets and the increasing use of Photo CDs, all of which Adobe is positive that PageMaker 6.5 and PhotoShop 4.0 will address. In addition, Adobe sees the areas of photography and Web design as growing markets for Pho toShop in particular. Both tools have undergone what Carolyn Radcliff, European product manager coined Adobeization, the streamlining of new releases of Adobe products – especially those inherited from acquisitions, of which PageMaker is one, from Aldus Corp, bought two years ago (CI No 2,376). This includes giving each tool a user interface, with menu layouts and keyboard short cuts common to other Adobe products. There are several new features offered by PhotoShop 4.0. The Actions palette enables the user to record sequences of editing steps as a list, which can either be used repeatedly on the same image file or on different images. Copyright protection for photographers and digital artists is provided through a technology known as digital watermarking. Using Imagemarc software from Portland, Oregon-based Digimarc Corp, PhotoShop embeds a digital watermark into an image, which is not visible to the human eye, but remains readable even after the image has been edited, printed or re-scanned.
New Web file formats
On opening a watermarked file, PhotoShop 4.0 will automatically indicate that copyright information is present. A link from PhotoShop accesses the Digimarc Web site, where the user can get copyright and artist information for the marked images. The tool supports new Web file formats such as PNG Portable Network Graphics, progressive JPEG and Portable Data Format. PhotoShop 4.0 supports symmetric multiprocessing and includes – in the Windows version – an Intel Corp MMX chip plug-in. It also sup ports Object Linking & Embedding on the Windows system and AppleScript on the Mac OS. PhotoShop 4.0 for both systems will ship exclusively on CD-ROM – available on floppy disks for an extra charge – in the fourth quarter, priced at $900. Users of previous versions can upgrade to 4.0 for $150. There are also some notable enhancements to PageMaker. In page design, PageMaker 6.5 now provides the option of working on publications either in free form as with previous releases, or with frames as does Quark Inc’s Xpress, its main rival. It also includes a dictionary for 17 languages. For on-line publishing, PageMaker 6.5 now has a hyperlinks palette enabling construction of hyperlinks either within a PageMaker publication or to a Universal Resource Locator on the Web. Hyperlinks can also be imported for a Web page. As with PhotoShop, graphics can also be automatically converted to JPEG and GIF file formats. It also has a HyperText Mark-up Language plug-in that makes it easier to export content from PageMaker files to the Web, as well as drag-and-drop capabilities for placing PageMaker elements into Adobe PageMill Web authoring tool, Adobe’s answer to Microsoft Corp’s FrontPage offering. Color publishing through support for the ICC, Image Compression Co-processor color management profile standard (CI No 2,762) enables different color management systems to use the same device profiles. An example of this is the Eastman Kodak Co’s Digital Science Color Management System, included with PageMaker 6.5. Compatibility with other vendors’ products is provided through import filters, for QuickTime and for the Macintosh only Claris Works 4.0 and Microsoft Works 4.0. There are also right mouse-button menus for Windows95 and Windo ws NT. PageMaker 6.5 ships by CD-ROM with a copy of Adobe Acrobat Distiller and Acrobat Reader, PhotoShop 3.0 Limited Edition (for Windows only) and Adobe Table 3.0. The Windows95 and NT version will be available from early November, the Macintosh version later that month. No prices were given.
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