Good Morning, Amybeth! Good Morning, David! How are you?
Very good. Bright and early
in New York City. It looks like it's dark, still.
Right. Well, yeah, not bright and
early, but dark and early, in New York City.
(David laughs) That's a good one, yeah.
And we might have some snow, today.
Oh, snow! Cool. All is well in Manhattan.
Excellent, excellent! Yeah, before we jump into Amybeth's experiences with the
PDF2DTP, PDF to InDesign plugin, and maybe our new product, as well,
IDMarkz, maybe you can tell us a little bit about who you are and what you do.
My name is Amybeth Menendez. I am the assistant manager for
a print workflow, for one of the big five publishers, in Manhattan.
I do scripting and I teach Adobe applications, so I do application and file
support for the design teams, as well as training, here, at our company.
Cool. Wow! So, you're staying busy.
Yeah. I've been in printing for, ahem, 30+ years, so like I
sort of grew up in the industry. My family was in the industry, too, so,
I was born and bred, looking at dots.
Yeah, your dad was, like, with Kodak Polychrome, or something like that?
Your father? My dad was the CEO of Kodak Polychrome.
Wow! Wow! Yeah, I remember you once... I basically grew up looking at newspapers
through a loop, with my dad telling me the newspaper was out of register.
Yeah, I remember you telling me that story.
Nothing pretentious. I was just hanging.
I was like five years old. Yeah. Cool. Yeah. Well, last time I saw
Amybeth in person was at the CreativePro conference in New Orleans.
Oh, it was awesome! Yeah. I think I missed last year's.
I'm collecting swag and knowledge, right? Yeah. I missed this year's and, you know.
As well, did I. Oh!
But we will be at next year's, hopefully. Yeah, that's the plan.
And it's in Texas. Texas. It's warm. Nice weather, you know?
Right. So, yeah, but that's a really cool event,
CreativePro. I really like that event, and it was great talking to you more, there, and
what's nice about that event you get like to meet the people, deeper, and
understand more about the workflow and ...
Exactly. Yeah. Yeah.
I got to catch up with a couple of people that I follow on YouTube and ...
Yeah. ... it was really nice.
Cool. Yeah. Okay, great! So, PDF2DTP,
Markzware's PDF to InDesign conversion plugin. What was your first impression
of that? I actually was using the software, when...
before Markzware made it. It was made by a different software developer, and so
I've always had the need for PDF to InDesign software.
Right. And Markzware's is incomparable to any
of the other software that I've used before, as far as, like, it processes the
fonts, it'll give you an error, if there's something wrong with the fonts, it makes
a picture folder for you. So, like in those cases, and I've also tested it, a little bit in
the work environment, in those cases where
you don't have anything but legacy PDFs and you have to edit them, this is a
viable solution for that. Right.
Right. It gives you a page layout application, where everything's fluid.
You get your fonts, you get your images, you get your document size. You know.
Yeah. Yeah it extracts the images, as well, and in a separate folder, like you
mentioned... Exactly.
... which is very handy. Extremely valuable.
At resolution used, so it might not be perfect, if it's a low-res PDF and you
need high-res images. Right. Right. But if you have a high-res
PDF, like. For myself, as time goes on, I just save the print files for, I mean, my
personal use, my personal freelance use, so I may only have the
print files, for something like a brochure
that I did 10 years ago, and now, all of a sudden, this client is
contacting me and wants to make revisions on it, and now I have a viable
way, without going into something like Illustrator,
which is not a PDF-editing application... Like Dov Isaacs, huh?
... or a page layout application, really. Yeah. Yeah.
So, this way, I can work in the applications
that I'm comfortable in and, then, also have application files.
Right. Yeah. I always hear about... Dov Isaacs in the back of my head, when,
always on the forums, he's typing, "Illustrator is not a PDF editor. Illustrator
is not a PDF editor." Yeah. Dov Isaacs.
Dov Isaacs, for people who don't know, is the scientist from Adobe.
Yeah. Another one of the gurus that I follow. You know a lot of people, I've got to
tell you, anyway. That's because I'm always on the forums.
I'm always educating myself. I'm working on getting my Expert certification, now,
but they just they just stopped giving the tests that
they're giving now, and so, because they're releasing the 2020 certification.
Ah. You've got to wait, yeah. Yeah, because you have your... What do you call it?
Your Associate... I have the ACAs in InDesign, Illustrator, and
Photoshop. Wow! Cool!
My goal is to become an Adobe Certified Instructor, here, at my big five company.
Yeah. (laughs) Yes I have used it, compared to just
editing in something, like in, say,
Pitstop. Right.
You know, like, ... Right.
... and, then, being able to have the files. But we use a variety of Markzware
solutions. We use the Quark to InDesign. That is part of our workflow, here.
Yeah, Q2ID. Yeah, yeah. Yeah.
And I think I remember you mentioned
you were one of the... I think you're one of the first users of FlightCheck. That was
your job, in the beginning, right? Oh, okay. I'm not even sure what year it
was, but I was just a pre-flight operator. And there was a room of, like, six of us and
all we did was FlightCheck, all day long. And you would just hear the bird chirping.
Chirp, chirp. The pre-flight process is quite simple and
fast. Look at that! Chirp, chirp. You know, like when it's
collecting packages, but, yeah. Yeah, yeah. That's awesome.
Yeah, that's really cool! And, for people who don't know,
FlightCheck is a stand-alone preflight application. You can check that out, as
well. Of course, InDesign has built-in pre-flight and you have Pitstop for PDF
pre-flight, ... A bad one.
... but the beauty of FlightCheck is it checks everything, PDF, InDesign,
Illustrator, and image files. Correct.
You just get a nice overview of the file. Any other particulars about PDF2DTP, any
odd files that it saved the day, or anything? Well, recently I had a
brochure that I was trying to... that I needed to edit. And the brochure was
actually created in... It was from a client who had sent it to me and all they had was
a PDF. And it was created in some sort of
Microsoft Word layout application, but at least I was able to
extract my images, get my page layout, get all of my paragraphs set, and then
just edit my text. So, that really saved the day for me. Yeah.
Wow! I had all of my images. It has the images
with bleed. It... When you convert from the PDF, yeah, it gives you the page
document side, but if the document had bleed settings and, then, it doesn't clip the
images. Right.
So, it's been a complete 5 stars, for its conversion process.
Awesome! Awesome. Yeah, yeah. People, I mean, obviously you can import a PDF, a
static PDF, a flattened PDF, if you will, into InDesign, page by page, but you won't...
It's uneditable. It's uneditable. So, unless you use Pitstop
or something, beforehand, it's like a whole different workflow. So, with this, you just
click, and it converts an entire multi-page document right into InDesign.
Right. Multi-page! Yeah.
So, I've done this, with multi-page documents. I want to add that, as well.
Yeah, yeah. Cool! Excellent! Excellent. Okay. So, my last question on PDF2DTP. Is it a
product you'd recommend to other graphic designers?
I would absolutely recommend it to other designers, because there's always a
situation, where all you have is like a legacy PDF or a PDF from a client, or there are just
no application files available, and you need to make changes on it. And this is the
safest way, because it gives you fluidity. You have your artboards, you have an
application file that you're ... Yep.
... comfortable working in, and absolutely. Awesome, awesome! Yeah.
Yeah. It's a staple in my workflow. Excellent!
For sure.
Well, thank you. Thank you very much. Great! Which leads me into the next
product you've been beta testing for us, the IDMarkz, which... PDF2DTP...
Love it! Oh, you love it!
I do love it, because I think it will be extremely useful. I am going to try and
pitch it, too, because you're able to take... We're always, being that we're in a large
company and we're on an enterprise system of Adobe software, we're never on
the latest version of the software. No.
So, we work with a lot of outside freelancers and designers that are
sending ... Oh, yeah.
... InDesign documents, and we need to, number one, save to IDML, but this is also a
really great way for production, per se, to get a complete preview, and without
the [InDesign] application, of what the document looks like. You could see the
images, you can zoom in on the text, you can export to a PDF.
Yep. So, even if you don't have
InDesign, you could export to a PDF from this, to send something around for
viewing and commenting. It is incredible!
Yeah. And, for the price point.
So, for people that actually don't need the entire software suite, this is perfect for
people that are reviewing files that they're getting from clients, etc, etc.
Yeah. Awesome, yeah. I'll put more information in the
description box, where people can go download it. And the preview part is free,
where you can preview any InDesign file, and the conversion and export to various
formats. You have to pay a little bit of money for that, of course. But you have
export to IDML, PDF, and even other... JPEG, TIFF, yeah.
Yeah, yeah. And it'll open it in other applications, even. You can do an
InDesign via IDML, right up into QuarkXPress or...
Exactly. InDesign into Publisher.
Right. That's one. Affinity. Have you tried that
Affinity Publisher, by any chance?
No. Okay.
Not yet. Yeah, yeah. You're too busy with your
workflow. I mean, you... Yeah.
Yeah. So, yeah, I guess it's pretty
locked down, at a big publisher. You can't just, as a designer... In your company, you
have designer, but the designer just can't download what they like, I guess.
No, not at all. Yeah.
Everything is managed.
So, anyway, okay, cool. So, yeah, IDMarkz. Great! Glad to hear you love it.
We're doing a lot with that product and, of course, thank you for your feedback on
PDF2DTP, the PDF to InDesign. I love PDF2DTP!
Yeah. And thank you, Amybeth, for
the time. We got cut off at the end but, in any event, we really appreciate you
taking the time, to share your experiences with Markzware's PDF2DTP,
PDF to InDesign and your first impressions on Markzware's new IDMarkz.
Don't take only our word, even though Amybeth is a user, my word, or
someone working for Markzware, look at what all of the other customers are saying,
as well. A lot of great reviews and quite a high rating, as well. PDF to InDesign, with a
click! Markzware's PDF2DTP.