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Alright, well, I just called …
I need to fix my screen, now.
I don't have much hair. I’ve got to
keep the little bit I have
in view. And you know it, too.
Alrighty. Yeah.
Hi, everybody. David Dilling, here, from
Markzware. And, today, we're with a
Markzware customer, Stephen Duxbury.
And he's going to tell us about his
experience with PDF to InDesign converting,
with our products. And, before we do that,
let's get a little background on Stephen.
Okay, yeah. Hi, David. Well, being a typesetter,
well, started off as a
printer, going back to my school days.
Wow!
And, then, I got into a printing company, but
then, really, I’ve always concentrated
very much on the typesetting side,
the typesetting side being a bit of an
old-fashioned term, now, that perhaps not
everybody knows,
but being just me and Catherine in Prestset.
When did she start? Catherine started in ’83.
I’ve been in it, since like ’84.
Then, it was ’87 and just the two of us.
And we do anything, from a business card to a …
I’ve just done 128-page book on
red buses. Wow! And I’ve also done some tables,
all sorts of work, anything that could be
print or online.
Right, and you're like … Could I describe you as a
local printer, like in your
village and the surrounding area, or do you do … ?
Yeah, print, little village. It’s just we’ve got some nice
offices. We don't actually print much, in-house.
We just got a big fancy
digital printer that we do very
short-run stuff. Right.
Anything else, we just farm out and get printed. Right.
We’ve been in the printing trade for
into 40 years. I know all the local
printers and … Yeah.
… whatever the job is, there’s no question …
You know where to go.
Yeah, yeah, and wow, 1983! So, I mean,
you were just saying, before,
you were saying something about PageMaker, before we
started recording, I mean.
Yeah, yeah, I actually started on PageMaker version 1. Whoa!
I don’t know how much it cost, but it was a lot of money.
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, that's amazing! So, you had PageMaker,
Quark, and then, of course, now,
I guess you’re InDesign. Yeah.
Well, I know you’re InDesign.
Yeah, there was Quark. Hated it.
And I don't even have a copy of Quark,
anymore, that will work,
on the Mac. For years, we were
producing film and bromides. Right.
So, we’d have a lot more files in QuarkXPress. So, we did have
Quark, but PageMaker, Stroke, now InDesign.
Right, right.
Stephen, now, we're, of course, now we're in … What is it,
October? Well, for all effective purposes,
it’s almost November of 2020,
October 30th, I think it is. This whole COVID,
this whole Corona situation,
how’s it been for you,
these last months? Yeah, it’s not been
good, at all. I mean,
March 23rd, it was like turning a tap off.
Ugh!
We really did very, very, very little, for months.
And I only feel it's just slightly
starting to pick up again, now.
We’ve been a bit busy, this last couple of weeks.
That's because we’ve been doing this big book.
And we also do a load of bus time tables,
for Metro, which is a local organization.
And I would, by now, I would have done,
probably, hundreds of pages, plus
timetables, but,
since February,
until two weeks ago, not done any, at all. Wow!
It's been good. It's been rough. Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, well, we saw that, too.
I mean, like you said, it was like someone turned
off the faucet, at a certain point. Yeah.
Pretty amazing! But, yeah, good to hear
it's coming back a little bit.
Hopefully, these new round of lockdowns don't
affect things too much, in terms of business.
Well, actually, as of
Sunday night, we're in, in England, we
call it Tier 3,
which is not good, which is almost back
to full lockdown, again.
Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, same in The Netherlands,
even France. We all heard about, recently, Germany.
It's just, yeah, it's a pity. Well, hopefully,
it'll continue to go decently, for you and …
Hopefully. Yeah, yeah. Good luck and thanks for
sharing that not-so-nice experience.
I mean, I'm finding some of the printers,
one or two printers, are very busy and
some printers are actually deafly quiet.
They seem a right mixed bag, at the moment,
in terms of printers.
Yeah, yeah. I know, in our village, here,
like the local printer, at a certain point,
it's not good, of course, but they're
just they're doing a lot of
corona shields and masks, of course.
I had one customer, yesterday, I just noticed.
I just looked at their
web address, I clicked on the email.
It’s like a normal web address and, then, it went
to their web address forward slash
covid and they had a whole
range of products, so …
Right, yeah, entrepreneur. Yeah, well, people need it.
It's one and a half meter,
and I don't know if it's one and a half meter,
in England, as well, but … Yes, yeah, six feet,
one and a half meter. Yeah, yeah, same.
Well, that’s, yeah, yeah. That's two meters, actually.
It is, actually. Two meters. Yeah, you guys go two meters.
Wow! Extra safe.
Yeah, two meters, in England. Okay, enough of that Corona.
Hopefully, that'll just, also just
fly away, here, with the
transition to the next question, here.
And, now, we're going to get a little more into the
Markzware side, ’83, 1983,
PageMaker. How did you … When did you first hear about
Markzware? Do you remember?
No idea. Well, that's a very honest answer.
Alright, I’ll give you another answer, now.
I would think I’ve probably read
about it in my cues I might have seen.
Yeah. Or among two
Macintosh user groups. Right.
A local Yorkshire Macintosh user group that I’m on.
I’m also on another one called …
which I think actually is really more
based in America. Right.
It would either, probably, be in
Mac User magazine or just forums. Yeah, that was a bit, yeah.
We had a lot of attention in a Mac User, back in the day,
with our FlightCheck product. Did you …
Have you ever heard of FlightCheck, before?
Oh, yeah. In that case, FlightCheck.
That's what it would be.
Yeah. We bought some FlightCheck software, because,
as I said before, we were, for many years,
we were a service bureau.
So, we would take all sorts of files from people
and we had to produce the film.
Yeah. And, now, it's all digital,
but, in those days, we produced all the film, for
the printers to make plates with.
Of course, we were sent
files, from anybody and everybody,
and so many of those files
never worked. So, yeah. So, we’d have to
FlightCheck those files. Yeah,
FlightChecking, for a few years.
Yeah. It was a huge thing, for us. Yeah. And, yeah,
FlightChecking. So, that's probably where …
Yeah. You probably sent me an email
and I must have read about it. Yeah, in fact, your
name rang a bell to me, when we had our
more recent, over the last year or two,
over PDF to InDesign.
I thought, “I know this name,
somehow.” But, in any event,
that's a common thing.
A lot of people, in the past, knew
FlightCheck, but didn't know what
Markzware was.
Yeah, I never put the two together. I’m sorry.
I didn't realize you were the
FlightCheck.
Yeah, no problem. It's our problem, actually.
Yeah, okay. Yeah, FlightChecking was a big,
big thing, for us,
because, oh, we’d have so many files that didn't work.
Yeah. We’d have font problems,
image problems, oh, terrible. Oh, yeah. Well, the advent of PDF has
helped. It hasn’t done away with
preflighting and
FlightCheck, but it has helped, yeah,
put the blame back on the creator,
more so than the outputter, which is
where it should be.
Yeah, I mean, the fact that, then, everything that
changed into PDFs did make life
so much easier, for us, because so often,
PDFs worked
pretty well, not always. No. Yeah, yeah,
and that's where we, yeah, great.
Thanks, Stephen. That’s where we come into
the next product
you've been using, which is Markzware's
PDF to InDesign converter. Yeah.
You started with the PDF2DTP.
I don't know. Do you know how long
you've had that, Stephen?
I’d have to look back, on the records, but it’s, could it be ten years?
I don’t know. Yeah.
Yeah. Brilliant, brilliant. And you don't pay me,
to say that. No.
It was a fabulous product!
I would rate it very highly. Wow! Excellent!
It got me out of a hole,
this morning, actually!
With that book. No, no, with a logo
I wanted for something.
Okay. I didn't have the logo, but I had a
PDF of the cover of this
magazine. So, I simply
opened it, with Markzware, got the bits
out of the creative and InDesign file,
got the bits out and
I used it. So, this morning, I’ve used
Markzware. Wow! Awesome! Yeah.
And we're not paying Stephen,
that's for sure.
Wow! Interesting. Yeah. And, well, great to hear!
I mean, are you getting a lot of
PDFs from customers that you need to
transition back into layout files, or what?
What's some of the main
common purposes you're using it for?
There can be all sorts of PDFs. Sometimes, I mean,
the book that I’ve just done was sent to me as a
Word file, and the Word file wasn't actually very good,
but I managed to make a PDF of the Word file
and, then, I used Markzware, to open it up.
And that was so much better
than the Word file, to work with. Wow! Yeah.
It opened all the pages, for me. I mean, the
pictures were a bit, well, it was a
customer that, originally,
had not scaled the pictures, properly.
Right. But he gave me a fantastic
file, to work with.
I had two files open. I had a converted file.
And, then, I copied the bits out of that
and I had started a new
InDesign file, and, then, I just simply had the two
InDesign windows open and I’m just simply
dragging and dropping.
Marvelous! So, we get all sorts of
files from people. Yeah.
Sometimes, it's an old file that they might have
done something with and they want to update it.
So, a new picture and new information.
Yeah, I use Markzware, all the time.
Wow! I just got a new customer,
this week. She's hiring out
hot tubs. Oh, yeah.
She’d got a designer, to do some mock-ups
and she’d actually done a mock-up of a gazebo
and put it in that PDF. She'd actually shown some
mock-ups of the PDF of the roof of the gazebo. Right.
And I ripped it open, with Markzware, to get the …
She'd done a lot of drawn circles, and I wanted those circles.
So, I use it for all sorts. I use it for all sorts.
I like that terminology, Stephen. You ripped it
apart, with Markzware.
That could be our new slogan, “PDF to InDesign.
Rip it apart, with Markzware!”
Yeah, that's a good one. Well, that's what it,
effectively, like you said, it does.
You can. I use it a lot, for that, too, for grabbing elements out that,
otherwise, I’d have to recreate.
Yeah. Picture, like this morning, I opened about a one-page
PDF of the cover of this magazine.
And I didn't actually have the logo of
this magazine. All I’ve got are all sorts of bits for
this organization, but funny if I didn't
have the name of the magazine. It’s called,
again, Journal, but ripped it apart and
got it fixed. Wow! Awesome, awesome! Okay, well, here.
Okay. So, if you could rate
PDF to InDesign from Markzware, from
1 to 10, 10 being the best,
1 being the worst, what would you give it?
Okay, well, to start with,
I’ll quantify this. I’ll give it a 10. Oh.
I will say, in probably 90% of cases,
perhaps 90, 95% of cases, Markzware does a fantastic job
of converting the file. Yes, there's a few little bits missing,
not missing, but near there. The other 5%, it does a reasonable job.
And the last 2 to 3%, forget it.
Yeah. Well, … Just, it’s all …
Yeah, yeah. Thank you. A 10. A 10, even for part, is amazing.
Yeah. And you're being realistic, because
PDFs are PDFs. They're, sometimes, yeah, created in such a way that it's amazing
that you can even get it back into a layout, in any way.
Oh, yeah, yeah. The whole point of a
PDF is you're not supposed to be able to
crack it open, are you really?
No. Yeah, yeah. It’s supposed to be a fixed file.
Yeah, that's actually, yeah, a file you're not supposed to
tweak, these. I mean, in the past, we've opened PDFs quite well,
with Illustrator, before we got Markzware. And Illustrator
can be quite good at opening up a
PDF, but I’ll give you credit.
Markzware, normally, is better.
There you go. Yeah and InDesign is a more
capable tool for many, many projects.
For just a logo, Illustrator could be fine, but for
books and stuff, you know. Yeah.
Sometimes, where it goes, where I’ve seen it go wrong is,
if you've got a graduated tint, but it’s so easy to fix …
Oh, yeah. … because, if you’ve got a tint from
ought to 100, Markzware sometimes could give you, like, a hundred
little bits of graphics. Yeah.
But that isn't really a problem, because you simply wipe it clean
and just draw your own new box. Yeah. And you’ve got that to fill.
So, that's certainly one area that, in the past,
I haven’t seen recently, but that’s where it used to fail, terribly.
Sometimes, perhaps, something where it's been
cut and pasted inside, I’ve struggled a little bit with, but,
on the whole, very, very, very good.
Excellent, excellent! Can’t live, without it.
Yeah, great to hear, great to hear!
And, on that note, we're coming out with a replacement for
PDF2DTP. You’d think crazy. I mean, we just got a 10 out of
10 rating from Stephen, for this product,
but PDF2DTP is a plug-in, and we're creating, now,
standalone technology. So, we don't need to be
dependent on an application.
And you can, then, still convert your PDFs into
InDesign, IDML, or other file formats. And we gave Stephen a
beta version of our PDFMarkz and, yeah,
how did you like it? Yes, what I really like is the
summary of the view of the files.
It told you … Like, I did it. I ran my 128-page book, through it.
So, it came up 128 pages. I already told you
I didn't like the pixels bit.
Yeah. I’d rather have it in millimeters.
Yeah, yeah. We're going to, yeah, yeah, we're going to fix that, yeah.
It told you how many fonts you'd used
and the images. Yeah, I liked it, for that. Yeah.
I think I’d rather have it as a plug-in, to run direct from
InDesign, itself, because it's just so easy to be in
InDesign and go from PDF. Right.
Well, good point. Yeah, good point. With all the functionality,
right there. That's what we're going to
also have added, in PDFMarkz. Actually, in the beta,
it should do it, too. You can install these
scripts, which will act as plug-ins, so you can actually call …
Yeah. … PDFMarkz, in InDesign, just like
PDF2DTP. Good. I like the sound of that.
So, yeah, yeah. Cool. Alright, good. So, I always ask this,
but I think it's quite clear. Would you recommend
Markzware's PDF to InDesign, for other
Definitely. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Definitely.
No shadow of a doubt.
Just come back to the fact that 90 to 95%,
brilliant; the last few, not so good.
Right. I think we've used it
so many times, I’ve lost count. Hundreds of jobs we’ve used it on.
Wow! Awesome! Great to hear, Stephen. Well, it's been a pleasure talking
with you. Yeah, good.
And people can get more information on your company at …
What's your web address? www.prestset.co.uk
Great. I'll put that in the text, here, and
I’ll show your webpage, in a little bit.
Nice, with a nice building you guys have.
Is that your building, down there, below?
That old brick building? Yeah, it's a nice old …
It's still some school hall, with a chapel, in the village.
That building’s 190 years old. Wow!
We, actually, we rent our offices,
in the building. We've got seven, seven or eight, seven different tenants.
And there’s, well, like an architect, and one of them does
knitting patterns. Oh, wow!
I’ve used Markzware on the knitting patterns, because
she hadn’t done a very good job,
to rip it apart. Excellent! Yeah, yeah.
Very good. Well, thank you, again, for the time and for
helping other customers understand what
PDF to InDesign from Markzware is.
And you have a great day! A great pleasure. And you, always.
Very good. Alright, thank you. Alright.
Take care. Yeah. Bye.
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