Callas releases pdfToolbox 4.3

Callas Software just updated pdfToolbox 4.3 today. I was fortunate enough to see the live demo in Brussels last week and I have to say I was impressed. What is pdfToolbox and what can you do with it? pdfToolbox is available as a plugin for Adobe Acrobat or as a standalone version (new) and it let’s you handle, modify, prepare and arrange PDF files. The desktop version was optimized for use as a plug-in for Adobe Acrobat, but now you can also choose to run pdfToolbox 4 as an independent application.

Just about everybody sends out PDF-files these days but not everybody knows how to create a good PDF. “So what” you might think? Well… if a job gets printed containing errors, your client is going to look for someone to blame. Using pdfToolbox you can rest assure you’ve filtered out the most common mistakes (using the Pre-flight Tools) and did the best optimizing possible (using all the other Power Tools).

Apart from that it’s actually like a great big PDF toolbox containing InPosition tools, PDF/X settings, Ghent work Group presets, ISO color profiles, optimizing for newspaper or magazine, and much, much more. And now they’ve even added a iPhone-like interface called ‘the Switchboard’. The default setting uses iPhone like icons and the interface guides and helps the novice user optimize the PDF or change the characteristics of the PDF. This makes it very easy to get the job done right. Experienced users can select the more complex interface and just go straight for the ‘Power-Tools’.

This is the standard Switchboard. Pressing the looking glass activates the interface for experienced users.

After selecting ‘Standards’ this is step 2. All that is required is for you to select the correct standard (like say ‘Newspaper Ad’) and press ‘Execute’. pdfToolbox will optimize and check your PDF. Should it fail to poduce a good PDF, it will tell you why.

This startup screen is a very good way to inform users about all the possibilities pdfToolbox has to offer.

Other improvements include:
• A new ‘imposition engine’ that will permit you to place dynamic text on imposed pages, making it possible to create slug lines with job information on the imposed sheet.
• Swiss PDFX- ready profiles (based on GWG version 4 specs) were included and localized for all supported languages.
• Extended overprint and knockout fixup for complete control of the overprinting behaviour.
• Support of the latest ICC profiles recently released by ECI

You can download a fully functional trial of pdfToolbox or read up on more details right here.