K4 Publishing System Version 5.6 Available Now

Hamburg (PRWEB) February 23, 2006 -- SoftCare, a leading developer of workflow solutions for the publishing industry, today announced that K4 Publishing System version 5.6 has been released. The popular editorial system for Adobe InDesign and Adobe InCopy has become even faster thanks to the integration of Adobe InDesign Server. The latest release also improves integration with other systems and provides a host of new features that help publishers boost productivity and lower production costs.

With InDesign Server, Adobe introduces a high-performance layout rendering engine. The layout engine significantly speeds up the check-in process for layouts and enables K4 to offer PDF previews, complementing the JPEG previews introduced in a prior release. SoftCare now ships every standard K4 Publishing System with a limited license of Adobe InDesign Server CS2, designed specifically to enable tasks like background generation of page proofs for viewing over the Web.

In addition, K4 can now be connected to almost any asset management system. Ready-made connections to FotoWare FotoStation, Visono MAM, and picturesafe myCONTENT are already available. Caption and credit information of images sent from connected systems will be stored and displayed in K4. Text frames for captions and credits can be logically linked to the image on the InDesign page, and are automatically adjusted when the image frame is moved or resized, making page design easier and reducing room for errors. After an issue is closed out, a list of placed images can be exported for use in a commercial system or for other statistical purposes.

K4 version 5.6 increases production security and speeds up correction cycles by allowing administrators to selectively disable text-editing features in InDesign and InCopy by type of user. For example, authors can be prevented from manually formatting text, or can be restricted to apply only pre-defined character and paragraph styles. Change-tracking has also been streamlined: A new optional plug-in offers a detailed view of an article’s change history and allows easy rollback of unwanted changes.

“We continually improve K4 to make editorial workflows faster, more efficient, and easier to implement and maintain,” says Andreas Schrader, Managing Director of SoftCare. “K4 version 5.6 marks another important milestone in this process and allows our users to reduce administrative overhead even more, freeing up time for their real work.”

K4 Publishing System version 5.6 will be presented in March and April at an international K4 roadshow that will include cities in the Netherlands, Russia, Germany, Switzerland, Austria and other countries. In addition, K4 will be showcased at trade shows such as the DAM Symposium, NEXPO, America East, and IPEX.

K4 Publishing System version 5.6 is available from K4 System Integrators worldwide. Customers using K4 version 5.0 or higher with valid maintenance agreements are eligible for a free upgrade. K4 supports Mac OS X and Windows clients in mixed-platform environments. The server software is available for Mac OS X Server, Windows, Sun Solaris and Linux.