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SmartStream Designer

On HP's drupa stand you'll find SmartStream Designer v2.5. While this product may be unfamilar to many, it was actually one of the first VDP desktop tools on the market. Previously named Yours Truly Designer, the product has been renamed to SmartStream Designer to align it with the HP SmartStream family of workflow solutions. It used to be included as part of QuarkXPress (v6.2 onwards), but Quark stopped bundling this a while ago due to IP-related issues. SmartStream Designer is a VDP plug-in for both QuarkXPress and InDesign, on Mac and Windows.

While SmartStream Designer v.2.5 is still pre-release software, they're distributing free trial versions on the HP stand. This new version offers some interesting new features along with a server edition, adding value to this already mature product. Details of the new product features are discussed below.

1. Imposition enhancements
Imposition is a key strength for SmartStream Designer. Actually, I'd consider buying the product just for it's imposition features alone. New imposition enhancements include the ability to save 'multiple layout impositions' (impositions with more than one layout) as templates. The 'numbering options' have also been improved—this feature doesn't refer to printing numbers on impositions, but instead the page number across the imposition and the ability to replace selected pages with other pages or empty pages.

2. PDF Import
SmartStream Designer lets you create a new document from a PDF. You simply select 'New > Document from PDF' from the InDesign file menu and a document is created with the PDF on respective pages. While this is handy for using VDP jobs where you will be overlaying text on background artwork (similar to PrintShop Mail), it's also a really useful feature when using InDesign generally.

3. Dynamic Personalisation
This is probably one of the most significant new features. SmartStream Designer offers an SDK for third-party developers to hook in to their dynamic personalisation feature. This feature calls external applications (if installed on the same computer) to create variable images and are driven by the SmartStream Designer database. Third-party softwar that are already integrated include DirectSmile, BlitzTools Barcode (for barcode generation) and Utility Warrior Chart Creator (for dynamic chart creation). SmartStream Designer also offers native support for Photoshop. This feature uses the Variables feature in Photoshop to pass variable fields to Photoshop for generation of personalised images. However, the Photoshop integration doesn't offer the ability to define Photoshop Actions to apply filters and effects, unlike XMPie uImage and Darwin's Photoshop integration.

4. Layer Rules
This feature enables you to switch on and off InDesign layers for each record. I know, this has been around for quite a while in XMPie and Darwin, but it's good to see that HP finally support it.

5. Hot Folder Automation
This feature will only work on Windows XP, so sorry Vista and Mac users! It enables users to automatically generate a print-ready file from dropping a database file into a hot folder. The database file name just needs to match the InDesign document name of the template to be used. Hot folders can also be used to automate imposition of PDF documents using defined imposition settings; you just drop the PDF (static or personalised) into the hot folder, and SmartStream Designer spits out an imposed PDF. This hot folder support is a really useful. Darwin Pro has offered it for quite some time and I'm surprised that similar solutions, like XMPie uDirect, have chosen not to offer similar support this to-date.

6. SDK
SmartStream Designer offers a JavaScript-based SDK. Essentially, HP has added a scripting dictionary to the software, so anyone can integrate other products and applications with SmartStream Designer. As the SDK is built on JavaScript, it makes the software very accessible to anyone with JavaScript knowledge.

While it's good to see several value-add new features in this product, I'm a bit disappointed that they haven't addressed some legacy usablity issues that have plagued the product for years. I admit, usability is perceptual, but my biggest issues are the product feature descriptions and the rule editor. It's obvious that SmartStream Designer's UI names were created by a developer, as they use quirky terms such as "Purge" and "With Fix Text" to refer to suppressing spaces on empty content, and "Overflow Cut" for copyfitting. Also the rule editor is still very programmer centric, where you actually hand-code business rules using defined functions, similar to PrintShop Mail. However, one nice addition in the rule editor is a help or "description" panel which explains the required format of each function.

Despite its legacy quirks, SmartStream Designer is quite functional to use. I put it through it's paces and tried to find out if there are InDesign features that it can't handle, such as transparency or text-on-a-path for variable objects, but it appears to support both these features without any problems.

As mentioned earlier, SmartStream Designer will also be available as a server configuration, using Adobe InDesign Server. There are three different configurations for this server edition. The first is integration into SmartStream Director (a branded version of Press-sense iWay web-to-print product). The second will be as a SDK-based solution, where developers can create their own VDP applications, for example a browser-based application for ordering customised collateral. The third configuration will be as a hot folder workflow, which essentially runs as a 'headless' SmartStream Designer. As the InDesign product EULA does not permit the desktop version to be used for generating documents for multiple users (e.g. submitted through hot folders across a local network), InDesign Server will permit this workflow. It is unclear at this stage whether HP plan to support both InDesign Server Single Instance and Multi-Instance licences.

The most surprising part of SmartStream Designer is it's pricing model. The list price is US$500 for the desktop version and US$7,500 for the server version (which includes an InDesign Server Single Instance licence). What's even more surprising is that the desktop licence is for an unlimited number of users on a single physical site. However, this is platform and software dependent. So, for example you can only have unlimited Mac InDesign seats on one site. If you want a Windows or QuarkXPress licence, you have to pay an additional US$500. Despite this caveat, it's still very good value. HP are obviously in the business of driving volume on their printers, rather than on making revenue from this software.

SmartStream Designer v2.5 and SmartStream Designer Server will be available in September through HP channels, although the software just not restricted to HP Indigo owners and supports both PPML and PDF, in addition to HP's proprietary JLYT format.

Posted on Sunday, 1 June 2008 at 4:48 PM | TrackBack: http://www.veedeepee.com/cgi-bin/mt-tb.cgi/143