What s New in Version Cue CS2

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Version Cue CS2 is a feature of Adobe Creative Suite 2

What’s New in Version Cue CS2

Version Cue ^® ^CS2

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Mac OS X, version 10.3/Microsoft Windows 2000/Windows XP

Overview

Creative professionals spend at least 10% to 20% of their time managing fi les—fi nding, opening, moving, and renaming the many fi le versions generated in typical creative projects. That’s a lot of lost hours that could otherwise be spent being creative, promoting their businesses, billing out their work—a variety of activities that businesses must engage in to be more profi table. But designers can get this time back using Version Cue CS2, the innovative fi le-version manager that has been enhanced and improved in Adobe Creative Suite 2 to be more intuitive, visual, and robust. Creative professionals can now manage and share Adobe and non-Adobe project fi les, create and access historical fi le versions as well as version “alternates,”

access Version Cue through Adobe Bridge, and use Version Cue to initiate Adobe PDF reviews.

Version Cue and enhanced productivity

Version Cue offers beneﬁ ts to individual designers as well as groups working in a collaborative environment.

Powerful ﬁ le management for individual users

• Integration with Adobe Bridge—visualize and manage workﬂ ow across the entire Adobe Creative Suite.

• Effi cient fi le management—create historical versions of both Adobe and non-Adobe fi les and track the changes made throughout the project.

• Alternates—create variations of a design based on prior versions; or manage alternative content required for different usages of a publication.

• Review by external parties—easily setup and manage a web-based review of PDF ﬁ les.

• Powerful search capabilities—fi nd fi les quickly based on fi le metadata and version comments.

• Archiving—manage and schedule recurring backups of Version Cue projects.

• Simpliﬁ ed administration—create and conﬁ gure projects without being an IT professional.

• Simplifi ed sharing—easily share fi les with or without a server; protect fi les from unintended edit confl icts.

Workﬂ ow enhancements for collaborative users

• Managed PDF-based reviews—web-based tracking of comments from multiple reviewers.

• Simplifi ed fi le organization and group access—projects-centered Workspace where fi le-naming conventions no longer are required.

• Secure and reliable collaboration — multiple users have conﬁ dence they are using the correct ﬁ le version;

guidance alerts prevent ﬁ les from accidental overwriting.

Today’s design applications have a broad range of valuable creative features (such as fi lters, effects, type choices and controls). Version Cue enhances these features by giving creative professionals better control over their workfl ow: it enables professionals to fi nd fi les more quickly, make fewer errors, and use fi les more effi - ciently. As a result of better processes, creative professionals can have more successful businesses.

Thumbnail previews let designers fi nd the right fi le at a glance, or designers can search for fi les by such spe- cifi cs as author and keyword. A team of designers can see which fi les co-workers have open and see when fi les are completed without leaving their design tools. Version Cue even lets designers search the text of version comments to help them fi nd their fi les. Additionally, Adobe PDF-based reviews can be managed and tracked easily.

With Version Cue integrated within Adobe Creative Suite, users can experience the advantages of an improved workﬂ ow without switching context or leaving their familiar Adobe design environment.

Table of Contents

Overview ... p. 1 Integration with

Adobe Bridge ... p. 2 Metadata ... p. 2 Powerful ﬁ le management for individual users ... p. 2 PDF-based reviews ... p. 4 Workﬂ ow enhancements for collaborative users ... p. 5 A typical Version Cue

environment ... p. 7

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Version Cue and enhanced productivity

Integration with Adobe Bridge

Adobe has redefi ned integration with Adobe Bridge, which serves as a connection to each of the compo- nents within Adobe Creative Suite 2. Designers can browse through and preview any kind of fi le (even mul- tiple-page PDF fi les), can run automation scripts and powerful searches, and can synchronize settings across all of the Adobe Creative Suite components at once—all within the familiar Adobe environment. Addition- ally, Bridge serves as a dashboard to important information on fi les, tips and tricks, and news feeds.

Bridge exposes the power of Version Cue by enabling users to manage their projects easily and experience the advantages of a managed workfl ow. Using Version Cue and Bridge, users have access to vital workfl ow information, including the current status of a fi le (such as who is currently editing the fi le, or whether a fi le is the latest version), thumbnails and previews of the different historical versions and alternates for a fi le, and information about the content of the fi le.

Metadata

With today’s hard drives becoming larger and fi lled with more and more digital fi les, it is harder to locate fi les. Designers waste valuable time as they copy large fi les from servers, only to open them and realize that they copied the wrong ones. Version Cue, in combination with Bridge, gives users access to metadata—extra text-based information—for each of their fi les. Some examples of metadata are the author of the fi le, cre- ation or modifi cation dates and times, version comments, keywords, and image colorspace and resolution settings. All of the component applications of Adobe Creative Suite 2 give users the ability to manually add metadata to a fi le through a File Info dialog box. Certain kinds of metadata are also automatically added to fi les as they are saved, such as a list of fonts or colors used in an Adobe InDesign® CS2 fi le. Bridge also allows users to add and edit fi le metadata without having to open the fi le. Additionally, Bridge enables users to automate the appending of metadata to multiple fi les by using scripts.

Powerful ﬁ le management for individual users

Version Cue offers individual designers a powerful way to manage the fi les they work on every day. Version Cue streamlines the process of creating both historical versions and alternates for fi les, maintaining a fi le history, locating and managing fi les, and backing up or restoring entire projects.

Designers can browse thumbnail previews of project ﬁ les in the Version Cue Workspace and view

information about the contents of each ﬁ le.

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Beneﬁ ts to individual users are:

Effi cient fi le management As clients request changes to fi les, designers can create historical versions of both Adobe and non-Adobe fi les and track the changes made throughout the project. At any time, designers can view these versions and even promote older versions of fi les to become the current version.

Version Cue displays the status of a ﬁ le either in Bridge or directly from within any of the Adobe Creative Suite applications. Version Cue also prevents designers from accidentally overwriting past versions while they work.

Writer: Write story to ﬁ t in InCopy.

Designers can easily manage alternative designs directly within Illustrator and Photoshop layouts, as well as see a listing of alternates in Bridge.

Historical versions and alternates

Throughout a design project, fi les go through many iterations or version changes. Historical versions of fi les are edits or changes that have been made over time. Versions are also important when a designer creates several different design ideas during exploratory design phases. Clients may also ask to see a particular design in a few different ways. Version Cue refers to these kinds of fi les as alternates, and a designer can easily specify fi les as being alternates of other fi les. Through Bridge or from within Illustrator or InDe- sign layouts, designers can easily replace or swap out alternate versions of their design fi les.

Alternates can be helpful in a review process as well, offer- ing design choices. Files with completely different content can also be designated as alternates.

This may be of use in publica- tions with different editions, or different languages. Alternates can also be used for lo-res/hi-res images when working with web and print usages of a document.

To contrast the two concepts, a historical version can be thought of as a snapshot in time and an alternate a parallel path in the design process.

File versions are accessible without having to hunt through the ﬁ le system for every iteration.

Alternates Designers can create alternates of their design ﬁ les, which might be variations of a design

based on prior versions; or could be designated from completely different photos for different editions of a

publication, for example. Version Cue makes it easy to manage variations of a design. Designers can access

alternates from Bridge or even swap between them directly from the Links palette within either InDesign

or Adobe Illustrator®, making it simple to present a variety of design ideas to clients and creative directors.

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PDF-based reviews

More and more designers are seeing the benefi t of an all-digital workfl ow. Adobe PDF fi les of designs and layouts can be instantly generated and distributed via e-mail for review. However, managing such a review process—coordinating it, communicating its presence, aggregating the comments from multiple reviewers, and integrating it within the design workfl ow—is a complex task. Version Cue offers a fully integrated PDF- based review process that enables users to distribute PDF fi les, track comments and manage review cycles.

Users begin by creating a PDF ﬁ le from within any Adobe Creative Suite component, and then launch the Version Cue CS2 Review feature from the Version Cue Administration utility. There, users can easily manage PDF-based reviews by creating new review cycles, participating in reviews that they’ve been invited to, and perform other review-related tasks. As reviewers make comments by using the review features in Adobe Acrobat _® , the designer can track and respond to those comments.

Adobe Acrobat 7.0 Professional gives users the ability to activate functionality in a PDF ﬁ le that will allow others with Adobe Reader 7 to participate in a review. Once a PDF ﬁ le is created and opened in Acrobat Professional, the designer can choose Enable for Commenting in Adobe Reader from the Comments menu.

The designer can then use the PDF-based review functionality mentioned above to include those using the free Adobe Reader.

Designers can update Illustrator and Photoshop layouts with the alternates to a placed photo or graphic.

With the Version Cue CS2 Review feature, users can easily manage the PDF review process.

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Search capabilities Designers can fi nd fi les quickly by searches based on fi le metadata, which designers can add to fi les as they save versions and alternates.

Archiving Designers can easily manage the backup and archiving of design projects. Designers can also retrieve projects that have already been archived. Additionally, the entire Version Cue Workspace can be backed up on a regular schedule using the Version Cue Administration utility.

Workﬂ ow enhancements for collaborative users

In addition to all of the benefi ts that individual users enjoy, Version Cue lets workgroups easily share proj- ects and safely collaborate on fi les by providing information about shared state, usage and edit confl icts, and resolution of these confl icts. Additionally, Version Cue can be set up to perform in either a user-based or a server-based confi guration.

Understanding Version Cue terminology

Workspaces When using Ver- sion Cue to manage, organize, and share fi les and fi le information, designers or workgroups must access a Workspace. This Workspace, whose location is defi ned during the installation process, stores all fi le versions and the XMP metadata for all fi les. The Workspace also pre- serves and updates the relation- ships (links) between fi les.

Designers access the Workspace directly in Bridge, where they can create and connect to their own and others’ Workspaces and projects, view project fi les, and access workgroup commands. In this way, access to project fi les is integrated into the workfl ow directly in a common, familiar user interface.

Alternatively, users can access Workspaces directly from Open, Save, Save As, and Place dialog boxes in the CS2 versions of Pho- toshop, Illustrator, InDesign and Acrobat 7. GoLive CS2, mean- while, gives designers access to the Workspace through its Site Manager. By working through the Site Manager, Version Cue enhances GoLive workﬂ ows.

Projects A project is a folder

in the Version Cue Workspace that contains related fi les grouped as desired within other folders. Projects can con- tain any fi le. Some non-Adobe fi le types can also be managed and versioned by Version Cue.

However, ﬁ le management and version management in Version Cue will be most robust with the ﬁ les created by the CS versions of Photo- shop, Illustrator, InDesign, and GoLive. Projects can be kept private, even on shared Work- spaces, or shared as desired with or without assigning user access privileges.

Powerful search capabilities help designers locate the correct ﬁ les to work on.

Project backups can now be scheduled on a periodic basis.

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Beneﬁ ts to collaborative users are:

Managed PDF-based reviews Version Cue manages the complex content-approval process by allowing users to initiate and participate in PDF-based review cycles. By tracking comments from multiple reviewers in a central location, users can respond to the comments of other viewers in a truly collaborative fashion.

Simplifi ed fi le organization and access Version Cue provides a projects-centered Workspace where designers can organize related fi les and separate private and collaborative projects. Individuals can install their Workspaces on their own computers; designers working on teams can allow colleagues to access their Workspaces as desired, avoiding the need to purchase, install, and confi gure additional hardware and software. Thumbnail previews provide visual cues to fi le content. Files can also be searched on such fi le information as author, keyword, and date.

Secure and reliable collaboration Designers can collaborate transparently on projects. They can be confi dent that everyone is using the correct fi le version without slowing down other team members. Multi- user access makes fi les available to designers, compositors, and managers, while guidance messages and alerts prevent fi les from being accidentally overwritten.

Administration Version Cue is conﬁ gured to work efﬁ ciently using the default settings. More advanced users can customize settings to meet their needs through the included advanced settings administration utility.

Use of standards

Version Cue is built on several open industry standards that enhance its core functionality.

Among these standards are XMP and WebDAV — what do they mean?

• XMP: XMP, which stands for Extensible Metadata Platform, is based on World Wide Web Consor tium (W3C) standards and is available via open source license. It is an enabling technology that adds intelligence to ﬁ les so that they’re easier to ﬁ nd, reuse, archive, and exchange.

Supported by all Adobe native fi le formats, including Adobe PDF, XMP lets designers capture, preserve, and share meaningful Extensible Markup Language (XML)-based metadata across fi les and work fl ows, opening the door for more effi cient job pro- cessing, workfl ow automation, and effi cient rights management, among other possibilities.

Version Cue automatically embeds XMP meta data, such as author, date, title, description, and keywords, when designers save versions of fi les. Designers can also add XMP fi le information in the File Info dialog boxes of Adobe CS applications. Com- ments that are added manually by designers when they save versions are also managed by Version Cue as metadata. Thus, designers can quickly locate a fi le in a Version Cue project by searching XMP-based version comments, key words, copyright information, authors, and titles.

• WebDAV: Another standard that Version Cue uses is WebDAV, or Web Distributed Authoring and Versioning. WebDAV, which is administered by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), is a protocol that facilitates collaborative content creation in a platform- and technology- indepen dent environment, and makes it easier to reuse content and share knowledge collab- oratively over the web. Within Adobe Creative Suite, Version Cue uses a richer protocol, but Version Cue uses WebDAV to enable applications other than the CS and CS2 versions of Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign to communicate with the Version Cue Workspace. Ver- sion Cue also acts as a WebDAV client to enable the importing and exporting of content to and from a WebDAV server.

Alerts and guidance. If someone in the workgroup opens a ﬁ le that’s already in use, Version Cue displays guides to minimize editing conﬂ ict (left) and displays an “in use” message in the status area (above).

Version Cue Workspace Administration.

Designers and system administrators can manage ID’s and privileges, and perform such maintenance as project backups and exports.

Multiple reviewers can be invited to participate in a Web-hosted, PDF-based review.

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A typical Version Cue environment

As mentioned earlier, Version Cue uses a project Workspace to store fi le versions as well as information about fi les. When a designer installs Adobe Creative Suite, a Version Cue Workspace is automatically and by default placed on that individual’s computer. The designer who works independently and doesn’t need to share fi les is already set up, and the designer who is part of a workgroup is ready to use Version Cue in a user-based implementation.

In a user-based implementation, Version Cue projects and fi les are shared directly from a designer’s local hard drive; a standalone server is not required. The individual who sets up a project essentially serves it to team members. Anyone who is networked to that individual’s computer and has Adobe Creative Suite; the CS2 versions of Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, or GoLive or Acrobat 7.0 Professional; or any application that supports the standard Web Distributed Authoring and Versioning (WebDAV) protocol can access the fi les. (For more on WebDAV, see “Use of standards” sidebar.) User-based implementation is the easiest and most affordable way to set up Version Cue, saving workgroups from buying and confi guring a dedicated server.

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A server-based implementation may provide benefi ts for more structured workgroups. In a user-based implementation, fi les are accessible to teams only as long as the computer where the project resides is turned on and networked to the group. In some situations—for example, when a designer works remotely and is only sporadically connected to the network—a user-based implementation isn’t expedient. For work- groups that need 24/7 availability and perhaps greater storage capacity and network bandwidth, Version Cue can be confi gured to run from a dedicated server or even a central computer being used as a server (no special server operating system is required). One Version Cue Workspace may be installed for each licensed instance of Adobe Creative Suite. The Workspace may be installed on an individual designer’s computer or on a central server as desired, depending on the needs of the studio or production environment.

Local or server-based ﬁ le sharing. Version Cue can be set up to operate in a user- or server-based networked environment. In a user-based implementation, ﬁ les and projects are shared from an individual’s own hard drive. In a server-based environment, the Version Cue Workspace resides on a separate computer.

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For more information

A wealth of information is available to designers, production professionals, and system administrators who want to know more about the features and capabilities of Version Cue and the technologies it uses:

• Th e Adobe Version Cue product page at www.versioncue.com oﬀ ers animated demos and other information about Version Cue.

• Th e Adobe Creative Suite product page at www.adobe.com/products/creativesuite/ www.adobe.com/products/creativesuite/ www.adobe.com/products/creativesuite/ shares information about all of shares information about all of the components of the suite and how Version Cue can be used with them.

• Th e Adobe Customer Support page at www.adobe.com/support/ www.adobe.com/support/ www.adobe.com/support/ oﬀ ers searchable knowledgebase articles, user oﬀ ers searchable knowledgebase articles, user forums, training resources, and more.

• Adobe Studio®, studio.adobe.com , contains articles, case studies, tutorials, and other expert resources that help creative professionals manage the design process eﬃ ciently and maximize the value of their Adobe soft ware.

For more information on XMP technology, go to:

• www.adobe.com/products/xmp/ www.adobe.com/products/xmp/ www.adobe.com/products/xmp/ is the Adobe home page for XMP information. is the Adobe home page for XMP information.

• xml.coverpages.org/xmp.html xml.coverpages.org/xmp.html xml.coverpages.org/xmp.html is a reference collection of information about XMP. is a reference collection of information about XMP.

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Acrobat, Adobe, Adobe Studio, Creative Suite, GoLive, InCopy, InDesign, Illustrator, PDF, Photoshop, PostScript, PostScript 3, Version Cue, and XMP are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Adobe Systems Incorporated in the United States and/or other countries. Mac, Mac OS, and Macintosh are trademarks of Apple Computer, Inc., registered in the United States and other countries. Windows is either a registered trademark or trademark of Microsoft Corporation in the United States and/or other countries. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

What s New in Version Cue CS2

Version Cue CS2 is a feature of Adobe Creative Suite 2