Best Buy

  • Price: 195 . 695

  • Company: Stonecube

  • Pros: At £195, version 2 should fall within the budget of all but the most frugal design departments.

  • Cons: Lacks contextual menus and a newsstand viewing environment.

  • Our Rating: We rate this 9 out of 10 We rate this 9 out of 10

Using special inks and effects can be risky if all eventualities are not explored. If your metallic finish or costly foil substrate results in text that can be read only in favourable lighting conditions then your time, effort and – most importantly – money will have been wasted.

One answer is hand-made mock-ups, but these can be expensive, time-consuming and often inaccurate. Hard proofing is another approach, but this takes a lot of time and money too.

Stonecube spotted this gap in the market, and PrintDevizor 2 continues to be the only print-finish visualizer on the market. It lets you view on-screen standard print, special inks, and decorative finishes in a photo-realistic 3D environment. The program simulates true lighting conditions so you can see how your finishes will look in various situations.

Users create print models by choosing a substrate and then applying multiple print effects and finishes, using images from standard creative software as masks. Jobs can be rotated through 360 degrees in any direction into light and shade. The reflections that appear demonstrate how the finish will behave when printed.

border=0 />Results can be shared with clients and colleagues via emailable images, animations, and interactive QuickTime VR, so the finished product can be signed off quickly. </p> <p> The big news with PrintDevizor 2 is that it is accompanied by the release of a Pro version. This is a smart move on the part of Stonecube. On its release last May, PrintDevizor weighed in at a prohibitive £1,169, but when version 1.2 shipped later that summer this was slashed to £495. </p> <p> However, many of its users were still paying for higher-end packaging features they’d never use. Now, these specialist features – and much more – are contained in the Pro version, meaning PrintDevizor 2 is irresistibly priced, given its usefulness. </p> <p> New features in both the Standard and Pro Editions include a series of proprietorial plug-ins that add support for including metallic process inks from Eckart and MetalFX, as well as plug-ins for specialist inks and finishes from Celloglas, such as laminates and foils. There is full support for the Pantone Matching System, including solid, metallic, and high-intensity spot colours. </p> <p> <div class=floatedimage><img src= Print

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