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Crossmedia Workflows
1. Techniques for Building
Flexible Cross-Media
Workflows
Dwight Kelly – Apago
Tom Petrillo – Adobe Systems
2. About Apago
• Software development and consulting firm
• Founded in 1991
• Customers include major graphic arts
OEMs, publishers, printers, corporations,
government and consumers
• Implemented numerous cross-media
workflows for customers
3. What is cross-media
publishing?
The term “cross-media publishing” has traditionally
been used to describe “repurposing” content for both
print and web.
A simple example is Microsoft Word’s HTML filter that
creates HTML from Word documents.
Another is exporting a “low-res” PDF.
4. What is cross-media
publishing?
But now cross-media publishing has taken on a greater
importance. Content brands need to be visible in as
many venues as possible for their target markets.
Every day more devices and services are released that
can attract the desired demographic.
6. Other demands for
cross-media publishing
Repurposing content isn’t the only example of cross-
media publishing today.
7. Other demands for
cross-media publishing
Repurposing content isn’t the only example of cross-
media publishing today.
Other examples are:
• Extracting images and text for insertion into a Digital
asset management system (DAM)
• Building a search archive
• Reformatting for use in 1:1 marketing campaign
• On-demand books
8. Each of these derivative products have their own
requirements for color, image quality, fonts,
graphics, etc.
Generating all of the variations can be problematic
and time consuming.
9. Key question
Maintain layout (e-magazine)
or
Reuse content (article text & images on website)
10. The dream
“Create Once, Publish Many” – a magical button that
publishers push to have content “auto-magically”
come out in all of the right variations in the right
formats.
11. The dream
“Create Once, Publish Many” – a magical button that
publishers push to have content “auto-magically”
come out in all of the right variations in the right
formats.
Doesn’t exist and besides doesn’t take advantage of
unique capabilities of individual devices and
services.
12. The reality
“Create Once, Produce Many” – a single content
master is used to create each variation.
Methods:
• Optimized PDF
• Convert to Flash or other rich media
• Export assets using XML or other format
13. Optimized PDF
• Benefits
– most publications are already available as PDF
– rich graphics model (color, image, vector, fonts,
transparency, etc.)
– free viewer (Acrobat Reader)
– easy to create with Indesign “Export PDF”, Acrobat "PDF
Optimizer", Apago PDF Enhancer, etc.
– text is searchable (but not indexed)
14. Optimized PDF
• Problems
– no control over viewer experience (branding, controls, etc)
– difficult to reflow text for easy reading on small screens
– many web users dislike PDF and Reader because it takes
over page layout and interaction
– complex pages can take a lot of storage
– no inexpensive centralized rights management
– no viewer tracking or ad revenue opportunities
– limited rich media capabilities
15. Convert to rich media
(Flash/Silverlight/SVG/HTML)
• Benefits
– complete control over viewer experience (design,
interaction, website integration)
– viewer can be integrated into web pages, desktop, etc.
– flash is already installed on 99% of computers
– rich media elements (video, music, animation)
– “the page flip”
– some companies provide viewer tracking metrics,
subscriber services, conversion and hosting services while
others are self-service
16. Convert to rich media
(Flash/Silverlight/SVG/HTML)
• Problems
– PDF and Flash graphic modes differ
• Transparency & overprinting
• Font & image formats
• Dash lines
• Smooth shadings
– supports unmanaged RGB only (no CMYK, ICC profiles or spot
colors)
– Complex pages can display slowly
– only 65K elements per movie
– limited support for text searching
20. Exporting assets
• Indesign export to XML and the new IDML
– limited tools available for working with IDML however it is
“standard” XML
• PCI Scriba integrates with K4 and Quark to
implement automated workflows for exporting tagged
and untagged content from page layouts to DAM,
web sites, etc.
• Good translation requires knowledge of page layout
(geometry or tagging)
22. Designing for cross-media
“Create Once, Produce Many”
• Separate content creation from layout and
publishing
• Articles written for web tend to be longer than
printed articles because of space limitations
• Leverage metadata (XMP, PRISM)
• Use templates for publishing
23. What about existing
printed content?
• Probably not digital or in format that can be easily repurposed
• Possibility of 100s of 1000s of pages to be processed
• Old physical copies need to be scanned, cleaned up and
optimized
• Text readability issues
• Can you find all of the back issues? It’s surprising that many
magazines have incomplete/damaged archives
• OCR vs. re-keying, index text content (create taxonomy)
• Services bureaus are available to do the hard labor
25. IPA Initiatives
• Active cross-media working group
• Currently working on updating ISO 12647 –
“Process control for the production of half-
tone colour separations, proof and production
prints”
• Determining recommended workflows, file
formats, etc
26. Conclusions
The design of your cross-media workflow
depends highly on where your content
originates (old vs. new), at what point you
want to extract or repurpose the
content/layout, and how the user will
interact with the new products
27. Tom Petrillo
Sr. Solutions Engineer
Media and Entertainment
Adobe Systems Incorporated
