Automatic Folds & Crops
Gluon’s Cropster 6 ($99) is an XTension for QuarkXPress 4, 5 or 6, and a plug-in for Adobe InDesign, that automatically sets up complex, one- or two-sided folding and trimming mechanicals, with crop marks and guides for bleed, trim, safety, folds and gutters.
It even creates dimension arrows around the perimeter so that proofreaders can easily see if specifications were followed. You type in the measurements you need, and Cropster creates the document. Later, you can change the measurements, and Cropster rearranges the marks and arrows. You can also save frequently-used measurements as presets, and control the appearance and spacing of all marks.
It can also crop an entire multi-page layout to a new size.
Jay Nelson is the editorial director of PlanetQuark.com, and the editor and publisher of Design Tools Monthly. He’s also the author of the QuarkXPress 8 and QuarkXPress 7 training titles at Lynda.com, as well as the training videos Quark includes in the box with QuarkXPress 7 . In addition, Jay writes regularly for Macworld and Photoshop User magazines and speaks at industry events.