By Cyndie Shaffstall

When your fingers and brain cells are collaborating on your latest award-winning design, and the ideas are coming fast and furious, the last thing you want to do is actually stop and think about what you're doing. Editing graphics while you're deeply entrenched in your page-design application is always a pain, especially the part about choosing the best application for the job. OpenNow Pro for QuarkXPress 8 intervenes on your behalf.

Editor's Note: With the recent release of OpenNow Pro for QuarkXPress 8, we've resurrected parts of this story from the One-trick Ponies article and updated the links so that you can try the new versions.

OpenNow Pro for QuarkXPress 6, 7, or 8, $49, Mac only

I think it's probably quite rare that a desktop publisher, designer, or production person works in a single application these days. We are expected to be the master of our domain — and our competitor's domain. That means we create a brochure, color correct the images, and illustrate the logos. We're probably also making the web page and throwing together Flash® ads for good measure. OpenNow Pro makes these tasks easier. Just click, click.

Select any image and click, click. In the resulting dialogue box you now have more information about that image than you dreamed you'd need. Click the open with drop-down menu and you will practically fly to the application of your choice for a quick editing session. No longer are you limited to editing the image with the OS-assigned default.

Click the image for a more detailed description and interactive view.

Figure 1 All of the OpenNow Pro options are found in this one dialogue box, but you can get here in one of three ways: select a picture in the document and do one of the following: double-click on it with the picture content tool selected, or right-click with your mouse and select Badia OpenNow Pro, or select Badia OpenNow Pro from the style menu.

If you're not happy with just one choice (who is?), simply queue up your favorite applications (up to 30), and choose any one. Better yet, define a default application for a particular file format and off you go.

The dialogue box, in an easy-to-read format, shows detailed picture attributes: name and file icon, full path, file size, dimensions, scaling, format (e.g., EPS, TIFF), color model (e.g., RGB, CMYK.), absolute and effective resolutions, date modified, status (e.g., OK, Missing), color profile, preview resolution, and the default editing application.

Other tools for managing pictures include: reveal the picture or any of its enclosing folders in the finder, bring the picture up to date after it has been modified, change the preview resolution from high to low or vice versa, and open the picture usage dialog to search for missing pictures.

If you're also using Badia's BigPicture product, when you click OpenNow, you will actually launch the dialogue box for that product. We've printed a story here in X-Ray Magazine on that product as well, and invite you to check it out (BigPicture for QuarkXPress 7). While it's available only for QuarkXPress 7 at this point, the manufacturer has announced his intent to rev the product for v8.

All of Badia's products are shortcut minded. Each is built to keep you from manual tasks that delay your design work. OpenNow Pro, although contained in a single dialogue box should not be dismissed easily. When you have a document with hundreds or even thousands of images, with potential resizing, rotation, or color correction tasks at hand, being able to assign images to open in specific applications is a real benefit — even if you only use the open with pop-up menu to limit yourself to one application for all image types and override the default.