In last month’s issue of Graphic Arts Magazine, we looked at a number of apps perfect for professionals in the printing industry. This month, we’re continuing the search, focusing on apps for estimators, printing educators, printing historians, prepress operators and busy CEOs on the go. Come on, get ‘appy!
For Estimators
Book Thickness Calculator
This app is perfect for estimators and customer service representatives to quickly find the thickness of a book and relay that information to their publishing clients in order to finalize book cover designs.
Price: $0.99 | Available for: iOS
For Printing Educators
This interactive app is perfect for teaching students about colour theory and colour phenomena, including colour models and colour memory. The app is an interactive book with images to view, videos to watch and lots to explore.
Price: Free | Available for: iOS
Print Apply is an all-in-one app perfect for students and educators because it has so much information in one place. The interface is designed to look like a virtual cork board where users can explore a variety of information such as a print glossary, a proportion wheel to find percentage enlargement/reduction and even upcoming trade show dates.
Price: Free | Available for: iOS
For the Printing Historian
This app is great fun for both educators teaching their students traditional printing techniques, as well as the printing and publishing historian who wants a letterpress in the palm of their hand. Compose vintage wood type to create a one-of-a-kind design and then “print it” on the virtual, hand-cranked letterpress. This app also comes with instructions for operating the press.
Price: $5.99 | Available for: iOS
Using LetterMpress
Step 1: Compose
Step 2: Makeready
Step 3: Print!
For Prepress Operators
This simple, yet effective, app tells the operator the required output resolution based on the halftone screen ruling and the desired number of grey levels. It does all the thinking for you!
Price: $0.99 | Available for: iOS
Although RedLaser is primarily an app for consumer barcode scanning, it’s also a great extra preflighting step for prepress operators. With this app, prepress operators can help ensure that their customer’s barcodes scan properly before moving into print production.
Price: Free | Available for: iOS, Android, Windows Phone
For the CEO On the Go
The Google Drive app houses all of your files in one place, providing users with full editing capabilities and syncing across all devices. Keep your docs, spreadsheets and presentations on the cloud and never worry about not having access to your information again.
Price: Free | Available for: iOS, Android
Do you have a daunting pile of unorganized business cards? This app is like a virtual rolodex that allows users to create a comprehensive database of their business cards. Simply take a picture of the front and back of the business card and the app will capture the contact’s data through OCR (Optical Character Recognition). You’ll never have to manually add a contact again!
Price: Two Versions – Free & Full $7.99 | Available for: iOS, Android
Why type a document when you can speak it? This app is remarkably good at voice recognition without having to pre-program the nuances of your own voice. Once you’ve spoken your mind, you can edit and export the text for use in any document.
Price: Free | Available for: iOS, Android
This app not only acts as a list manager but it can also function as a full-blown project management tool, depending on the level of complexity set up by the user. The app allows for tabbed categorization of lists, as well as voice note capabilities and it syncs across multiple devices.
Price: $9.99 | Available for: iOS, Android