With today's availability of Adobe Creative Suite5 vjoon releases K4 Version 6.2, which is fully compatible with CS5. Publishers can immediately take advantage of the ideal combination of multimedia capabilities offered by K4 and Adobe Creative Suite 5 by including videos or picture galleries in dynamic layouts and publishing them into digital platforms like the iPad. With vjoon K4 6.2, the Hamburg-based software developer enriches its Cross-Media Publishing Platform with handy features for more collaboration and multi-channel publishing – such as real-time chat communication with sticky notes across different clients, additional preview capabilities in K4 Overview Advanced, and alternative page designs.

"Digital editions are redefining the media-consumption experience and revenue strategies for professional publishers," says Andreas Schrader, CEO of vjoon. "Regardless of the devices and strategies that a publisher chooses, with vjoon K4's highly evolved workflow engine, publishers can efficiently manage and produce content for a variety of media and channels, including the iPad."

Real-time collaboration
Because quick and direct communication through instant messaging has become commonplace in today's working environment, vjoon gives creative teams a new tool for real-time collaboration and communication within the live document: The "sticky notes" feature in K4 6.2 integrates instant messaging into the production process – directly on the layouted page. For example, an editor needs a layout designer to leave more space for his article, so he places a note on the layout that says, "Is it possible to scale down the image to make my text fit?" The designer, in return, can directly answer this question by posting a note maybe saying, "I am going to use a different image anyway and that will free up some space." The sticky notes feature is also integrated with the browser-based K4 Overview Advanced, introduced with K4 6.2, which means the head of production can participate in the live chat on the document and can request changes to layouts directly from browser-based previews of the InDesign documents.

K4 Overview Advanced also enables members of the creative team to preview and pull proofs of layouts as they would look if all of the objects on the layout were updated – without needing anyone to open the document in InDesign. Using InDesign Server, the "prediction mode" of K4 Overview Advanced will pull in updated text and graphics onto a layout and make JPEG previews and PDF proofs that are accessible via a Web browser. With this tool, editors can, for example, pull proofs that show the effect of their edits without asking the InDesign operator to update the layout manually.

The new 6.2 release also enhances the creative team's ability to manage alternative layout designs. If uncertain which photo of a celebrity or story will make the cover, for example, layout artists simply link different designs to the layout within K4 6.2. This feature allows for producing any number of different layout designs in parallel – with changes to source articles and photos updated on all of the layout designs from the database. K4 Overview Advanced makes it easy throughout the creative and production cycle to indicate and change which layout is the preferred design.

"Publishers want the freedom to create content without having to decide in advance where it will be published," says Linda Bruce, vice president of enterprise sales at MEI, vjoon's K4 distributor for the Americas. "K4's cross-media, multi-channel workflow engine streamlines the process of tailoring content to the requirements of each individual output channel. For organizing work-in-process content and managing cross-media workflows, vjoon K4 truly has become the central hub within the editorial and creative production environment."

The 6.2 release of vjoon K4 is available immediately worldwide through vjoon's network of distribution partners.