Plug-Ins and XTensions: InDesign Indexers, QuarkXPress Catalogers, Photoshop Fixers

What are Plug-Ins?

According to Webopedia, it is a hardware or software module that adds a specific feature or services to a larger system. The idea is that the new component simply plugs in to the existing system.
About-the-web.com says that they are small applications that add new functionality, multimedia, or audio-video capability to a program.
247.aw.com defines plug-ins as software programs you can download from the Internet that allow you to add features to your software. For example, Shockwave, RealPlayer, and Java plug-ins allow users to view animations and other multimedia features.

Ameritech-hosting.net says that they are software programs that enhance other programs or applications on your computer. There are plug-ins for Internet browsers, graphics programs, and other applications.

Plug-ins let you add extensions to files and folders to encode or process them, let you remove them from files to decode them and let you change file extensions to translate one type of file into another.
What are Extensions?

Mantex.co: They are the three or four letter or number code used to identify files. They come after the full stop following the filename. Common types include .doc and .txt for word processor documents. Files ending in .gif and .jpg generally contain images. Files ending in .exe and .com usually contain executable programs, which load into memory and carry out a set of instructions.

What are the latest plug-ins and XTensions?

InDesign Plug-ins for Figures, Footnotes and Indexes

One great source of InDesign plug-ins is Virginia Systems Inc. The company produces a variety of software for document searching, document imaging, automatic index and table of contents generation, cross- referencing, footnote/endnote management, figure/table numbering, and automatic PDF hypertext linking. Their latest plug-ins help you automatically number and keep track of figures, tables, footnotes, endnotes, and indexes. The following are their latest programs:

Sonar Bookends InDex Pro version 4.0 is the newly updated automatic indexing plug-in for Macintosh and Windows that can use either character or paragraph style sheets to mark items to index. The marked items are extracted automatically and compiled into a list. The index created using the list can consist of either all pages where the items in the list appear, or only the pages where the items are marked with a particular style sheet. It can also index items in InDesign tables.

Sonar Bookends InFnote version 4.01 is a footnote/endnote management product for InDesign desktop publishing system. It can move footnotes from page to page automatically, and ensures that each footnote is on the same page as its reference. A separator line is automatically drawn above all footnote text boxes that actually contain footnotes. Also, additional numbering scheme for footnotes is available.

InDesign Plug-in for Cross-References
The same company, Virginia Systems, offers Sonar Bookends InXref as a cross-referencing plug-in for InDesign that lets you mark anything in a document, such as a table, figure, photo, among others, and then refer to its page number elsewhere in the document. If the item moves, its page number reference updates automatically. This product uses a "labeling" system to mark both where referenced page numbers are to be inserted and where the material being referenced is found.
QuarkXpress Plug-In

QuarkXpress is layout software that lets you combine writing, editing, and typography with color and pictures to produce dynamic final output. With Em Software Inc. introduced Xcatalog 6.2, the software that helps you create bi-directional links between a QuarkXpress 6 document—text selections or whole text and picture box contents— and an external database. You can now link any picture or text element, from a single character to a phrase or paragraph or entire story. Once the links are established, changes can be made on either the XPress side or the database side, and the changes pushed in the other direction. It helps you update prices, graphics, product information, or change versions or even swap languages. What's more, you can do all of this automatically. Em Software also has a version for InDesign named InCatalog.

Photoshop Great Image Fixers

These plug-ins by The Imaging Factory are for correcting perspective, angle, and lens distortions such as light falloff and magnification at the edges of wide-angle lenses, and color fringing.

Debarrelizer version 2.0 corrects quickly and easily barrel distortion, as well as Chromatic Aberration.

Perspective version 2.0 is for pictures taken with a slightly tilted camera. It corrects perspective distortion while providing live visual feedback.

Squeeze version 2.0, for those group shots that tend to become "larger than life". With this tool, you will be able to squeeze them back to normal proportions.

Vignette version 2.0 is built to quickly and easily remove lens and telescope vignetting defects or uneven flash patterns. It also allows you to add creative vignetting effects for subtle centering of attention.