E-Spec, Inc.

As of November 1 2021, E-Spec will retire Tag-It! and Convert-It! as products. Tag-It! and Convert-It! rely on Adobe provided technology which is being deprecated. The current software development environment (CEP) is being replaced by UXP which will not support our usage. This is similar to the fate of In-Cat! and Link-It! which relied on Flex Builder (Flash) capabilities that were not supported when Adobe moved to CEP.

We will try to continue support through your current contract date to the best of our ability. Please don’t upgrade your production copies of Illustrator/Photoshop without contacting us.

Adobe’s roadmap excludes support for custom embedded XMP as well as ignoring development partners in Cloud files, CC Libraries and iOS pursuits. Even in CEP, there are no integration points when a “Cloud” file is saved (so it doesn’t support our Target folder model), there are no integration points in CC Libraries and there is no Software Development Kit (SDK) for iOS versions of Illustrator or Photoshop.

Additional challenges are being presented by Apple and Microsoft as they continue to increase installation requirements in the name of security. Apple now requires a “notarization” in addition to a known developer certificate. Providing installers for all the combinations of OS and Adobe versions has become unmanageable.

If you need a Tag-It! replacement, Adobe provides a free extension that provides some of Tag-It!’s functionality (find it on the Adobe app store – “Custom Metadata Panel”). Some of Convert-It!’s functionality can be “scripted” if you have internal resources to support scripts.

If your requirements are a subset of the features that our products provide, there may be an opportunity to continue to use the technology in a “customized” implementation rather than as a product. We can put you in contact with a consultant to explore these options if interested.