Comparison of the Perfect Layout Editions
(Silver, Silver400, Gold)

What's the difference between the plug-in versions? (Silver400, Silver, Gold)

Most important is:

The default output of Silver400, Silver and Gold is identical! All examples on this homepage can be done with any of the three versions.

You can upgrade from Silver400 to Silver or Gold at any time, so you might start with Silver400 and upgrade later if you are unsure.

The main difference between Silver/Silver400 and Gold is: Gold has more options for fine-tuning than Silver/Silver400.
So while Silver/Silver400 give a very good result for standard notation, Gold might be the choice if you want to have more fine-tuning of symbol distances or more flexibility over deactivating standard features.

Now what is standard notation?
The plug-in attempts to follow the modern guidelines set forth by Elaine Gould in her book "Behind Bars".

Some example recommendations:
Perfect Layout Gold:
If you are a professional music publishing house and have your own manual of style with certain rules (especially: change all available distances and have more options).
If you engrave music that follows old standards from the 18th and 19th century.
If you want to see a music notation, which is discouraged in the book "Behind Bars" for various reasons.
If you want the greatest possible flexibility.
If you engrave very modern music with special requirements where the "standard notation" rules may not apply.

Perfect Layout Silver:
If you want to follow the "standard" recommendation made by Elaine Gould and don't do any special editions with different requirements.

Silver400 Limit:
The features of Silver400 of are identical to Silver, except that Silver400 is limited to scores of up 36 (visible) staves and 36 linked parts with a maximum total of 400 measures:
That means any piece with a maximum of 36 staves x 400 measures would be possible (=not more than 400 measures in length and not more than 36 visible staves and not more than 36 linked parts, but theoretically a score spanning 14.400 "frames").

So a big band score of 200 measures and 18 instruments would be fine.
A piano piece of 600 measures is too much as it exceeds the 400 measures limit.
It is also ok to have more than 36 staves, if only 36 are visible in the score and not more than 36 linked parts are used (e.g. separate staves for scores/parts or staves for MIDI playback only are also possible) in the Silver400 version.

In short: Silver is targeted to standard or power users, Gold is meant for publishing houses.
For more info have a look at the different user dialogs of Silver and Gold.

Do I really need this plug-in?

Yes, you do!
It will save you lots of time with Finale and guarantee you a much higher quality output than you would have been able to achieve manually in the saved time. We asked our v2.0 beta users after 6 month of testing how much time the plug-in will save them (30 beta users answered). 80% of the users answered that Perfect Layout saved them 20% or more of their overall Finale working time.
Half of the users (50%) even said that it saved them 25% or more of their working time.

More than 25% of working time saved! This is at least one week per month.

Still not convinced?
Here is more user feedback and our example and video gallery.