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Quark vs Indesign
- Thread starter CathC
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stevep said:
My endorsement is qualified.
I've been spending a lot more time with it over the past few days including one project where I threw everything including the kitchen sink at it.
I absolutely detest the way it handles editable objects on pages based on master pages and can I get a reliable and flight-checkable PDF from a bells and whistles multi-paged, layered and transparency-riddled document? Can I heck.
And yes, that's as an export and as postscript through Distiller.
If and when we pick up InDesign next year (CS3), that's exactly what we'll be doing — not dropping Quark. We'll still need to keep Quark around for at least another 5 years to handle legacy files and work done by external suppliers.
But when the time comes where InDesign becomes our bread and butter app, we'll do a short digital run of a postcard or flyer and send it out to all our printers, typesetters, and freelancers letting them know what we're up to.
Blue Velvet said:
Have you tried the import feature of InDesign?
I used it for a roster poster I do every summer and was very pleased with the import. I had to adjust a text box attached to the photos but that took about 5 minutes to complete them all. From there I just was able to make the changes with no issues. My production time was cut in half from Quark 4.5 the year before.
rjphoto said:
InDesign only imports Quark v4 and lower files, not 5 & 6 as Quark helpfully started adding a level of encryption to their files for newer versions.
There is a newish Markzware 'Quark to Indesign' plug-in for InDesign but nothing is perfect.
http://www.markzware.com/q2id/
My how the tables have turned...
Adobe announces Q2 2007 for Universal Binary CS3. Quark 8 and Apple apps will already be dancing circles around all Adobe apps. They're wasting so much effort on Flash integration now...you Adobephiles are in for a rough ride...Adobe's the lost cause at this point....they are trying to catch up with color-based transparency, job jackets, collaboration zones and so much more and while Adobe worries about wringing moula from PDF format, the world is moving to OPEN standards so PDF will be gone as fast as Zip disks in a few years...writing's on the wall.
Adobe announces Q2 2007 for Universal Binary CS3. Quark 8 and Apple apps will already be dancing circles around all Adobe apps. They're wasting so much effort on Flash integration now...you Adobephiles are in for a rough ride...Adobe's the lost cause at this point....they are trying to catch up with color-based transparency, job jackets, collaboration zones and so much more and while Adobe worries about wringing moula from PDF format, the world is moving to OPEN standards so PDF will be gone as fast as Zip disks in a few years...writing's on the wall.
CathC said:
I used ID to produce a 240 page yearbook. Is that big enough for you? I'm sure you've seen a yearbook or two in your life. So you know the kind of elements that we work with. I've never used Quark, but ID, once you work with it, is pretty sweet.
I love InDesign but a slightly offtopic question about it here: why is there no way to apply small caps to the first line of an article (a style)? This is a pretty common thing to see in books and magazines of all types, but I can find no way of doing it automatically in InDesign. Using nested styles I can apply a character style to the first three words or whatever, but "lines" is not one of the choices.
InDesign is the new PageMaker...
...with a little illustrator thrown in. I'd love to see a race where a team of 5 people was given a big job and see who got it done fastest...the CS2 crowd or the Quark 7 crowd (with Photoshop 7)...I'd bet the Quark crowd would be done way before the ID crowd. It's pathetic how much money companies are loosing to the hype.
...with a little illustrator thrown in. I'd love to see a race where a team of 5 people was given a big job and see who got it done fastest...the CS2 crowd or the Quark 7 crowd (with Photoshop 7)...I'd bet the Quark crowd would be done way before the ID crowd. It's pathetic how much money companies are loosing to the hype.
wizenPub said:...with a little illustrator thrown in. I'd love to see a race where a team of 5 people was given a big job and see who got it done fastest...the CS2 crowd or the Quark 7 crowd (with Photoshop 7)...I'd bet the Quark crowd would be done way before the ID crowd. It's pathetic how much money companies are loosing to the hype.
I'm curious - what do you consider a "big job"? Why would Quark users finish before ID users? It seems to me that speed is mostly based upon one's familiarity with a program and not the program itself.
You'll have to forgive my cynicism, but I'm not too eager to give Quark another chance any time soon. I think you'll find that after a decade of putting up with Quark's lack of innovation and basic contempt for their customer base, people aren't going to be terribly forgiving toward Quark -- no matter how much better you claim their program is.
I will say that I'm glad to see Quark innovating again. Quark 6 looked and felt like Quark 4 running in classic on OS X. With Quark 7, It looks to me as though Quark has finally decided to start making their program worthwhile again.
Unfortunately, looking over the new features in Quark 7, I don't see many useful features that aren't already available to me in CS2.
CathC said:
you sound like you are more used to quark, that's all...it's easy from the perspective of a newbie like me who can, as a computer technician, see two programs side by side, but not have the bias of being a professional worker/artist in one program or the other
indesign is easier/cleaner
it's kind of like appleworks to me...which was about the same time i saw microsoft office...i thought appleworks was easier to use and more logically laid out, but i knew the less elegant microsoft office was the standard of the industry
quark has been, and still may be (especially in post production) the standard of the industry, but it seems easier and more logical for people to use photoshop, illustrator and indesign as opposed to photoshop, illustrator, and quark
my two cents, as a non designer
Quark: Looking out for your needs.....NOT!
Hello. My name is Gavin, and Im a Quark user. (circle of people answer Hello Gavin).
I lecture in graphic design and as the course and faculty has grown so has the number of software licences. We currently have 120 seats of Quark 6.5 which equals a very large pile of cash. This summer we will be getting our 2 main Mac suites refitted with Intel iMacs. What software to get could well cause fisty-cuffs. We will have to get the CS2 suite as CS3 has developed a case of the Longhorns or should I say Vistas. This is not ideal as CS2 and Rosetta are not totally bosom buddies and we will need to shell out for CS3 when it comes out. (I know we will pay education prices but 100 seats will still be around £15K). Have never used ID but will be looking at it.
And now for Quark ..
Quark 6.5 and Rosetta is a bad combo. Quarks answer Buy Quark 7, it will be universal. No, we have no plans to update v6.5 to fix any bugs.
And get this
They will be stopping the upgrade programme on lab-packs (guess what 90% of education use) so we will need to buy 120 new FULL licences of Quark 7.
I am SO PISSED at Quark and not for the first time either. Once again the customer care sucks, and they wonder why ID is gaining ground.
Does anyone want to buy 120 licences of Quark 6.5? Anyone? No? Just as well because it is illegal to sell the software on as you dont own the software you only pay for permission to use it bastards!
Hello. My name is Gavin, and Im a Quark user. (circle of people answer Hello Gavin).
I lecture in graphic design and as the course and faculty has grown so has the number of software licences. We currently have 120 seats of Quark 6.5 which equals a very large pile of cash. This summer we will be getting our 2 main Mac suites refitted with Intel iMacs. What software to get could well cause fisty-cuffs. We will have to get the CS2 suite as CS3 has developed a case of the Longhorns or should I say Vistas. This is not ideal as CS2 and Rosetta are not totally bosom buddies and we will need to shell out for CS3 when it comes out. (I know we will pay education prices but 100 seats will still be around £15K). Have never used ID but will be looking at it.
And now for Quark ..
Quark 6.5 and Rosetta is a bad combo. Quarks answer Buy Quark 7, it will be universal. No, we have no plans to update v6.5 to fix any bugs.
And get this
They will be stopping the upgrade programme on lab-packs (guess what 90% of education use) so we will need to buy 120 new FULL licences of Quark 7.
I am SO PISSED at Quark and not for the first time either. Once again the customer care sucks, and they wonder why ID is gaining ground.
Does anyone want to buy 120 licences of Quark 6.5? Anyone? No? Just as well because it is illegal to sell the software on as you dont own the software you only pay for permission to use it bastards!
G.Kirby said:Hello. My name is Gavin, and Im a Quark user. (circle of people answer Hello Gavin).
I lecture in graphic design and as the course and faculty has grown so has the number of software licences. We currently have 120 seats of Quark 6.5 which equals a very large pile of cash. This summer we will be getting our 2 main Mac suites refitted with Intel iMacs. What software to get could well cause fisty-cuffs. We will have to get the CS2 suite as CS3 has developed a case of the Longhorns or should I say Vistas. This is not ideal as CS2 and Rosetta are not totally bosom buddies and we will need to shell out for CS3 when it comes out. (I know we will pay education prices but 100 seats will still be around £15K). Have never used ID but will be looking at it.
And now for Quark ..
Quark 6.5 and Rosetta is a bad combo. Quarks answer Buy Quark 7, it will be universal. No, we have no plans to update v6.5 to fix any bugs.
And get this
They will be stopping the upgrade programme on lab-packs (guess what 90% of education use) so we will need to buy 120 new FULL licences of Quark 7.
I am SO PISSED at Quark and not for the first time either. Once again the customer care sucks, and they wonder why ID is gaining ground.
Does anyone want to buy 120 licences of Quark 6.5? Anyone? No? Just as well because it is illegal to sell the software on as you dont own the software you only pay for permission to use it bastards!
wow, that's a lot of dollars, or pounds
i hope as a teacher/professor, you don't have to shell out some of your own hard earned cash for the class like some in the teaching profession in california have done due to either bad educational administration management or bad state funds management...or both
i had a computer repair class i attended where the professor would have to buy spare parts because the the college's administration took so long to ok so much as a paper clip
This is an interesting thread, because I asked myself the same question when our yearbook staff went to computers this year. I knew very little about both programs, but of course InDesign CS2 was cheaper for us, and with my PageMaker and PhotoShop background (in my desktop publishing/multimedia class that I took my 10th grade year) we went the ID route. I have loved this program, my only complaint is the cheap Dells we are forced to run it on. I am used to using Adobe in the Mac Lab at school, and using it in the PC lab for the yearbook as been a change.
What I love that Herff Jones has plugins that allow us to work work with templates and graphics and such that they gave us! This is the extent of my work, I have often times thought about going into publishing after being on the yearbook staff for two years and learning a lot about what goes into making our book. This year I was business manager, so I spent more time dealing with people and our money than I did giving my thoughts on how things should be, but I did create my pages and I like my work. I am also the only computer nerd, so as you can imagine I have kept busy showing everyone how to use the program.
But my first point of posting, is that when I asked myself the question, I also asked some others, and I heard that Quark was on its way out. However, the Apple computer teacher teaches Quark during the summers, and he likes it better than InDesign, and says we should have gotten it.
My advice, use what works best for you!
What I love that Herff Jones has plugins that allow us to work work with templates and graphics and such that they gave us! This is the extent of my work, I have often times thought about going into publishing after being on the yearbook staff for two years and learning a lot about what goes into making our book. This year I was business manager, so I spent more time dealing with people and our money than I did giving my thoughts on how things should be, but I did create my pages and I like my work. I am also the only computer nerd, so as you can imagine I have kept busy showing everyone how to use the program.
But my first point of posting, is that when I asked myself the question, I also asked some others, and I heard that Quark was on its way out. However, the Apple computer teacher teaches Quark during the summers, and he likes it better than InDesign, and says we should have gotten it.
My advice, use what works best for you!
My 2 Cents
Well, I use ID to create and update scripts for the theatre company I work for: and not just text, which it handles excellently by the way, but for mant graphical aspects in other layers meant to aid stage managers in learning the show. I used PageMaker way back in the day, and loved it. Actually, my first layout program was ReadySetGo! way back when I was a kid learning how to make my junior hs newspaper on a Mac Color Classic. I have used Quark, but I have never found it as easy to use. Of course, you always stick with what you learn first, so there you go; at this point, I would say ID definitely takes the prize...
Well, I use ID to create and update scripts for the theatre company I work for: and not just text, which it handles excellently by the way, but for mant graphical aspects in other layers meant to aid stage managers in learning the show. I used PageMaker way back in the day, and loved it. Actually, my first layout program was ReadySetGo! way back when I was a kid learning how to make my junior hs newspaper on a Mac Color Classic. I have used Quark, but I have never found it as easy to use. Of course, you always stick with what you learn first, so there you go; at this point, I would say ID definitely takes the prize...
Graphic Design Student
I started with Quark in my freshmen years of Graphic Design. I liked it but it would keep crashing and had problems printing certain characters. Then I switched to ID, just to give it a little spin and was amazed! Finally, a shortcut to get the hand tool on the fly! I was used to Adobe's shortcuts that it came naturally for me in ID. Was working on a page layout project (which was due a week later) and ported all my content from Quark to InDesign. If you know Quark, you'll easily adjust to InDesign, I caught on to it in about 2 hours.
Also, I hear that printers hate it because it can cause problems.
I started with Quark in my freshmen years of Graphic Design. I liked it but it would keep crashing and had problems printing certain characters. Then I switched to ID, just to give it a little spin and was amazed! Finally, a shortcut to get the hand tool on the fly! I was used to Adobe's shortcuts that it came naturally for me in ID. Was working on a page layout project (which was due a week later) and ported all my content from Quark to InDesign. If you know Quark, you'll easily adjust to InDesign, I caught on to it in about 2 hours.
Also, I hear that printers hate it because it can cause problems.
fba199 said:
Quark. Hold down the Alt key.
I'm so weary of people criticising software before they know how to use it.
fba199 said:
Too which software are you referring, Quark or ID? As long as you use the correct file formats for your images (eps or tiff @ 300dpi and in CMYK) and you use proper font sets, Quark works just fine. However, ID has caused problems because it allows you to easily ignore basic print setup rules.
It is hard enough to teach print protocols and then Adobe turn round and say you can use none postscript file formats. People then wonder why their files dont print.
JasonElise1983 said:
that's my creativve suite, folks!
and i can do what i want!!!!
btw, if you need a pretty interface for GIMP, get seashore, it's like PSE
Personally, I think the worse thing that happen to the industry was everyone standardizing on QuarkXPress.
Not because it was a bad app, but because when any one company has that type of power... the customers end up losing out.
What happened when PageMaker was left to die off and QuarkXPress was the page layout app? Quark abused it's position. They over charged and under delivered. They took steps to punish customers who were not upgrading on Quark's schedule. And if Quark had had any competition at the time I doubt that any of that would have happen.
And we shouldn't forget what killed off PageMaker... it was Adobe.
Adobe felt very left out of the desktop publishing market that it felt it had help create with Postscript. They had considered making their own page layout app, but decided to go shopping instead (seeing as they had a ton of money). They bought FrameMaker, but weren't satisfied. So they bought Aldus too, hoping that PageMaker's old reputation would help. They did virtually nothing to the app after acquiring it... and it died off.*
I think InDesign is a great app. I think QuarkXPress is getting back to being a great app. And even if I liked one more than the other... I really don't want to see either dominate the industry.
We should learn from history here... and not repeat the same mistakes over and over.
* It should be noted that Adobe did not repeat the mistake with PageMaker when it bought GoLive CyberStudio. Adobe quickly started to both improve features and integrate it with other Adobe apps.
Not because it was a bad app, but because when any one company has that type of power... the customers end up losing out.
What happened when PageMaker was left to die off and QuarkXPress was the page layout app? Quark abused it's position. They over charged and under delivered. They took steps to punish customers who were not upgrading on Quark's schedule. And if Quark had had any competition at the time I doubt that any of that would have happen.
And we shouldn't forget what killed off PageMaker... it was Adobe.
Adobe felt very left out of the desktop publishing market that it felt it had help create with Postscript. They had considered making their own page layout app, but decided to go shopping instead (seeing as they had a ton of money). They bought FrameMaker, but weren't satisfied. So they bought Aldus too, hoping that PageMaker's old reputation would help. They did virtually nothing to the app after acquiring it... and it died off.*
I think InDesign is a great app. I think QuarkXPress is getting back to being a great app. And even if I liked one more than the other... I really don't want to see either dominate the industry.
We should learn from history here... and not repeat the same mistakes over and over.
* It should be noted that Adobe did not repeat the mistake with PageMaker when it bought GoLive CyberStudio. Adobe quickly started to both improve features and integrate it with other Adobe apps.
InDesign is BY FAR the easisest to USE and Design With!!!
It is Intuitive, works with all the other Adobe Apps VERY Well and Just has more control over the document than ANY VERSION OF QUARK (INCLUDING QUARK 7)
Switching can be hard to do... but well worth it. The Extra abilities you get with the unification between InDesign and Photoshop are limitless As well as the combo of Illustrator and Indesign with drag and Drop combos and Auto updating with Photoshop documents are just So much better.
IF you need any tips feel free to ask: i teach InDesign to new users so im aware of all the new user conundrums!!! Just Make the Switch and it will be worth it!!!
It is Intuitive, works with all the other Adobe Apps VERY Well and Just has more control over the document than ANY VERSION OF QUARK (INCLUDING QUARK 7)
Switching can be hard to do... but well worth it. The Extra abilities you get with the unification between InDesign and Photoshop are limitless As well as the combo of Illustrator and Indesign with drag and Drop combos and Auto updating with Photoshop documents are just So much better.
IF you need any tips feel free to ask: i teach InDesign to new users so im aware of all the new user conundrums!!! Just Make the Switch and it will be worth it!!!
I have had reports that several large pubishers that have moved from Quark to Indesign are going back to Quark once v7 is out. It sounds like quark have fixed all of those anoying little problems.