Quark or InDesign?

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Permalink Reply by Adam Evans on September 12, 2008 at 11:22pm

Please don't say the "Q" word around me. It makes me itch in hard to read places. I love Adobe products and think they all work well together. I used Quark for years. InDesign all the way!!!

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Permalink Reply by Joshua Thomas on August 4, 2008 at 7:40pm

Our company is a publication premedia, design and production company and we held onto Quark for quite longer than we probably should have. We were probably a bit biased towards Quark since we were long time pre-beta and beta testers for Quark Express and, honestly, we often mimicked the common "... both have strengths and both have weaknesses ... " response which wasn't always an incorrect statement!

I'm sure others involved in digital prep recalls the nightmares we faced when InDesign first hit the shelfs... especially when dealing with issues involving trapping, postscript handling, trapping, color separations and did I mention trapping?At that time, Quark definitely had the upper hand in production.

(back then we were all still trying to figure out we're supposed to do with a PDF file... I mean common DCSII all the way... right?)

It wasn't until we had enough of a demand from customers that we decided to reinvestigate InDesign with the release of IDCS2 back in '05 and long-story short, we're no longer Quark testers!

Not only were we able to greatly improve both our design and production workflows, but we also found that InDesign was much friendly when it came to applescripts and Java making it easier to automate.

Our first test (a 72-page +cover golf magazine) used to clock an average of 65-75 hours of combined design/production time in Quark and the first issue (not including the initial setup time to convert master pages and styles... study the results... scrap them... and reconvert manually with the help of a few applescripts) landed at a total of 54 hours in design/production.

Since then all of our jobs have seen:

-a- reduced overall project time;
-b- increase time allotted for layout/design;
-c- better color management and production workflows

So that's my input... not to mention the typical stuff like:
-a- Better master page / styles sheets / library control
-b- Better transparency support
-c- Better PDF/separation support... (especially in CS3... PDFX4 is a Godsend! Spot colors and transparency used to be an all-day job!)
-d- Better table support
-e- WWAAYYY better margin / bleed / guide control

....and so on.

But to throw a ball back in Quark's court... Quark 7 does have the new split view which is real... err... helpful? Maybe?

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I would be interested in hearing more details on what aspects of Quark / Quark Express users feel still have an advantage over ID/InCopy?

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Permalink Reply by David Willson on August 7, 2008 at 5:28pm

I was thoroughly fed up with Quark's customer service and the fact that their updates were so expensive I was basically buying a whole new copy every two versions. So in 2004, when I launched a new magazine and needed to purchase all new software anyway, I went with the Creative Suite.

I noticed right away that the user interface had me doing double the moves on many functions and it took us a while to really build some efficiency into InDesign. But like I said, I was fed up with Quark. All in all, I'd have to say I agree completely with Robin's assessment. CS2 solved a lot of earlier problems, and CS3 basically debugged the Version Cue.

On the other hand, the Creative Suite has been repriced to where it isn't such a great deal anymore. Still, I don't own a copy of Quark that'll run on OS X, and there's probably no turning back. CS3 is powerful. And all-in-all I'm happy with it.

I don't think I'm the Lone Ranger here. It kind of goes to show you how important customer relations can be.

David Willson
Illustrator, cartoonist, designer, editor and writer (now freelance)

David Willson
106 Ridge Rd.
Jupiter, FL 33477
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dwillson@mac.com

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Permalink Reply by Richard Michem on August 22, 2008 at 9:10am

I glad this forum is still open. When talks about magazine layout, everybody bring up Quark, or InDesign. Does anyone know of a THIRD program, that is good for magazine layout. More importantly, does anybody know of a GOOD "Open Source", program, that could be used instead of Quark or InDesign> Statring a mag is hard, fining money is harder> If someone could save one to three thousands, dollars, finding a good free Open Source, program. Maybe, that saving might result, into more magazines being published.

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Permalink Reply by Little Shiva on August 25, 2008 at 2:50pm

InDesign, InDesign, InDesign! I switched from Quark a few years ago and would never go back. Why? Because InDesign is just as good if not better, and besides, it's part of the Creative Suite bundle. Sorry Quark, it was a fine affair, but now it's over.

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Permalink Reply by Sachin Ghodke on September 15, 2008 at 6:01am

Hello Dan,

You have a huge conversation going on here. Some InDesign fans some Quark. I must say i have worked on both and they both have their pros and cons. Since my environment is mostly Photoshop & Illustrator working with InDesign is easy. Quark has improved over the years and i must say both Quark and InDesign were equally matched but as Joshua says... workflow ease and quicker production times have nudged InDesign a bit ahead. It does also depend on years of comfortable use of the brand and its supporting software and how close one feels with working on it.

Best bet is for you to have loads of information regarding this two publishing software giants on - http://quarkvsindesign.com/

Hope this helps.

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Permalink Reply by Sachin Ghodke on September 15, 2008 at 6:20am

The war is on!
QuarkXPress 8.0
http://www.creativepro.com/article/first-look-quarkxpress-80

But Adobe will be masters of Desktop if anything in the link below is to be believed.
Quark Quitting Desktop
http://quarkvsindesign.com/articles/a1/features/2008/quark-quitting...

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Permalink Reply by Joshua Thomas on September 15, 2008 at 7:16pm

Thanks for the resources, Sachin!

Speaking of new software ... Adobe will be announcing Creative Suite 4 later this month and after getting the inside scoop from Adobe's private webcast last week, I'm pretty sure I'd still choose InDesign over Quark!

And not to stray too far off topic — but PS's Content Aware Scaling has already sold me on CS4.

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Permalink Reply by Joshua Thomas on September 15, 2008 at 7:22pm

You know, I also think Quark made a crucial mistake and lost a lot of ground with Quark 5 not being OS X compatible. If you recall, back in 2002 they released a non-OS X version of their software the same week Adobe released InDesign 2.0 which was OS X native.

That alone probably cost them a good share of the market.

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Permalink Reply by Sachin Ghodke on September 16, 2008 at 3:09am

They are also making it diffcult futher to make it virtually impossible for single user to work on Quark. This will certainly get Adobe much ahead and the leader in desktop market. Also Quark are restricting their target audience to Corporates and big companies who can afford to buy the server license. All this only if the news of Quark closing the desktop option for future development of the software.

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Permalink Reply by Richard Michem on September 17, 2008 at 1:13pm

First has anybody tried out Quark 8? What interesting about this argument, between Q and InDesign, is nobody is bringing up the fact, could their be a THIRD, bit of software lurking out in the wings?. Corel, maker of Paint Shop Pro, was bought , by a Chinese company, with plans to enter into the graphic market, with software that they acquired, and are developing. One wonders, what are they working on?

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Permalink Reply by Paul Chernoff on September 17, 2008 at 4:25pm

There are still diehard Ready, Set, Go fans out there. . And MS Office might be the most widely owned publishing software, but that is because it is bundled with so many Windows computers. But seriously, the only people who try to supply us with ads created in Publisher (which we do not accept) are people who no nothing about layout, CMYK or good design.

I don't expect anything to replace ID or QXP unless both of these programs stumble badly. I might have been drooling over InDesign for years, but it wasn't ready for us until CS2 and even then we needed a replacement for QuarkPublishingSystem (workflow software) and a version of XTags plugin that worked with ID and our Classified System also needed to be updated. A layout program is part of a larger ecosystem in most places, so making a switch could mean finding replacements for other software.

I think Quark stumbled with QuarkXPress 6/6.5. We made the upgrade and a year later were not happy. That left a huge opening for Adobe at our publication and many others.

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