Quark 6

[Stoney]

Anyone got their paws on Quark 6 (for Mac) yet?? Jigsaw tell me that it's not available until the end of July.

Anyway if you have - hows it going - any dubious first edition anomolies?

 

[Andy80F]

I think there may have been a significant swing to InDesign as there does not seem to be as much of a buzz about a new version of Quark as might be expected. Certainly the newsgroups and magazines seem underwhelmed with the proposed arrival and one letter writer to MacUser wrote wondering if the Quark team are not "simply and utterly commercially inept".

Regards
Andy80F

 

[bakerlonglegs]

InDesign

We switched from Quark to InDesign, because we got fed up with the wait, and I have to say InDesign is great... Easy translation from original Quark files and those of you use Photoshop and Illustrator will find the interface a doddle. Works well for outputing files to PDF too (not surprisingly!).
BLL

 

[Sergeant Pluck]

i'd concur - quark was sh*te even before indesign came out. i wouldn't touch it with yours now ;-)

pr0ne

 

[Stoney]

Indesign - I'ver always shied away from it.

A few questions;

I'm a graphic designer,

Do printers tend to accept indesign (obviously I can ask mine and find out)?

Is it as good at multi-page layout?

Is it easy to learn - I guess if you use other Adobe stuff (which I do) i must be fairly straight forward.

Ho much is it?

This is a big decision for me - Quark is £900 plus Vat and I have placed an order but if opionion things it's money not best spent I can re-think it.

 

[Richard34]

Do printers tend to accept indesign (obviously I can ask mine and find out)?

You've hit the nail on the head!!

This will be the main problem for the next few years. As a director of a printing company (fairly large) in London, whilst we detest paying the 900 odd quid for Xpress - it still remains the de-facto page layout software in the industry and could therefore not stop using it.

In time there will be a massive migration to In-Design because:
a) it's far better than Xpress now - even version 6
b) it's way cheaper to buy and for tech. support
c) the BIG publishers i.e. newspapers and magazines are slowly switching

Once the big boys go over it's only a matter of time.

PDF is the way to go as far as the printing industry is concerned and once the commercials and smaller guys implement a workable PDF workflow there will be absolutely no need to waste money on Xpress anymore.

I for one can't wait!!

 

[Stoney]

Rich...

That's the problem - while some of the main printers use inDesign my smaller ones don't. I'm desperate to migrate fully to OSX and insist on only using legal software - seems for now I need to fork out the dosh for Q6 and will probably have to buy Indesign as well.

Am i right in thinking that I can send you printiners a pdf set-up as I normally would as spreads or single pages and you can still impo it from that?

Initially I thought I'd have to impo it then pdf it - which is just to much hassle.

 

[Richard34]

Any decent mid size plus printer ought to be able to impose from virtually any file you send to them.

I use some software called Farrukh imposition publisher which will impose from 30 plus various applications!! not cheap but very extensive. PDF's no problem (even if they're not separated properly as we shove them through Pitstop anyway)

 

[Stoney]

I've asked around and changed my order to indesign - thanks for all the advice.

Only problem is I've got one of my best mates saying 'I told you so' now - plus it also means I could have changed over fully to OSX ages ok - oh well you've got to learn sometimes!

Cheers
Andy

 

[Stoney]

Indesign

Thanks for saving me £300!!!!

I've using Indesign for a few weeks now and it is v. good - thanks for all the advice!!!