QuarkXPress vs. InDesign, yet again!

[eclipse525]

Wow...some great comments on both apps. Thanks for the input. I've just begun to use Quark 6.5 and have had no problems. Seems to be a solid update. FINALLY!. Has anyone been using 6.5 and are there any bugs? I guess, I'm gonna give ID another look and see if it's that good. Funny thing is that I won a copy of ID 1.0 years back and installed it but found it buggy so I didn't even bother after that. Who know what the upgrade will cost.

~e

 

[Jaffa Cake]

Funny thing is that I won a copy of ID 1.0 years back and installed it but found it buggy so I didn't even bother after that.

Hmm... I've got a hazy recollection that there were quite a few problems with the initial 1.0 release of InDesign – as you mentioned there were a lot of bugs and it was a bit of a CPU hog to boot. Adobe issued an update to 1.5 pretty quickly.

I was always warned about '.0' software!

 

[areyouwishing]

Have to add my 2 cents.

This is how I see it...

1. File Structure...
Quark forces designers to build nice strict files, this is becoming less the case with Quark Vista, and now they are talking transparencies with 7/8. Who knows how that is going to turn out.

InDesign lets users do a lot of questionable things that can end up having a negative output like transparent color shifts, drop shadows. They have been using these questionable things for a few years now and are continually getting better at it, when quark finally releases their first try at trans, Adobe will have conquered all the issues.

2. Speed...
Quark is fast, on a slow machine, on a fast machine, its fast.

InDesign is slower, but it launches faster than Quark.

3. Fonts...
Quark supports most fonts, has activation plugins, but doesn't have the ease of use in implementing Opentype ligatures, etc. NO OPTICAL KERNING SUPPORT!

InDesign was created by adobe with a completely new customized type engine, I prefer the control it gives over what quark has to offer, optical kerning is amazing, tab rulers are directly over the text box where quark is a guess and check method.

4. Images...
I have seen just about everything in a quark file except ai files, and PS files. even psds are supposed to be supported now with 6.5. The usage palette is a simple implementation that easier to use than ID's Links palette.

InDesign supports AI files, PS files, and just about everything. It's links palette has a few more features but it seems to be kind of a clunky interface.

5. File Creation...
Quark makes you jump through a few hoops to get a postscript you have to have a virtual printer and its kinda inconvenient. The default install of quark also offers NO built in Color Management for quark files, it just reads your embedded profiles in images. Color output can vary from Ill, to Photoshop, to Quark.

The Print engine in Indesign makes Postscript creation a snap, less hoops. Color management is driven the same way Ill, and PS are done, which makes color output EXTREMELY constistent.

6. Data Management
Quark and ID have built in XML parsers. Quark has MANY data plugins available, but less for the 6/6.5 crowd.

I prefer the built in XML support in InDesign over Quark because it just makes a little more sense to me, on a 500 node list its pretty easy to go from plain text to styled(sheeted) text in about 5 minutes...its very slick. InDesign has a lot LESS plugins.

7. Global compatibility
If you are sending something overseas, go quark, period.

8. Crashing
With quark you have the age old "autosave" feature where you get to tell quark how many minutes between freezing what you are doing and save the file automatically.

With InDesign it creates a temp log of everything you are doing, so if it crashes it automatically restores the very last function you did.


All in all its about preference, they both have pluses and minuses. But you can't deny that quark is now playing catchup on a feature for feature basis with InDesign. InDesign still can cause printing firms issues, but most problems have been solved and most rips are capable of matching the transparency differences.


About me...
I have been using Quark for about 5 years and ID for 2 years (on a reg basis) up until about 6 months ago it was all design/publication work, now I work as a prepress tech for a printing firm where I deal more with prepress, and deal with these programs from a ripping and color management standpoint. We still have less problems with quark, but most of our more progressive clients use InDesign, and that tends to be reflected in their work quality.

 

[crackrock]

This is a Screen-Printing perspective coming from a guy who makes a living in the prepress department accepting artwork from customers, trapping, making 4/c separations, outputting film, and doing densitometer readings - InDesign is better than Quark in nearly every way. Now I learned the stuff off of Quark and have been using it for YEARS, but InDesign tops Quark in nearly every catagory. Unless you are running OS 9, don't bother with Quark - upgrade to InDesign. Need reasons? I could go on forever, but here are some of my favorites....

1. OUTPUT PREVIEW!!! By far the best feature of InDesign, you can preview your trapping, spot colors, and get a glimpse of your cmyk seps without ripping anything. And if somethings not right, you just update the links and it refreshes immediately. Quark doesn't have anything remotely close. That little feature saved me weeks in ripping time.

2. You can place ANY file format. Try placing an .ai, .psd, .ps or .pdf into Quark, I just simply doesn't work. Like when all you want to do is add in color bars, crop marks, and registration marks but want to keep everything the same? Create a new InDesign document of whatever sheet size you are going to print, place the file in, add in your marks, and print to a postscript file.

3. Better color management. InDesign can warn you if things aren't in the same color space. Now realistically - most people use SWOP v2, but if that isn't the case... Quark won't tell you anything, InDesign will.

4. It's easier to get more done in less time. It runs faster. The shortcut keys are easier, you don't have to make boxes to place images into the file, you can just type text right in without making a box first, and you can change the display preferences to one have one high quality placed image show up high quality - the rest low res. This means when you are doing step & repeat work you don't have to wait and wait for the screen to load but still keep an eye on what you are doing.

5. More printing options. Printing a spot UV coating and don't want to have it interfere with your trapping? Doing lots of complicated trapping and putting some scrach-off ink on top of all of it? Just change the density of your spot color ink and let InDesigns trapping get it right for you. Custom screen angles? No problem. Want to make a last minute change to a spot color to 4/c? You can do it on the fly right before printing. Want to do that in Quark? You can't!

6. You can TYPE in the position of guides and placed items. Quark makes you use the Move command. That get's old when you are aiming for precision under unrealistically tight deadlines (I just emailed you the file, can you get 5000 sheets done by tomarrow morning?)

7. Spell check without going into the story editor. Now why doesn't Quark have this?

8. The functions of Distiller are built in. Outsourcing your work and know that the guy you are sending it to doesn't really know what he's doing? Make a PDF x/1a straight from InDesign and there's no way he can screw it up.

9. Multi-colored guides. Another one of those "why hadn't the programmers of Quark thought of this 5 years ago?"

10. It's less expensive! Spend $1000 on Creative suite and you get Photoshop, Indesign, Illustrator, and Acrobat. Spend $1000 on Quark and well... that's all you get. When I opened up the package for 6.1 and installed it I was so disappointed, like "that's it? I feel so ripped off!" (I have Quark for compatability only - I do believe Quark will die soon, but I have one big customer who insists on using it)

Now back in the day Quark was ahead of it's time, but not anymore. If you talk to any old designers they will tell you to use Quark, but talk to the younger crowd who's creating the breakthrough designs and they will unanimously tell you that InDesign does everything that Quark does 10x better.

I guess it's not bad to learn Quark for the sake of knowing it, but in the printing industry we laugh at people who want us to output Quark files. You won't earn much respect from me by giving me a Quark file, but I'd still print it with dead-accurate color.

 

[eclipse525]

I have quick question. This pertains to InDesign.

In QuarkXPress, under the paragraph attributes you can choose to add underline/Rules with specific lengths. Can I do this in InDesign? I couldn't find it.


~e

 

[da_alchemist]

paragraph rule

I have quick question. This pertains to InDesign.

In QuarkXPress, under the paragraph attributes you can choose to add underline/Rules with specific lengths. Can I do this in InDesign? I couldn't find it.


~e

Yes. Use the type tool and place your cursor on the text which you want to apply the rule to. Click on the little triangle in your paragraphs palette and choose paragraph rules from the drop-down menu.

 

[eclipse525]

Yes. Use the type tool and place your cursor on the text which you want to apply the rule to. Click on the little triangle in your paragraphs palette and choose paragraph rules from the drop-down menu.

Cool...Thanks! Got it..... I'm really liking this ID thing. <lol>

~e

 

[da_alchemist]

Cool...Thanks! Got it..... I'm really liking this ID thing. <lol>

~e

Yeh, InDesign is awesome. I recently switched to it. I'm never going back to Quark.

 

[Col. Panic]

Started using XPress in the ealry 90s. Still using QuarkXPress 4.1. Just placed the order for 6.5 though. Couldn't convince the powers that be to approve a switch to ID. So we'll be an XPress shop for a while longer. Can't wait to finally get out of classic.

 

[Blue Velvet]

Started using XPress in the ealry 90s. Still using QuarkXPress 4.1. Just placed the order for 6.5 though. Couldn't convince the powers that be to approve a switch to ID. So we'll be an XPress shop for a while longer. Can't wait to finally get out of classic.

Quark 6.5 is a pig... many traps await the unwary.

Reliable PDF creation, sending files to a RIP, I could go on... Avoid the QuarkVista Xtension at all costs. Even though OS X can handle long file-names & extensions, Quark can't...

Join/read www.prepressforums.com and www.quark.com/service/forums/

Edit: The most reliable way of getting perfect PDFs from Quark 6 is the old-fashioned way. Best described in this download here.

 

[eclipse525]

Join/read www.prepressforums.com and www.quark.com/service/forums/

Edit: The most reliable way of getting perfect PDFs from Quark 6 is the old-fashioned way. Best described in this download here.

Thanks for those links and file. Very useful. U Da Best!

~e

 

[benwa02]

I have never used Quark before but I couldnt imagine any program being any better than InDesign. The first day I opened InDesign I was able to start right away since I am well versed with Adobes PS and Illustrator. Very easy to get around if you already know Adobes products and even if you dont. I love InDesign and I cant wait until my next project with it.

 

[Ben Kei]

I'm only just getting my head into InDesign and so far I like what I'm seeing and using..

I'm not doing design too much.. I work in the digital department for a large print house so it's mostly end of line stuff.

One thing I think Quark still has over InDesign is it's output options to print (not talking print to file here). The output options in ID just aren't quite as streamlined as they are in Quark.. OK quarks output section is a real pig if you are just learning it! but once you know it it's pretty good and efficient at what it does, ID is still a bit bulky feeling in the way it sends to print.

 

[iGary]

It will take a while, but I hope ID eats Quark for lunch (probably not, huh?).

Their custoomer service stinks, they only just recently got the brains to release an education version (guess they got tired of all the college labs being filled with ID - ours is) and the new verification algorithym thing?

Eff that.

ID for me is totally more intuitive and offers an all-in-one package. I like that.

Most of our designers here at the firm love to hate to love Quark.

It's like a necessary evil or something.

 

[benwa02]

Only thing I came across so far that I dint like is that you cannot open ID 2.0 files with ID CS and vice versa. Dont know if that has been mentioned but that sucks.

 

[Lacero]

Is ID still a dog to run? I remember in '00 ID was all but unusable on the hardware at the time, when QX4.0 was top dog in performance. I still use Quark today so ID is not at all relevant to me.

 

[benwa02]

Is ID still a dog to run? I remember in '00 ID was all but unusable on the hardware at the time, when QX4.0 was top dog in performance. I still use Quark today so ID is not at all relevant to me.

ID runs mint for me. I never used ID in '00 so I wouldnt be able to make any comparison, but no problem over here.

 

[Chip NoVaMac]

Is ID still a dog to run? I remember in '00 ID was all but unusable on the hardware at the time, when QX4.0 was top dog in performance. I still use Quark today so ID is not at all relevant to me.

Have had no complaints about ID on my PB rev. B with 1.2gb RAM. Did a fullpage newsprint ad in 4 color, and there was just a minor slow down since I did not optimize the graphics. There were tons of "huge" EPS files and very large JPGs. They were much more than what I needed for the task, but didn't want to take the time and size them for my publication.

 

[eclipse525]

Sorry, got a dumb question....

How do you create crops in ID? Do you need a plug in like GLUON's to accomplish this?


~e

 

[Sara7venus]

Objective viewpoint - totally

I've been a user of both InDesign and Quark for many years; my perspective is a lot different than most, however, so my views may not apply to everyone reading this thread. I work in marketing/labeling in the healthcare industry as an in-house creative. I use Quark 6.5 at work, and Adobe InDesign at home. I work with many languages, including the "new" Central European (CE) languages and Greek/Turkish for European countries. The first comment I want to make on Quark 6.5 and laying out foreign languages is that it is a freakin' nightmare! Adobe has produced a very modern, unicode-compliant and top-of-the-line layout program, whereas Quark is still mucking around in the mire of ASCII character sets. This is a horrific experience for anyone dealing with several (and by several I mean like, 23+) languages, dealing with beween 4 and 6 individual character sets. My regional Quark rep. has told me that Quark 7.0 will be unicode-compliant, but I'm not betting on anything spectacular. Other designers in my company, and myself, have seen so many problems converting to Quark 6.5, we're afraid to move to 7.0, even if it is Unicode-compliant. It's a scary thing to know that the FDA is watching (among other regulatory agencies), and to be less-than-confident in Quark's ability to display font characters (ASCII or Unicode) correctly.

 

[Blue Velvet]

Other designers in my company, and myself, have seen so many problems converting to Quark 6.5, we're afraid to move to 7.0, even if it is Unicode-compliant.

Interesting post and one with which I agree. Quark's track record seems to be at least two major revisions to get a feature right if at all...

They've got a serious credibility problem and unless they virtually give v7 away for free, I can't see many designers getting that keen about it.

 

[RacerX]

Does anyone have any objective views on the future of these two Apps. and who really might be the program of choice?

I don't use either (I use Create for all my needs)... so I guess I could be considered objective.

I have tons of experience with both of them as I have to support both apps with my clients and provide training on them.

Frankly, I don't think it would be a good idea for either to become defacto... History has shown that when one app dominates the market (like PageMaker once did and QuarkXPress once did) the users suffer because of it.

My opinion on both:

InDesign is a much easier app to achieve some very nice effects with. The fact that it's save to PDF function has almost all the same options as Distiller is very nice too. And when purchased with the Creative Suite, it has a price that can't be beat.

One of the things I saw of many of the designers I work with that now use InDesign was that they were spending a lot of time doing page layout in Photoshop and Illustrator and only used QuarkXPress to output the final product.

As for QuarkXPress... from a support stand point, it is about as bad a Mac OS X app as I've ever seen. And the fact that QuarkXPress was one of the last (if not the last) major app ported to Mac OS X sure didn't seem to mean that Quark spent any extra time on getting it right.

And QuarkXPress 5 was a slap in the face of it's user base.

And Quark had better start lowering it's prices and caring about it's users. It is no longer all dominant in this industry.

Right now, QuarkXPress is to expensive and to flaky an app. The only thing it seems to have going for it is users who are unable (or unwilling) to learn something new. And frankly, that is not enough. I know of entire publishing houses that have switch completely. And I also know of printers who now charge an extra $500 if you send them QuarkXPress files rather than PDF.



But, like I said, I don't want to see the end of QuarkXPress. I would like to see it try to compete with InDesign in the areas of function/stability, usability, and price.

With work flows ending in PDF, the industry doesn't need one dominant app... it needs competition to make sure that the end users aren't being abused (like QuarkXPress abused it's users for most of the last 10 years).


If you want to know which to use... only you can decide that.

 

[jayscheuerle]

Quark has never really made sense to me....some things you adjust in the bottom toolbar, some things in side pallettes, you can't delete colors without selecting an object, no shortcut for exporting to PDF, the list goes on and on. To me, Indesign just makes sense when working in it. Plus it's a lot easier to work in Indesign, Photoshop, and Illustrator all at the same time, than it is to work in Quark, Illustrator, and Photoshop. If you know Iluustrator, Indesign is a breeze...a standard interface and set of tools is important to me.

The only thing I wish Indesign had was the ability to mirror flip an object across the x or y axis.

You can, but not with the right click. Up top on the tool bar, far right, is a circle with an arrow in it, where you'll find Flip Horizontal, Flip Vertical, and Flip Both. Took me a bit to find this..

 

[jayscheuerle]

Sorry, got a dumb question....

How do you create crops in ID? Do you need a plug in like GLUON's to accomplish this?


~e

Do you mean crop marks in their visible workspace? I don't think it does this (like Illustrator does), but instead adds them when going to pdf or print if you choose (like Quark does).

 

[RacerX]

Only thing I came across so far that I dint like is that you cannot open ID 2.0 files with ID CS and vice versa. Dont know if that has been mentioned but that sucks.

Yes, that was a pretty big problem early on. Adobe made major file format changes from 1.0/1.5 to 2.0, and then again from 2.0 to CS. My understanding is that the format has settled into something more stable with CS and CS2 rather than the wild jumps that came from... well, mainly from InDesign's lack of maturity early on.

What I'm getting from people at Adobe, that the formats will be incremental changes from here forward (rather than major jumps).

But Adobe is a corporation... and in the industry (of computer applications in general), changing the format is the easiest way to force users to upgrade to a new product even if there is no other reason for them to make that move. Microsoft has been using the format lock-in to heard people with Office (and some of their other apps) for years now.