[jholmes]

The new issue of CA has an interesting article about InDesign vs. Quark and I saw myself in the article. There are tons of things about Quark that bug me - but not enough to learn a whole new program.
Does anybody use InDesign or have you made the switch from Quark?

The article cast a very favorable light on InDesign but, I need some real world info. That and talking to the printers and service bureaus to make should everybody can work with it.

If anyone has any input I'd appreciate it.

[MikeM32]

Well I work in a service bureau "like" environment. I work for a major Printing Firm, in thier pre-press/graphics deptartment. We specialize in Direct Mail and Business forms for the most part. Many jobs we typeset from scratch and others (mainly the direct mail stuff) we simply receive artwork from ad agencies for some major clients like Columbia House and JCPenney.

We were forced into purchasing InDesign when one of our major clients sent us an InDesign file, this was a big press-run with lots of $$$ involved. We pretty-much had to learn it "on the fly". Admittedly we knew InDesign was "out there" but we never expected to actually see an InDesign file for quite some time.

99.9% of the files we deal with are Quark format, so wer'e all very familiar with it, and comfortable with it. In fact, since purchasing InDesign we've only seen one other file in InDesign format (and it was from the same client, and basically just a revision of the same direct mail job).

As a die hard, but open minded Quark enthusiast I can say InDesign is a great application for ease of use. I'd have to say Adobe got it right this time, especially if you compare it to thier previous "Layout" application PageMaker. I despise using PageMaker and am not afraid to say so. I think Adobe took many of the best features of QuarkXPress and incorporated them into InDesign. Many would dare say they even "stole" from Quark, but this is neither here nor there. You can even customize many keyboard shortcuts to "mimic" Quarks.

But where InDesign still falls short by comparrison to QuarkXPress is in output control. For the most part it's pretty basic, and it works when printing to our many Laser printers. The real issue is with manual tiling we require to output to films. In QuarkXPress you simply nudge the "X" zero axis in on the edge of the document (.236" to be precise) and you can output an 18" wide form to our 18.14" film. We also have to do this because of the way our printing plants use the films punch-holes for making plates.

InDesign takes the document size literally unlike Quark. It "sees" a 20" wide document, even though the actual form/artwork on the document is only 18" wide (from left to right crops). We were capable of fixxing the problem, but it required a "half-baked" approach, where we had to make the document in InDesign the exact width of our film.

Manual tiling just didn't seem to work at all. I do admit that we have some unusual procedures for output which may not be "the norm" in most pre-press/print house/service bureaus however.

It's mostly the job of the service bureau to have access to as much software as they might possibly see formats for. We've always had to have copies of PageMaker handy in the past, as well as QuarkXPress. Despite minor output issues, I'd rather deal with InDesign over PageMaker that's for sure.

But personally I still say Quark rules

Mike

[mike322]

Hi Mike,

I agree with you. As a prepress manager for about 20 years now, I have run a few pages in my day job. Currently in 2006, that's about 70% Quark Xpress. But InDesign has gained quite a piece of the market, in the last year mainly. Here's the biggest fact of my daily life that forms my opinion on Quark and InDesign.

Out of the minority of InDesign jobs comes a HUGE majority of all output related prepress issues we have every day. It's that simple. Additionally if I ever have to build anything, I grab my tool of choice, it's still Quark Xpress. I develop Xtensions for Quark Xpress and Plug-Ins for Adobe InDesign that I sell and many applications that are custom skunk works, and quark is a better platform for automation as well.

That said, if I design something in InDesign it will output perfectly. It's mainly that InDesign stretched out so far in terms of user control and feature that you can easily create a document that is like a prepress minefield. With InDesign training should come a dose of caution and moderation. Things like ability to create a mlti layered image with 6 transparent layers and use it as a background under all the other complex design work. Then take every image on a page and feather it's edges A FRACTION of a pixel? WTF? Why would Adobe allow a user to feather a fraction of a pixel. It's very easy to over design a document and send it somewhere else to be hacked into reality. It's another to sit here in prepress catching this crap that won't print, every day...

[andi*pandi]

this post was from 2001... if anything qualifies as a zombie thread, I think this does!

mikeM32, where are you now!

[Chuckit]

Holy spam, Batman!

[greenamp]

lol

[art_director]

this is an effing bogus quark lovefest if there's ever been such a thing...

[iREZ]

i work in pre press, i use quark at work to output film almost everyday...i still use indesign when im at home.

down with quark, viva indesign!

[siMac]

I used IDCS to output film for a couple of years before I left my service bureau job. Never had many problems - no more than Quark at any rate. Some problems early on but that was part of the learning curve, once I came to appreciate ID's advanced spot colour control, overprint/separation previews and excellent PDF generation I much preferred it over QXP for film output.

There, I've had my say, RIP: This Thread.

[godzookie2k]

At our agency half the print guys use quark and half of them use indesign. Both applications frustrate me.

[godzookie2k]

also, lol@this bump

[art_director]

funny thing...

two years ago i did a project for a small design shop. when i went to hand off files they informed me they were using iddesign. never before had i experienced this problem, it was an industry assumption that everything be done in quark so i did without questioning compatibility.

last year another small design shop client again asked for indesign files. this being only the second time i was asked for indesign files over quark files.

yesterday, may 11, 2006, i was informed by a very large client that beginning next month they'll be moving to an all indesign workflow. at last, a large department making the shift to id. i'm thrilled about the opportunity to get my feet wet with id and take a step away from quark. i hoist my middle finger in the general direction of their denver hq.