Quark Forums

Just found this info on the CreativePro site:

Quark Online Book Outlines How QuarkXPress 7 Can Be Integrated with Adobe Creative Suite 3 to Achieve Optimum Results

http://www.creativepro.com/story/news/26204.html

I'm surprised Quark doesn't put this info on the front page of their website.

Hmm.

[quote:4933c808d5]QuarkXPress and Photoshop are the two most widely used design applications and QuarkXPress is considered by many to have the best integration with Photoshop's PSD file format of any layout tool available today.

thing:

And there is the last point - if you have a CS3 package that includes Illustrator and Photoshop then you have ID too. Why buy XPress?

That is the big point. This is just marketing to keep existing QuarkXPress users content with their purchase and to assume that they are better off by sticking to QuarkXPress. It is tough to spread FUD when users already have ID.

I can't believe anyone will be sold on it though. If, like I said, they have CS3 (and therefore ID) odds are they already have experienced the differences between that and XPress. So what worth does a book saying XPress is better than ID really have!

If it's full of good tips for getting CS3 apps to play well with XPress then great, good move. But it really shouldn't be even trying to go the comparison route because it's just going to fall flat on its face.

BTW - FUD?

Sure people can be sold on it. Plenty of people on these forums have InDesign as part of the suite but barely peek at it.

Quark's marketing has always promoted a familiar interface and taught us to not look elsewhere. Plenty of folks on this forum say 'I don't want to have to learn a new software' or 'I don't like InDesign because the interface is not intuitive'. They do not realize that they are confusing intuition with familiarity of an app that they have used for so long. Creatives have an unfortunate problem with thinking creatively. They are too set in their ways.

Without the price, feature set or stability of InDesign, Quark has to market its product with fear, uncertainty and doubt.

Jim said:
[quote:3383a14176]Plenty of folks on this forum say 'I don't want to have to learn a new software' or 'I don't like InDesign because the interface is not intuitive'. They do not realize that they are confusing intuition with familiarity of an app that they have used for so long.

I see the 'HUH' but I do not understand the question or confusion.

Creative folk can be so uncreative that they think that only one platform or one application can make them the most creative. They stick with what they know, even if that ignorance of other tools actually limits their own potential. Quark exploits the horse blinders that many of its users have on. The first couple issues of the renovated Xray magazine demonstrate this well. There was a hilarious two part article titled something like 'why I won't switch'.

Hopefully the earlier posters have had a chance to read the booklet by now and see that it is not some anti Adobe propaganda pamphlet but a tip and tricks book for QuarkXPress 7 users.

Layout Newsletter described it well, I think: "The book is a concise and honest guide to what you can and can’t do, and it provides some interesting workarounds too." http://layoutmag.wordpress.com/2007/12/13/free-guide-to-using-quarkxpress-7-with-adobe-cs3/

Most of our users use the Creative Suite or some of its components. And we have found that many of our users don't realize the depth of integration that is available. So this booklet is one way of 'making the product better.'

Marc Horne,
Quark Inc.

Marc Horne (Quark):

Hopefully the earlier posters have had a chance to read the booklet by now and see that it is not some anti Adobe propaganda pamphlet but a tip and tricks book for QuarkXPress 7 users.

And we have found that many of our users don't realize the depth of integration that is available. So this booklet is one way of 'making the product better.'

Marc Horne,
Quark Inc.

Well said Marc!

I've read the newsletter and that's exactly what I got out of it: very objective and I learned several things I didn't know.

Thank you for putting out these newsletters, I'm looking forward to reading more.

Maybe those links should be included in a sticky post somewhere in the Forums.

Thanks.

Marc, we appreciate the best practices documents, and this one does have useful information to a point, but with all due respect what silly person wrote this?

Check out this lunacy in the book:

Page 21:
[quote:9df5e6d04a]IMPORTING PDF
QuarkXPress 7.3 can import PDF files up to version 1.5.

The default PDF version from the Creative Suite applications when using the Press Quality PDF setting is PDF 1.4, but if you do receive a PDF that's version 1.6 or 1.7 you will need to downsave it in Adobe Reader before import.

Good catch on the "Adobe Reader" typo. If we do a second edition, we'll change that. Or you can always petition Adobe to add that feature.

re: page 13. As the book notes you can convert to a compound path, which improves the situation somewhat.

Re: teeth-cutting. What's the problem with saying that some people's first experience of page-design was with InDesign? I thought that was quite open-minded of us? :) We frequently hear stories of people who need to learn QuarkXPress when starting a new job or gaining a new client and this chapter is for them.

Thanks for the good wishes and continual feedback.

Marc Horne,
Quark Inc.

Marc Horne (Quark):

If we do a second edition, we'll change that. Or you can always petition Adobe to add that feature.

While the rest of us aren't held too highly to strict professional standards here, that comment is a pretty poor reflection of Quark.

Is the design software used to produce the PDF book so complicated that a change is impossible? Why state 'IF'? Why acknowledge an error but fail to say "we will do our best to correct this ASAP"?

For some reason this is not a surprise. :lol:

Good point, I could have been a bit clearer there: I've made the change and we'll post a new version with the correction soon.

I can't promise, though, that it will include a proofreading credit for Jim.

Marc Horne
Quark Inc.

Just for the record, Marc, I'm not knocking the idea behind a tips book like this just some of the comments in the link from the original post - like the one I quoted about integration.

Personally I don't think anyone would agree XPress integrates as well with CS3 apps as other Adobe programs do. However tips to help making their use, in conjunction with XPress, are, of course, a good thing.

And to be fair the fact that this book is free is great.

However I still think there's too much to fix in XPress to be using time up writing about what it can do with esoteric tips. Rather than find ways to make it integrate better with a competitors product in an effort to encourage people to keep using XPress with CS3 rather than jacking it in totally for ID why not make XPress better than ID. Or at least a closer equal.

Much as I prefer XPress in general sadly I find I turn to ID more and more often. Simply because it will do what I need and better. Remember with all the other creative apps there really are no choices - Adobe (or some odds and sods) rules. Except with ID, which does have a competitor (cheers) and hopefully long will have. I'd just like to see a less hobbled one with a chance of winning a race against ID!

Good luck.

Greg

The most ridiculous part of this book is page 14

".. The end result is
that you and your printer get a folder full of cmyk tiffs,
for example, at the resolution you requested and each
perfectly sized. The only way your printer will know that
you didn’t do them one by one in Photoshop is that you’ll
get them all right!
..."

This simply doesn't work in the current version of quark, it is impossible to achieve a correctly coloured CMYK conversion as there are no colour management options or profiles. It creates a useless untagged CMYK image.

I've spoken to many people at Quark and the guy that wrote Quark's colour management article for the last newsletter and all have agreed that it just doesn't work. Also the scale option is very inconsistent for images that are placed over 100%.