Quark vs. InDesign, again
A client emailed us today, letting us know that they were switching to OS X and were considering switching to InDesign (from Quark). They’re a large company, so it wouldn’t be an immediate transition, but they were kind enough to ask us contractors what our opinion was. Nice!
So, I made a list of all of the reasons I prefer InDesign over Quark — and there are many, as most of you know — and sent them off. Afterwards, though, I realized that I was speaking of InDesign 2 or 3 (aka CS) vs. Quark 4 and 5. I really don’t know Quark 6.
Back in 2003, CreativePro wrote:
…All things being equal, it is quite clear that Adobe InDesign is the superior program. It incorporates superior technology, is written using a superior programming methodology, the features it has in common with XPress are implemented in a superior way, and while XPress has a few important features that InDesign does not, InDesign clearly has the superior feature set in toto.
That was comparing Quark 6 with ID 2. But when you read the whole article, it’s not a knock-out for InDesign. For ID CS, however, the story is different:
…I can publicly evaluate the two most recent releases, side by side. The results surprise me. I’m surprised because I’ve been a QuarkXPress lover since 1988, when I switched from PageMaker to what I considered a real page-layout program. I was a QuarkXPress evangelist in one “shootout” after another around the United States during the early 1990s. After hundreds of hours learning how to eke every little tip and trick out of the program, people started calling me “Mr. QuarkXPress.” So I’m surprised. I’m surprised because when I compare QuarkXPress 6 and InDesign CS, the result is obvious: InDesign is the real page-layout program, and QuarkXPress 6 feels like a relic.
Macworld is in on the act, too, calling InDesign “clearly the leader:”
Like a slow but persistent B-movie monster that eventually catches its screaming victim, InDesign will soon overtake XPress. Adobe has added several QuarkXPress features to InDesign, such as the ability to mix inks and make custom rules and underlines. And it has enhanced the program’s superior table-creation and typographic features, pushing forward unique features such as transparency control. Sure, XPress has many features InDesign doesn’t, and it may still be easier to flow text in QuarkXPress, via the combination of master pages, automatic page addition, and pre-linked text boxes. But these advantages may no longer be enough to keep people using XPress.
XPress’s unique strengths have dwindled to a few little-used functions, and InDesign CS is the program that will relegate QuarkXPress to PageMaker’s status of a decade ago. PageMaker users gave up that program’s few advantages to move to QuarkXPress, and now QuarkXPress users are likely to switch to InDesign, which, by all accounts, Adobe will continue to improve.
What do you think? Any Quark 6 users out there who want to defend the former page-layout champion, or help with insights that we haven’t covered?
Update In case you don’t go through the discussion: Lookmark kindly commented with another excellent comparison from ArsTechnica. Now if only they would learn about the white text on the black background thing.… (Thanks, Lookmark!)
Comments:
giles:
your advice was sound in spite of your lack of experience with qxp6. i always thought that xpress 3 was danged good/borderline great, given the times … qxp4 had it’s problems but eventually stablized. qxp5 was a complete waste of money. qxp6 isn’t much better; it’s been a huge time-waster for me and my co-workers. indesign cs just WORKS. qxp6 is a mountain of band-aids on top of ancient code. if i had my way i’d just toss the thing and work in ID-CS.
qxp (6,5, or 4) just doesn’t play well with OSX.
Our studio didn’t hesitate to switch to a site license for ID 2.0, although like GCH I‘ve used XPress since v1. Versions 1 & 2 were awful but 3.3 started to get good. Our studio (about 7 or 8 artists) has used v4 happily for years.
The factors which pushed me over included the intransigence of Quark re OS X version (a Carbon beta would have only been a couple of months’ work); the ridiculous, extortionate pricing; and too infrequent updates; and technical superiority of the Adobe product.
I’m a big fan of Indy CS over Quark as well. And I’ve used Quark 6 — it works (mostly), but w/ some pretty dubious features added… nothing to write home about.
An excellent comparison of InDesign vs. Quark (from a pretty tech-savvy magazine designer’s perspective) can be found over here:
http://www.arstechnica.com/reviews/003/software/indesign/indesign-1.html
I belive Indesign is a better program because of the way it works with Photoshop and Illustrator, but if you know Quark you can use Indesign.
-Quark 6 User
There is ONE major feature between the two programs that even the most diehard Quark-fan cannot dispute.
The cost.
Quark XPress 6.5 as of this writing costs $1,019.00 in a major mail-order catalog. The ENTIRE Adobe Creative Suite (InDesign, Illustrator, Photoshop, GoLive and Acrobat - FIVE programs) costs $1,140.00 in the same catalog.
If you still wanted to go with Quark XPress, to accomplish your work you’d still have to purchase Photoshop (or a competitor), Illustrator/FreeHand, and Acrobat Pro. Purchased separately, these costs can easily be $1,500. Of course, that means that if you wanted to run a productive prepress shop, printer, or design studio, you would still likely buy the entire Adobe Creative Suite in order to save on those three programs. Which means you would get InDesign “thrown in”. So why not use it?
And training costs? Hah. If you can use Illustrator you can use InDesign. If you are familiar with Quark you can make the switch easily enough. Any industry professional who needs 2 days of intensive training to learn the essentials of InDesign should be tested for drugs. Or given some.
Quark continues to offset their huge development costs of all of their failed software ventures by charging more and more for their ONE good product: Quark XPress. Don’t get me started on Quark XPress Passport Edition, which costs $1,895 and comes with a troublesome USB dongle. InDesign has all of its features and MORE at 1/3 the price.
There is no reason to use Quark XPress unless you are tied to a Quark Copydesk system at a major publisher. My $0.02
Since it’s introduction I’ve always wanted to give InDesign a try. When 1.0 came out I talked my boss into shifting our magazine into Adobe’s new whiz program. I did one magazine (2000) in it and our printer kicked the job back to us because InDesign could not properly process all the duo-tones. It was a disaster. I had to transfer the entire 128 page magazine back into quark. The magazine went way off deadline.
When 2.0 came out I thought . . Adobe must have this thing right by now. I had heard good things about ID. This time around I had style sheets that kept getting corrutped. Once again I bailed on InDesign.
Then in 2006 I designed an 80 page catalog and once again I gave InDesign another shot. I completed the job and sent the high rez pdf’s to the printer. Much to my dismay, many Indesign drop shaddows just didn’t work. It cost my company extra money to get those pages fixed after the fact.
All in all InDesign has many bells and whistles and Adobe proclaim this to be a highly superior program. My experience has been that it is feature rich, but it’s always had more than it’s share of bugs. The most recent CS version is pretty solid and it is the only version I would recommend.
InDesign 1.0 — Bug riddled, clunky page to page slow — garbage. Quark’s speed alone smoked this version.
InDesign 2.0 — Still a little buggy — and it got a little faster going page to page, but still very slow compared to quark. Quark beat this version too.
InDesign CS — Still slower than quark but most of the bugs have been worked out. But some bugs still remain.
In desk top publishing speed is HUGE. For this reason quark is always a reasonable choice.
I’m new to this blog, but I’ve been reading all the comments about QuarkXPress vs. InDesign with great interest. I run a graphics design company and as such I have felt the need to keep up with all the latest versions of all the various programs; you never know what a client might request. I made the switch to InDesign CS under duress I must admit. Years ago I was forced to use PageMaker and I couldn’t image that Adobe had come up a decent program. What an eye-opener InDesign CS has been! I’ve been using Quark since the late 80’s and was a real die hard. After two weeks in InDesign I haven’t looked back. Now when I have to use Quark, because an old client has a document originally done in Quark, I find it so cumbersome and slow! I’m now using InDesign CS2 and it just blows Quark out of the water. My dilemma now is—do I spend the ridiculous amount of money Quark is asking for to upgrade my version, or forget it? I never use Quark anymore if I can help it. A side note: Quark actually called me on the phone a few months ago to personally ask me to upgrade to 7.0. When I pressed the rep on what I would get in 7.0 he really couldn’t give me anything specific. They must know they’re in trouble if they have their sales reps actually making phone calls soliciting for sales. Well, that’s my two cents. (Please pardon my website; major redesign in progress; new site up by the end of the month so please check back.)