Sorry Quark – Adobe has got you beat!

Being a graphic arts professional for over 20 years and a QuarkXpress user for at least 15 of them, this article is bittersweet. Quark evolved into one of the most important page layout tools in the arsenal of desktop publishing professionals. It was the de-facto standard against which all others were judged.

Not so fast! Like I said I was a Quark Supporter. I loathed Pagemaker and everybody who used it. At the same time the arrogance of Quark continued to lurk around in the recesses of my brain. I had numerous issues with functionality and the unwillingness of the brass at Quark to listen to users. All that being said, when the media announced that Adobe would be releasing “the Quark Killer” I laughed out loud. Adobe, page layout, ha, what they are going to do, fix Pagemaker or worse yet Framemaker? No way!

Swallow – Boy was I wrong. When InDesign was first released, Adobe made it so incredibly affordable that I tried it. InDesign 1.0 was worse than Pagemaker. We all laughed again. Adobe could never take over. Adobe is going no where, as a matter of fact lets take a look at QuarkXPosure. After all Quark is superior at page layout maybe image manipulation is better there as well. Gulp – Boy I was wrong again.

Today, InDesign is a perfect compliment to Illustrator and Photoshop. As a graphics professional, we now cringe at the thought of receiving work in anything later that Quark 6.5. Quark 7 broke a good program and Quark 8 is too little to late.

InDesign and the newest PDF RIP technology create a speedy workflow that works. Printers everywhere prefer the formats and it has enabled productivity increases that help everyone save time and money. If you are on the fence about making the switch, JUST DO IT! The learning curve is quick, the cost is within reason and the benefits are enormous.