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(More customer reviews)I've been using Quark XPress for 15 years and I wouldn't have a successful graphic design business without it.
These days, designers have a big choice to make between Quark and InDesign. Although I am certainly an Adobe fan and I use Photoshop and Illustrator extensively, Quark will always be my choice for page layout and publication design.
I have used InDesign for short periods of time and it is a great program. I found that most of the features I use in Quark are there if you look for them.
However Quark has been the industry leader in page layout for so many years. It is a very powerful program and worth the price. Quark has better abilities to manage larger and more complex documents than InDesign.
Quark is a program that can be used very simply (for a one page flyer) or for a 500 or more page document. Quark's strength is in its ability to manage document layout. The use of master pages and style sheets is critical to consistency and efficiency in managing a document. The search and replace features are invaluable if used properly. I did a directory job in 1/4 of the time of another designer by using something called Xpress tags and the search and replace feature that allows you to replace text with a style sheet.
I know that InDesign is touted for its ability to work with native Illustrator files and Photoshop PSD files. Quark 8 also allows for a ton of integration from a variety of other programs including drag and drop of native Illustrator, Photoshop, and Flash files.
Quark has a great website listing all the integration possibilities (and compares them to InDesign) [...] Obviously it will slant to Quark's advantage since it is their promotional materials.
Quark allows you to create for print or web and has anchors and hyperlinks.
For me, Quark is a typesetter's program since its ability to control type, kerning, tracking, scaling, etc. is very precise.
I also like the ease and variety of tools and the ability to do mathematical equations in the measurements box when positioning objects/items. In other words,if you want to but a tab at 1.25 and your next one exactly .375 from there, you can go to the position box where 1.25 is listed and just put: +.375 and Quark calculates it for you.
I really like the ability to set runarounds and clipping paths to objects thereby wrapping text around objects with a lot of control.
Quark occasionally has issues when working in tables (crashing) but there seems to be a fix listed online. There use to be issues with the drop shadows that Quark creates but I think that has been resolved as well.
I use Quark for Windows and have no issues using it on this platform.
Even after 15 years of use, there are many features I haven't learned to use yet. Not knowing these features does not stop me from using the program effectively, it just proves that Quark is very powerful and diverse.
If you are a MAC user or and InDesign fan, please don't write comments about how much better they are. I'm not trying to say that they are not good. It is just my opinion that I prefer to stay with Quark than to switch to InDesign.
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