slight hijack - I’m about to have Indesign installed on my machine and I’ll get to use that over MS Publisher (hey, its not my fault - its what my work made me use). Having grown very familiar w Publisher, but having very limited experience w Quark and Photoshop, am I going to have a very difficult time w/ Indesign?
I’ve been using Quark since version 3.32, now I’m running Quark 6.5 on OSX, and guess what?! It’s practically the same damn application it was back in 1994. IMO, Quark needs to add some flexibility to their interface (half the crap that i use 90% of the time is still buried in modal dialog boxes… FRUSTRATING!), and add some great new features.
As far as I’m concerned, InDesign has it beat hands down, especially if you’re already familiar with Illustrator. The only downside I’ve found with ID, is it’s slower and not as ubiquitous as Quark… YET. Don’t get me wrong, Quark is a wonderful application in the right hands, but over the years they have not kept up with the trends in graphic design or listened to their customers about features they really want. I use both applications now about 50/50. Depends on the job. And I don’t even take advantage of some of the more robust features in InDesign (like transparency) as I feel it might still cause separation problems… but I still love using it. It’s where Quark should be at this point. Too bad they’ve dropped the ball, as I fear it might be too late for Quark, as InDesign picks up steam.
I could go on and on about Quark, and how annoying it is (even though i’m very fluent in it), but I won’t… I’ll sum it up thusly: Quark is a printer’s app, and InDesign is a designer’s app.
Publisher :eek: You poor thing! I had to use Publisher when I started my current job because I didn’t have any software. If you have a little experience with Quark, it shouldn’t be a hard transition to Indesign. There’s a lot more to learn with Indesign, so it might take a little longer to do things in the beginning, but after you learn the basics, it’s way better than Publisher.
Fun with Publisher: I did a document in Publisher that I had to send out to be printed. It involved resetting tabs–every time I opened the document, it had reset the tabs to the default settings, and I had to reset them every single time. I hate Publisher.
ME
Yes, PDF does handle spot colors. Illustrator and Photoshop have PMS color swatches. Just make sure each color is in its own layer, of course. It doesn’t really matter what color mode you use. Just make sure everything’s in the SAME color mode. When you generate a postscript file, you’re essentially doing a print command. Your graphics application (Illustrator, Photoshop) will do the separation, and the PDF will consist of separated pages.
No! No! Let’s talk about transparency issues!!!
I work in the art dept. of a printing/publishing company where we do almost all the design and prepress and we upgraded to OS X and InDesign in December. I love the CreativeSuite’s total interactivity between programs because PhotoShop’s text handling capabilities were so underwhelming and my boss loves to add glows and shadows and crap on every word. You can drag and drop a text block straight from ID into PhotoShop and add any effects you need while maintaining the formatting. Cool! Well, the end result looks like crap, but he loves the look and he signs the checks…
The problems began to arise because we have an old Itek RIP and a file with transparency in it from any other program but PhotoShop will take hours to RIP. If ever. A normal file RIPs in about 15 mins but an ID or Illustrator file with transparencies can stall the machine out for upwards of 5 hours. We have learned to flatten things but it was a hard lesson to learn.
As for .pdfs? Convenient, but only by really working here can you become an expert on designing for crappy web presses. Too many customer designed ads are a print nightmare. We have to tiptoe around color saturation to an extreme degree because of the toilet paper we print on. It took me months to figure out why so many ads (both in and out-of-house) had 4 color black combinations on them. I finally looked at the mix for the blackest black in the PS color palette and there it was - 75C, 68M, 67Y and 90K! 300% color and not even a solid black!
Mystery solved but it doesn’t stop people from using it who send in ads.
I don’t even use Word anymore since I began using InDesign. Don’t get me started on Quark!
Also, The entire Creative suite can be had for just under a grand if you Google coupon codes.