QuarkXPress 2017 expands layout tech, brings non-destructive image editing

AppleInsider · May 24, 2017 3:28PM

Quark on Wednesday launched QuarkXPress 2017, the latest edition of its design and publishing suite for the Mac, with a heavy focus on publishing for multiple platforms including iOS.

"Adaptive" layout conversion in the new software lets users duplicate a layout and automatically resize its elements, even when changing aspect ratios. Along the same lines, people can export multiple layouts as a single HTML5 package, for instance incorporating iPhone and iPad versions.

The new layout functions also let users churn out as many individual iOS apps as they want without any extra fees, though developers must have their own webservers and domains.

Some other upgrades include non-destructive, Photoshop-style image editing -- with adjustments like levels, curves, and gamma correction -- and improved conversion of third-party files into native QuarkXPress objects. Specifically, converted files can be saved to disk and linked to a QuarkXPress layout while preserving details like resolution and color profile.

QuarkXPress 2017 is normally $849 new, but many discounts are available. Owners of previous versions from 3 through 2015 can upgrade for $399 for instance, while 2016 owners can pay just $185. Educational prices can be as low as $79.

Users of "alternative graphic design software" from companies like Adobe, Corel, and Microsoft can switch for $399.

bill42 · May 24, 2017 3:35PM

Sorry Quark. I loved thee in the 90's but InDesign has won the war with their seamless integration with all the other Adobe apps in the Adobe Suite.

The only reason to go back to Quark is if the Space Alien is still there when you hit CMND-OPT-SHFT-K.

SpamSandwich · May 24, 2017 3:39PM

How I hated this program back when I had to use it for production. Nightmares.

macxpress · May 24, 2017 3:45PM

People still use this? I remember they held back for so long switching over from Mac OS 9 to Mac OS X. I bet they lost a lot of customers over that. What do people use nowadays?

SpamSandwich · May 24, 2017 3:51PM

macxpress said:

People still use this? I remember they held back for so long switching over from Mac OS 9 to Mac OS X. I bet they lost a lot of customers over that. What do people use nowadays?

I suppose many use Adobe's alternative... the name of their software escapes me at the moment.

king editor the grate · May 24, 2017 3:58PM

I used Quark for 20-plus years. Going to InDesign has been a nightmare, chiefly because the keyboard shortcuts are wired into my brain, and some of them now cause small fires. But, I'm getting there. Quark smashed Pagemaker, but its time has past.

volcan · May 24, 2017 4:08PM

bill42 said:

Sorry Quark. I loved thee in the 90's but InDesign has won the war with their seamless integration with all the other Adobe apps in the Adobe Suite.

inDesign is really buggy and crashes a lot. Quark is way more feature rich at this point, but as you say, inDesign is the default layout application. We have 10 offices worldwide so we have standardized on Adobe CC. If collaboration is something you need, then Adobe is probably your best choice, but Quark is really powerful, especially for long multi-page multi-language documents. You can also connect Quark documents to a database so you can pull in images, descriptions into a catalog template.

bloggerblog · May 24, 2017 4:18PM

Yeah, so in the late 90's when Apple wasn't doing so hot, Quark's CEO said that there was no need to stay with Macs and that everyone should switch to PC.

Then a few years later Adobe came out with InDesign, many of us who felt betrayed by Quark's statements and total arrogance quickly gave InDesign a chance. It was surprisingly better especially in the image layering and color management areas. InDesign aped Quark's UI to ease the transition.

Prior to the release of InDesign, Adobe did widespread demos to gather user input to helped them make decisions. Adobe had miserably failed with Pagemaker, a program they acquired from Aldus. I remember during one of those sessions Adobe had planned to make InDesign support multiple page sizes in a document, but many objected and the feature was removed. It was brought back about 10 years later.

nottylerdurden · May 24, 2017 4:21PM

I used this program in the 90s until the 2nd or 3rd revision of indesign came out. Never looked back. Quark is a perfect example of what happens to a company that doesn't value their customer input. The disastrous launch of Quark 4 with it's document corrupting bugs and it was downhill from there. Industry Leader to an Also Ran and it happened quickly. I chaired a production tract at a national publishing convention. We went from one magazine using Indesign and 40 using Quark to the opposite In the span of one year. People we're clamoring for more and begging Quark to add features. Adobe seized the moment and reaped the rewards. within 2 years the college design degree programs stopped teaching it. That's the real death nail, when they stop training the next generation to use your product. Personally I'm stunned they are still in business. But Adobe needs competition to spur development of new features so I'm glad Quark is still there for that reason alone.

zimmie · May 24, 2017 5:39PM

macxpress said:

People still use this? I remember they held back for so long switching over from Mac OS 9 to Mac OS X. I bet they lost a lot of customers over that. What do people use nowadays?

They did indeed. They went from probably 90% marketshare in the 90s to around 40% by 2004. Lack of a transition plan for Mac OS X was a part of it, but they also were kind of hostile to their users at the time. Last I looked, their marketshare is still around 30%. Most small publishers (and wow are there a lot of them) use InDesign for the better integration with other Adobe products. A lot of print houses still use Quark, but a lot have switched to InDesign to better accept files from the smaller publishers.

I personally prefer Quark's layout tools. I also dislike Adobe's products, but most of my recent interaction has been with Lightroom, which I can't stand.

bitmod · May 24, 2017 5:46PM

nottylerdurden said:

I used this program in the 90s until the 2nd or 3rd revision of indesign came out. Never looked back. Quark is a perfect example of what happens to a company that doesn't value their customer input. The disastrous launch of Quark 4 with it's document corrupting bugs and it was downhill from there. Industry Leader to an Also Ran and it happened quickly. I chaired a production tract at a national publishing convention. We went from one magazine using Indesign and 40 using Quark to the opposite In the span of one year. People we're clamoring for more and begging Quark to add features. Adobe seized the moment and reaped the rewards. within 2 years the college design degree programs stopped teaching it. That's the real death nail, when they stop training the next generation to use your product. Personally I'm stunned they are still in business. But Adobe needs competition to spur development of new features so I'm glad Quark is still there for that reason alone.

Bang on.
But what ultimately killed Quark was they found a way to stop pirating. A generation of kids, broke-ass artists and starving free-lancers stopped using it and switched to easily pirate-able CS2. When those kids grew up and freelancers finally made some coin or got jobs - they weren't going to invest in QXP 5 at the time (worst piece of crap ever written.)

Quark always did a few things a lot better than inDesign and is a lot more intuitive (linking text boxes across multiple pages, image resizing inside box)... but QXP 5... wow. It wouldn't even run on a fully loaded G5 (top of the line at the time).

inDesign is a giant turd. I got so frustrated with it, I started using Illustrator and haven't looked back (image resizing inside box hello???). I haven't worked on very large publications since, so i've been ok with it. If I was still putting 50 page rags together, I guess I'd have to bite the bullet somewhere.

Blunt · May 24, 2017 6:05PM

volcan said:
inDesign is really buggy and crashes a lot. Quark is way more feature rich at this point, but as you say, inDesign is the default layout application. We have 10 offices worldwide so we have standardized on Adobe CC. If collaboration is something you need, then Adobe is probably your best choice, but Quark is really powerful, especially for long multi-page multi-language documents. You can also connect Quark documents to a database so you can pull in images, descriptions into a catalog template.

InDesign is buggy and crashes a lot? I've been using it since version 3 and it never ever has crashed on my system.
I really used to love Quark in some ways it's still beter then InDesign. I don't like subscription based sofware. Today i was visiting the Adobe website what a mess for a company that delivers software for designers. Adobe have srewed up many things Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign are still relevant but i don't like their other stuff.

nottylerdurden · May 24, 2017 6:55PM

bitmod said:

Bang on.
But what ultimately killed Quark was they found a way to stop pirating. A generation of kids, broke-ass artists and starving free-lancers stopped using it and switched to easily pirate-able CS2. When those kids grew up and freelancers finally made some coin or got jobs - they weren't going to invest in QXP 5 at the time (worst piece of crap ever written.)

Yeah, there is an entire generation of people who used this program because it was small enough to load on a disk from a Kinko's Mac. I don't know how many design studios I've worked at that were running pirate copies of Quark from Kinko's. Two people would partner up, get a bunch of work, hire a few designers and crank out work. Lose one big client or someone leaves and takes the big client with them and it all fell apart. Everyone would grab their copy of Quark and try and find another studio to do work for. Can't do that any more. But I don't begrudge Adobe for going to a subscription model. It might suck for hobbyists but that's not their market. I can make $70K annually renting software for $600 a year. That's less than 1% of my annual income, seems fair to me. But then again, it's not the software, it's what you can do with it.

SpamSandwich · May 24, 2017 7:21PM

bitmod said:

nottylerdurden said:

I used this program in the 90s until the 2nd or 3rd revision of indesign came out. Never looked back. Quark is a perfect example of what happens to a company that doesn't value their customer input. The disastrous launch of Quark 4 with it's document corrupting bugs and it was downhill from there. Industry Leader to an Also Ran and it happened quickly. I chaired a production tract at a national publishing convention. We went from one magazine using Indesign and 40 using Quark to the opposite In the span of one year. People we're clamoring for more and begging Quark to add features. Adobe seized the moment and reaped the rewards. within 2 years the college design degree programs stopped teaching it. That's the real death nail, when they stop training the next generation to use your product. Personally I'm stunned they are still in business. But Adobe needs competition to spur development of new features so I'm glad Quark is still there for that reason alone.

Bang on.
But what ultimately killed Quark was they found a way to stop pirating. A generation of kids, broke-ass artists and starving free-lancers stopped using it and switched to easily pirate-able CS2. When those kids grew up and freelancers finally made some coin or got jobs - they weren't going to invest in QXP 5 at the time (worst piece of crap ever written.)

Quark always did a few things a lot better than inDesign and is a lot more intuitive (linking text boxes across multiple pages, image resizing inside box)... but QXP 5... wow. It wouldn't even run on a fully loaded G5 (top of the line at the time).

inDesign is a giant turd. I got so frustrated with it, I started using Illustrator and haven't looked back (image resizing inside box hello???). I haven't worked on very large publications since, so i've been ok with it. If I was still putting 50 page rags together, I guess I'd have to bite the bullet somewhere.

InDesign and Illustrator are completely different animals. For e-books, printed publications and other long-form content, InDesign is really the way to go. Illustrator is perfectly capable of multi-panel or multi-page documents, but it's really not how and where it works best.

dysamoria · May 24, 2017 7:21PM

I was "trained" in Quark at a design program and I hated the ultra non-intuitive software. When I ended up using PageMaker, I preferred it (of course Adobe killed it; I wasn't fond of InDesign in the beginning and haven't done that kind of work since). I did notice Quark fail to transition to OS X in the early days, though so many developers made the same mistake (Adobe's applications were merely carbonized for years). I thought the product vanished. But here it is, still insanely priced...

Blunt · May 24, 2017 7:50PM

dysamoria said:

I was "trained" in Quark at a design program and I hated the ultra non-intuitive software. When I ended up using PageMaker, I preferred it (of course Adobe killed it; I wasn't fond of InDesign in the beginning and haven't done that kind of work since). I did notice Quark fail to transition to OS X in the early days, though so many developers made the same mistake (Adobe's applications were merely carbonized for years). I thought the product vanished. But here it is, still insanely priced...

I disagree. Quark for me was dead simple to use. Pagermaker was a joke, really slow screen render times and slow printing. Quark had good extensions and really good AppleScript support.

volcan · May 24, 2017 8:00PM

Blunt said:
InDesign is buggy and crashes a lot?

Mine crashes at least a couple times a week. I have an iMac 5K with 32 gigs of ram, but I almost always have a dozen or more inDesign files open at the same time as well as several PS and AI files and a couple different browsers because they each have cookies for different mail accounts, so even with 32 gigs I'm still probably running low on memory. I haven't bothered to monitor it, too busy working, but it does crash and in different ways. Sometimes it just goes away and other times it locks up when packaging up projects or exporting pdf files. Usually when this happens there are really big PS files involved, but only inDesign crashes. Everything else is fine.

This just started happening with the latest version of CC. Before it was rock solid.

The buggy part is that I lose the cursor and it defaults to the text cursor or the direct selection tool no matter which tool I'm using. Another annoyance is the eyedropper style function stops working correctly and instead of copying and applying the style of the text it outlines it with a the foreground color. I have to completely quit inDesign to get it back. Another text issue is when working on really large documents, small text blocks will sometimes show a solid black background, but only visually, not really. You have to zoom way in and select the text to get the background to go away. I have dozens of other complaints but I've said enough for now.

Spiffers74 · May 24, 2017 8:23PM

I use QuarkXPress 3.3.1 on a daily basis, on my G4 Quicksilver running mac os 9. After the transition to OSX, Quark got so bloated, it was getting more and more idiotic. Just to print, one had to go through 3 dialogs for setting the crap up. I have tried later versions, but even running QuarkXPress 2016 on the Trashcan can not compete with the old one. I would really love if they could release a stripped down version that just did what it used to do. All the image editing crap, vector bull, thats what Photoshop and Illustrator is for. So let those apps just do what they do, and Quark focus on what its supposed to do. Until that happens, Ill still use my trusty old G4

Just for the record, I use the Trash Mac Pro for Photoshop and Illustrator, so Im not all old school all the time

planetary paul · May 24, 2017 8:46PM

I'm looking forward to giving the upcoming Affinity Publisher a whirl......

YvLy · May 25, 2017 5:40AM

I used it in the 90's and they were ignorant and arrogant ... but relevant. I had a look at it again 3 years ago and they still were ignorant and arrogant .... but this time utterly irrelevant. What a waste of space.

Blunt · May 25, 2017 7:31AM

volcan said:
This just started happening with the latest version of CC. Before it was rock solid.

I am still running 5.5 and only 4 GB. Don't need the new stuff they add.

QuarkXPress 2017 expands layout tech, brings non-destructive image editing

Comments