InDesign 2 Imagesetters

What r the DOs & DON'Ts for sending InDesign files for print?

[Tiga]

I'm a professional designer who's been using Quark for a while now and have made the choice to switch to InDesign 2.0 as I've read a lot of good things about it and was wondering, for anyone who has used it for sending jobs to an Imagesetter, would you be able to tell me what are the DOs & DON'Ts for sending InDesign files to the printer as I don't want to find out the hard way, thanks?

[SupaDucta]

1. Quark is no competition for InDesign.

No DONT's for InDesign, just a few holes you can fall into:

When outputting to certain imagesetters (not many though) you have to embed linked images before output. Avoid PS Level 1 or uncomplete Level 2 implementations. Always place text layer above images to avoid transparency flattening catching your text. Set the transparency flattening to a max. quality level.

That's all. If you take care of it, you will be delighted with a great output and reliable production.

Throw Old (and bad) Quarkosaurus to history.

And switch to new InDesign CS - it's a dream.

BTW, you kind of missed the forum topic here, no? ;)

[Tiga]

It definelty is a lot better than Quark, I can actually design properly NOW! Hoooray!

Thanks for the reply, I've been reading up on lots of websites about printing with InDesign but none mentioned any of those problems so that's a real help.

Do you still need to embed links even when sending files to Acrobat distiller?

It's the only Forum I could find that related closely to my topic, unles you know of another one as I'm new to this site.

[pageoneresults]

Doesn't InDesign offer a Collect for Output option? I've been using Quark since the early 90s and have yet to see a program that can outperform it when it comes to daily desktop publishing routines. Plus, Quark has more support in the print community than InDesign does.

[Tiga]

InDesign has PACKAGE which is the same as Quarks COLLECT FOR OUTPUT.

Quark is better in some ways but it also depends on what works better for you and your workflow and is a lot easier than you think to switch to. If you want to read a full rundown on the differences between the both then go to this address:
[creativepro.com...]

But overall InDesign comes out on top and is an Adobe product and also a lot of Press houses are starting to accept InDesign files as there prefered file type.
PDF started off slow and with problems but is now the prefered industry standard for sending files to the printer and I'm pretty sure InDesign will follow the same footsteps, so hopefully we''ll start seeing some more consistency happening through the all Adobe software and the industry (especially with colour).

So to finish off, I'm all for InDesign.

[SupaDucta]

So am I.

InDesign is an application a few levels above Quark XPress, and when you switch to it from Quark you never go back.

Additionally, I don't care which printer accepts INDD files because I always produce PDF or PS documents.