Forum Moderators: not2easy
Basically our studio is expanding, more Macs, more software, more expense... so we are forced to try and reduce overheads so our salaries can remain reasonable ;)
In light of this one obvious change could be made - switch all DTP from Quark to Indesign. Indesign comes bundled in the creative suite (PS + Illustrator) so is much much cheaper. Are there going to be any forseeable problems apart from the 'getting to know you' phase of new software, that I shoyuld know about before we go ahead?
The PDF creation ability of Indesign is much quicker and more robust than quark and as we put a great deal of reports onto the net/cd this way I am thinking we'll get better results.
Whatever the decision we take, the shift will be gradual but eventually I see us doing all DTP work in Indesign.
Will I be limiting my employability if I become an indesign-er? What are your experiences?
Cheers, Limbo.
Your employability with any reputable firm will not change, even if they use Quark when you have switched to InDesign. Knowledge of Pre Press is very hard to come by. I have a position I’m hiring for right now that I expect to be open for quite some time, simply because good knowledge is hard to come by. I’ll settle for anyone with layout experience in Quark and Freehand even though we use InDesign and Illustrator. The two programs are so alike in feel that the learning curve isn’t really that steep. When I made the switch (at the time we were using Quark 5.0 and switched to ID 2.0) It took about a week of everyone working overtime to get all the templates switched over etc., but overall the transition went very smoothly. I find that the PDF’s I output are much cleaner, and I can except more ‘problematic’ PDF’s without the hassles.
In short -- You’ll save money. Your productivity will increase (Quark zealots will argue the other way, but I know from experience that the ‘Command + D’ in InDesign versus the ‘Make picture box’ THEN Command +E THEN ‘fit to content’ in Quark, alone has saved me tons of time over the past 2 years). And really, don’t worry about your employability. Layout is layout. The equivalent would be like say -- Appleworks word processing and MS Word. Both different, but the same.
Seeing as you guys work with so much in the line of PDF/PostScript. IMHO you are making a wise move.
Curious, do you guys RIP yourselves or do you ship that out? I ask because that was the only hang-up in our conversion. We had to update our RIP software ... and I am not even sure why. It just “wouldn’t work” with the new version of InDesign. I think it was more of a vender issue though than a true compatibility issue. I really honestly don’t know what happened there...
Thought I’d throw in my 25¢. (2¢ would have been short) Good luck with whatever road you choose!
-- Zak
Checked out Command + D - already liking that! - spent 5 hours the other day inserting icons into a book - coud have cut the development time by half if had known that! - also liking the picture bounds control behind image box - very useful.
I think the biggest change will be the shortcuts - 5 years using quark and I have gotten pretty leapoardlike - changing my spots will be difficult - I imagine a gentle transition starting with leaflets and working up to bigger documents.
In short -- You’ll save money. Your productivity will increase (Quark zealots will argue the other way, ....And really, don’t worry about your employability.
Luckily I am not a quark zealot, in fact I am even ambiguous when it comes to the PC's VS MAC's debate - every tool has it's shortcomings and advantages...
Curious, do you guys RIP yourselves or do you ship that out?
We dont rip anything inhouse - no printing here. We produce PDF's for screen that match our print work - these are sometimes distributed on CD-Roms with the reports or via the web.
Ta, Limbo
say you have 15 items in a folder and you have to place all of them, physically go to the folder on your HD, highlight all 15 items, and drag directly over your doc. One move: Fifteen items placed.
-- Zak
