The Creative Blog

The first answer to this question is: look at the product description of both programs. Then look at reviews from third parties who do not have a personal interest in these programs, such as those you can find in About Desktop Publishing and similar sites.

The third thing you can do is to ask someone who has used both programs and therefore can tell you the differences and can give you a sensible advice. As I have used both programs, I can help you with that.

Question: QuarkXPress vs InDesign, which one is best for professional publishing?
Answer: Both. You can do a super design Quark just as much as you can with InDesign. The two programs do certain things differently, but you can obtain the same result with both of them.

Question: Between Quark and InDesign, which is cheapest?
Answer: InDesign is cheapest. You can buy the whole Creative Suite (which includes Photoshop, Illustrator, Adobe Acrobat and GoLive) for the price of QuarkXPress.

Question: Does InDesign work better with Photoshop and Illustrator?
Answer: InDesign integrates better with these two programs, yes. InDesign CS 2 apparently does even a finer job. QuarkXPress 6.5 though, offers you a free Xtension that allows you to work with Photoshop files even better than InDesign CS (but not better than InDesign CS 2).

Question:Yes but, honestly, how much better does InDesign deal with Photoshop and Illustrator files?
Answer: As I did not try InDesign CS 2, I can only tell you what applies to InDesign CS. The main advantage is that InDesign lets you use less clipping paths. Let's say you want to place a flower in your layout, but you don't want the white background to show despite the fact that you have deleted it in Photoshop. When using Quark you'd have to do a clipping path in Photoshop and then place the image in your QuarkXPress document.

When using InDesign, you simply save your image as a PSD and then you place it in your InDesign document.

Ther are also a couple of neat tricks which you can do with transparencies as well when placing a PSD document in InDesign, which you can't do with QuarkXPress. For example, you can set a layer to 50% transparency in Photoshop and when you import it into InDesign, you will be able to see through that image. So you could put text behind it and you could see it. The same is for AI (Adobe Illustrator) files.

Both QuarkXPress and InDesign have good hyphenation control. All the other basic controls, such as baseline, all caps et al, are just as good in both programs.

InDesign has more control over alternate glyphs (characters) and ligatures, even though Quark has some control over ligatures too.

Both QuarkXPress and InDesign will allow you to play around with typographical niceties like typographer quotes.

Question: What about making fancy text effects? I have heard that InDesign is great at that
Answer: the only difference is that InDesign allows you add drop shadows to text. That's it. Both QuarkXPress and InDesign allow you to do the same things with in different ways otherwise. InDesign's drop shadows can give you problems when you go to press sometimes, so let's just stamp that myth.

Question: Between QuarkXPress and InDesign, which program does the best job when preparing files for printing?
Answer: InDesign has a preflight option that helps you find problems in your files which QuarkXPress does not have. Both QuarkXPress and InDesign have an option that automatically collects all your files into a folder, so you won't have missing images or fonts. QuarkXPress though, can collect also colour profies, if you are colour management conscious, while InDesign does not do that. Also Quark gives you total control over what files collect.

Question: Between QuarkXPress and InDesign, which program is more user friendly?
Answer: That depends from you. If you are used to Photoshop and Illustrator, it will be easier for you to learn InDesign than QuarkXPress.

I would say that QuarkXPress is somewhat more printer friendly. Quark has been in the printing industry longer than InDesign and certain printers might have problems with InDesign files more than with Quark files. Printers who use up-to-date equipment won't have a problem with any of the two programs.

You have probably noticed that InDesign seems to be doing better in my Q & A review. My personal opinion is that InDesign is better, and you are hearing this from someone who has used QuarkXPress more than InDesign.

Just keep in mind that whichever program you use, you will be able to obtain the same result once the ink hits the paper.