Comments on: QuarkXPress 7: Thumbs Up In The UK

by: Macteach

Tue, 12 Sep 2006 10:05:58 +0000

>Read it for youreselve and ‘teach on!’ MacTeach. :-)

In the message I read: ‘not seeing masks’ i did net read ‘Not seeing clipping paths’. I understood a Mask as a alpha channel

by: woz

Tue, 12 Sep 2006 10:05:29 +0000

LoL. Here it is already:
“Also, if you use clipping masks for layer transparency, QuarkXpress trips up. A workaround is to build an alpha channel and use that as the PSD transparency within XPress.”
Read it for youreselve and ‘teach on!’ MacTeach. :-)

by: Macteach

Tue, 12 Sep 2006 10:05:04 +0000

>Oh and there was ‘this thing’ about Xpress 7 not seeing the masks in P’shop….

you mean: you don’t know ho to :-)
Just select the mask you want, right there in your controlpalet!

by: Tony Morse

Tue, 12 Sep 2006 10:04:43 +0000

Quark 7 seems to me to be slow in odd places - like opening/converting files, printing, exporting, etc. No real performance issues per se, but I have noticed that Preps 4 hates any PDF generated from Quark 7 for some reason. Also, the way Q7 generatesd postscript puts a “:” character in the filename (!!) which causes big problems when printing to a Unix-based server.

In short, I’ve been working with Q7 for about three weeks and have started converting all my Q7 pages directly back to Q6. New features be damned.

by: woz

Tue, 12 Sep 2006 10:04:23 +0000

Nope. I have not used Xpress 7 for my daily use. (And never will or I will be looking for another job) I’m a happy InDesign user. (Infact, I work here because of InDesign. I helped transform this agency from Xpress to InDesign). I do however have to deal with ‘3rd party’s’ that rely on Xpress. In fact, overhere in Europe (Amsterdam) a lot of newspapers still rely on Xpress 4 and/or 5. And occaisionaly ‘the sh*t will hit the fan’ overthere when there’s a spotcolor in a certified PDF file.

Oh and there was ‘this thing’ about Xpress 7 not seeing the masks in P’shop….

by: hunter

Tue, 12 Sep 2006 10:04:01 +0000

Comments from anyone on Q7’s slowness? We’re not about to upgrade to a slower piece of software, no matter how fancy it is.

by: steve

Tue, 12 Sep 2006 10:03:43 +0000

Hi Woz,Yeah you can bring in PSD files from CS2, QXP7 just doesn;t let you manipulate certain layer effects but worst case it brings it in composite. Unlike InDesign it can also automatically map the spot colors in the PSD file directly into your colors palette and they can then be managed. Sure you can bring in PDFs with spot colors, color management is way better in 7, it uses ICC profiles. Of ocurse QuarkXPress is in major newspaper workflows? Have you actually tried version 7?

by: woz

Tue, 12 Sep 2006 10:03:21 +0000

I am sorry but I do not feel the author has actually USED QuarkXpress 7 to produce a piece of artwork. This reads just like a press release from Quark. I would however like to hear your professional opinion on the major text-bugs and crahes as reviewed bij ArsTechnica (and several other sites). Also what about this .psd import? I hear it’s not compatible with CS2 .PSD’s. That sort of renders it useless doesn’t it?What about PDF -import? How will Xpress place PDF files with spotcolors for example? These are important features when producig a black and spotcolor newspaper. Doesn’t Xpress focus on newspaper-workflows? I thought hey did…