Indesign vs Quark

I had nearly 20 years in prepress/graphic design and used both on a daily basis. I was a staunch Quark supporter for years, the only real competition was Pagemaker, and it was very clunky and counter intuitive. The debut of InDesign was horrible, but by version 3 (CS1) they had surpassed Quark by leaps and bounds in my opinion.

Adobe has dominated the market and the rumors of Quarks demise are continually growing (Quark laid off a lot of people last August as their sales continue to decrease). Also, there are a lot of print shops that refused to upgrade to or support Quark 7 when it was released (not a problem if you can export a quality print ready PDF from it, but from my experience, very VERY few people can do so). I honestly don't know what they have in store with version 8, but it needs to be a knock out for them to just stay in business.

Also consider that you can purchase the entire Adobe Creative Suite (InDesign, Illustrator, Photoshop and Acrobat) for little more than the cost of Quark.

You may also want feedback from others who are currently in the trenches dealing with both layout programs. Check out http://www.b4print.com/forums/ and post your question there. And if you currently send any work out to print shops, definitely get opinions from the people who will be processing your files. Their opinions will carry more weight than every anonymous Joe in the internet put together.

Todd Smith
Arizona Home Bargains

(Still unemployed - but making ends meet and growing a solid Real Estate business!)