QuarkXpress 6.0 (Mac) Review

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(More customer reviews)This program is a complete joke. Quark has basically re-issued Quark 4 (and 5 for that matter) with almost NOTHING new worth mention.
* The very first thing you'll notice is this ridiculous validation scheme. Think you're going to buy software and install it and go to work? Wrong!! You have to be validated first which, if something goes wrong, can take DAYS!
* The multiple undo's would have been a great feature for 1998, even now not everything is undo-able.
* Quark has this wonderful new system of "Projects" and documents. If you ever pick-up an old document to make some changes and then re-save as a new one, the old file name remains with the file because Quark assumes you're just adding a new document to the project...A MAJOR ANNOYANCE! If you do use the project thing as intended (multiple documents and sizes wrapped up into a single file) you still have to collect each individual document seperately! HELLO?! HOW BOUT "COLLECT ALL"??
* The "Export to PDF" feature so rarely works, I don't even bother with it. I still have to "print" to a PDF.
* The "full resolution preview" isn't and frequently causes crashes when trying to change the preview res on a picture.
* All the old stupid annoying things about Quark are faithfully preserved in version 6...
* Still no "update all" feature in the links menu.
* Still no way to select a graphic and tell Quark to re-link to something different.
* Still no key commands to select tools on the tool palette.
* Still limited to 48x48" layouts.
* Still no support for OpenType. If you use OpenType fonts, expect lots of very strange letter spacings, etc.
* Lots of people still use Quark 4. If you need to save down, you must save from Q6 to Q5, then Q5 to Q4. If you're upgrading from 4 to 6, YOU'RE SCREWED! Quark 6 WILL NOT save down to Quark 4!
* Quark brags about all these new features that NOBODY will have a use for. Web pages?! PLEASE! Not even even a half-a** hack web designer would try to create a website in Quark! I tried just for the experience and believe me, it's a joke! 3 words... NO CODE VIEW!! How bout 4 more? NO MEASUREMENT IN PIXELS. These things alone makes Quark a web program not to be taken seriously.
If you're DYING to waste nearly $900, keep your antique Quark 4 or 5 and take that money to Vegas. Better yet, download a free trial of InDesign and see what a REAL page layout program should look like in the year 2004!

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Item #: F72218. QuarkXPress is powerful layout software with an intuitive, versatile interface that lets you combine writing, editing, and typography with color and pictures to produce dynamic final output. QuarkXPress is widely used by magazines, newspapers, advertising agencies, typesetters, printers, corporate publishers, design firms, catalog houses, book publishers, and form designers. It is also used by businesses with publishing requirements.QuarkXPress 6 software includes a wealth of new design and productivity-enhancing features that let you produce professional layouts - for print and the Web - more efficiently than ever.Because PDF creation technology has been incorporated into QuarkXPress 6, you can output PDF files directly from QuarkXPress without buying third-party software.Layout spaces simplify the management of complex projects by providing the ability to share specifications such as style sheets, colors, hyphenation settings, and lists among layouts. You can also include multiple content types and layouts with varying page sizes in a single file. Synchronizing content allows you to share text between layouts.Full-resolution preview displays images at the file's full resolution so that you can scale or magnify images with minimal pixelation and position page elements more precisely. You must register your copy of QuarkXPress before you can access this feature.Create a more compelling Web experience through better design with new and enhanced tools, including two-position rollovers, cascading menus, font family specification for cascading style sheets, form controls improvements, and more.Improvements to output features, including As Is Color Space and DeviceN, underscores Quark's continued commitment to supporting open standards in the workflow and delivering the highest quality output. Product Description: QuarkXPress ( v. 6.0 ) - complete packageCategory: Creativity applicationSubcategory: Creativity - desktop publishingVersion:

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Print Artist 12 Review

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(More customer reviews)Before anyone can buy this, they need to know what version of the software is being sold. Is it 4.0? 12.0? or 15.0? I have 4 different versions of this software that I kept updating with my new computers. Also is it Print artist Platinum? Gold? or Silver? Or is it some other colour that they developed?
I'd like to know a little more information so I can make sure my computer can handle this software and won't crash.

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QuarkXpress 4.1 Review

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(More customer reviews)It took me a few months, but I finally stopped complaining that they'd screwed up XPress. Version 4.1 is light years beyond version 3.3. And, it's a whole lot better than 4.0. The new features make this program a pleasure to work with. The user interface is more intuitive than ever. And, it still beats PageMaker and InDesign by a mile.

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QuarkXPress software gives you powerful design command over every aspect of your document, from conception to output. QuarkXPress lets you create a wide variety of materials quickly and efficiently from within an intuitive, standards-based environment. This premier electronic page-layout application provides you with software solutions to meet your publishing needs. Building on existing tools to facilitate digital workflow and multipurpose publishing, QuarkXPress 4.1 includes improved support for PDF, scripting, and Internet publishing. Some of the new features include PDF Import QuarkXTensions software (import pages from PDF files created with Adobe Acrobat Distiller 4.0 into QuarkXPress picture boxes and print high-resolution output, as you would any other graphic); PDF Export QuarkXTensions software (output PostScript files optimized for use with Adobe Acrobat Distiller 4.0, with the option of distilling your file immediately or saving it as a PostScript file that can be distilled later); and HTML Text Import QuarkXTensions software (import HTML text into QuarkXPress text boxes, the same as other text formats). You can also author XML content easily and efficiently; generate high-resolution image previews; use the new Scissors tool to cut text and picture boxes, lines, and text paths; use custom bleeds to specify a bleed value for each side of a document; and more.

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Print Artist 4.0 Version PLATINUM Review

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(More customer reviews)I use PrintShop, Print Master and Print Artist. Print Artist has, by far, the best art gallery of any of my graphic programs.
The interfaces are quite similar so it is easy to move back and forth among them, depending on what I want to do. I often copy and paste art work from Print Artist into the other programs.
I also love Print Artist's Pre-Designed Project gallery. It has everything from gift bags and boxes to place cards, place mats and coasters.


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SIERRA HOME TOTAL 4 CD ROM'S

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Print Artist Print Kit GoldEdition 2003 Review

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(More customer reviews)I had the Print Artist 4.0 and decided it was time to update. I recieved my new program today and it is super! The photo editing is just what I was looking for. I can now do so much with my photos in this program. The art images are out of this world! The best ever is the "Freedom" art collection they have included. No need for a different program to make CD labels as this program has it all! As always Sierra has come out with an easy to use program. When they say "No Experience Necessay" they mean it! Super program, you can't go wrong with this one!

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Whether you need a newsletter, greeting card, or business stationery, no experience is necessary to create, personalize, and print your unique project in minutes. PrintArtist features over 150,000 quality graphics, 10,000 fun layouts, QuickStart Reference Card, bonus Holidayand Freedom Art Collections, and Integrated Photo Editing. Find all of the tools you need to create high-quality print projects in minutes.

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QuarkXpress 5.0 Review

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(More customer reviews)Pay no attention to the catty doom-sayers: QuarkXPress is here to stay. Quark is too firmly entrenched in the collective consciousness of the computer community at large, and has too many diehard loyalists, to go quietly into that good night, just because a certain monopolistic competitor is banging loudly at the gate. The demand for Version 6, released in June, is phenomenally high. The reason is elementary: Quark is the best LAYOUT program - an all-important distinction - available, period, and has been since the dawn of desktop publishing.
My personal experience with Quark goes back to 1993, when I started a home-based advertising agency specializing in Yellow Page advertising. Quark was the first program I loaded on my then-formidable Macintosh Centris 610 (which nowadays sits on a couple of cement blocks out in the yard). I had never touched a computer in my life before then, but I felt an instant rapport with Quark, whose logical interface brilliantly exemplified the "your computer is your desktop" metaphor. (I might add, before starting my business, I had been a "paste-up artist" for nearly ten years, working with X-acto knives, layout boards, art wax, etc. It was easy for me to make a seamless transition from these tactile tools to Quark's virtual workspace.) To those who find Quark "non-intuitive," "non-user friendly," "frustrating" and "difficult," I politely suggest, perhaps you are in the wrong business. I've found Quark to be the polar opposite of these pejoratives.
For ten years now, Quark has been my primary program AND my favorite one. No exaggeration: I could not have survived the text-intensive world of the Yellow Pages without Quark's peerless typographical capabilities. I use Quark not only for my bread-and-butter YP work, but for virtually every print need imaginable: forms, labels, brochures, newsletters, calendars, greeting cards - you name it. For business correspondence and for creative or leisure writing (including all my Amazon reviews), Quark is also my chosen collaborator. After ten years, we're inseparable.
Sure, Quark has its quirks - I defy you to name an application that doesn't. (For instance, whenever I collapse a window in Illustrator, my G-4 freezes. I've never been able to figure that one out.) Considering the myriad of GREAT things about Quark, I prefer to think of its occasional lapses as the entertaining skulduggery of cyber-gremlins, no doubt playing pool with all those ones and zeroes. I never get bent out of shape over Quark's idiosyncrasies, because these, too, shall pass with a little sweet-talk, patience and tinkering.
I will never throw Quark over for Adobe InDesign for several reasons. One, I am too fond of and too loyal to Quark ever to betray my trust in the product. Two, I have nothing but admiration for the maverick Quark company, which has steadfastly resisted encroachments on its territory. And three, I have enough Adobe products already, thank you very much. I like them well enough, but I will not put any more money in the coffers of a humongous company that enjoys quite enough dominance already and has no business trying to rope and tie my favorite maverick.
It's important for desktop publishers and other professionals to have choices that don't include Adobe in their titles. For me, the only choice is QuarkXPress.

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QuarkXPress 5.0's new and enhanced tool suite produces professional print and electronic media publications more efficiently than ever before. Design Web pages and entire Web sites using the same palettes and tools you use to publish print documents. And because QuarkXPress 5.0 conforms to open standards, your Web pages can be opened and edited in standards-based HTML development tools, such as Dreamweaver. The 5.0 release also boasts an XML export tool that lets you extract content from QuarkXPress documents and store it in XML format.
QuarkXPress 5.0 streamlines print, Web, and PDF workflows by importing and exporting documents in dozens of file formats, including HTML and PDF, as well as XML format. The software's new tables tool sports typographic and image controls that create graphically rich tables in no time. QuarkXPress 5.0 also adds a new layers tool that isolates items within documents, letting you manage hundreds of document variants and making it an ideal tool for separating multiple design elements within a document.
With version 5.0, the QuarkXPress design environment gets Web savvy. Add drop-down lists, rollovers, hyperlinks, image maps, and metatags to your Web page designs. The product's powerful XTensions interface lets developers enhance QuarkXPress to meet the needs of unique publishing workflows, while its new License Administrator benefits publishers with multiple-seat installations by helping larger organizations share the use of a smaller number of licenses.

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Art Explosion Publisher Pro 2.0 Review

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(More customer reviews)Publisher Pro 2.0 is a great product and a good follow-on to the first version. Not only can you easily produce small publications (I create 16 page "tabloid sized" newsletters, with tons of photos) and export them as pdf files, but you can now open and edit pdf files, a feature I haven't seen in any affordable publisher. Its interpretation is precise, though when it meets a change in formatting (such as a single word in bold type within a paragraph), it interprets that as the end of a text block and starts a new section. I only use that feature when I want to fill out forms I've received from others or add a little text or images to them. I wouldn't try to heavily edit a large file. Pdf creation now includes form fields, which allows for more interactive features such as radial and other buttons and fill-out-able forms in addition to the standard pdf bookmarks, index and table of content which link to content within the pdf, hyperlinks to external sites, and more.
As in the previous version, it still has lots of pre-made templates, but the blank templates are still the best. I love being able to make a tri-fold brochure and actually selecting each page I want to work on separately: the right panel, left panel back panel and interior spread. The program then prints it in the correct sequence on the page. And in each of the 24 categories (including Banners, business forms, greeting cards, webpages...) there are many blank styles from which to chose.
As a volunteer newsletter editor (with no formal training in design and only some spare time), I find myself in the position of producing newsletters, flyers, tri-fold brochures and ad books not only for the large regional and local group of one organization, but also for my friends' school groups and churches and the local library. I often have to send the files to professional printers who require high-quality pdf files. It's a little more complex than either it's predecessor (Pub. pro version 1) or the older version of MS Publisher I had used before (a program I was happy with, but it had no pdf support), but most questions are easily resolved by refering to the in-program help files. On the other hand, it's a more powerful program with color separation, palette (incliding Pantone) support, transparencies and effects - features you'd expect in higher end programs. It also has a more flexible studio bar with tear off tabs for line style, formatting, colors, object styles, etc.., that you can view, hide or drag to arrange.
Included with the program is the free Publisher Pro Photo Editor, which allows you to draw and paint using layers and transparencies, and then export your pictures in a variety of formats (including some transparent versions), such as jpg, png, gif, etc. It doesn't have a lot of filters and fancy stuff, but it's a good little program for simple photo editing or creating a small graphic.
But most important, the telephone customer support was good. When I first got the program, I had difficulty opening some, but not all, of my older Publisher Pro files - the program crashed! I called customer support after a few days trying to figure out myself what the difference in the files was. I was told it had to do with the Nova clip art in the files and to remove the images and the file would work. Luckily, I had the previous version installed on another machine. I noticed in the Tools: Resource Manager that those clipart files were "linked," so selected "unlink" (which embeds the image) and then the files opened fine. (The Resource Manager is a nice feature that shows you what images and fonts are in your document, what their size and status are, and allows you to jump right to them). Nova Developement is currently working on a fix for the problem.
Pros: great price (especially if you have a rebate), good customer support, some high-end features, free photo editor and the ability to export to pdf.
Cons: a little harder to learn (reading the tutorials helps!), legacy files crash unless the clipart is embedded.
Overall: If you want a more powerful publishing program that produces quality pdf files, but is still within your budget, this is the one!
p.s. If you do get this program, you should check out the entertaining place-holder text, with it's odd pop-culture references that form random stories. More interesting than Lorem ipsum.

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Art Explosion Publisher Pro is the fastest, easiest way to create documents with impact. From single-page flyers to multi-page brochures and newsletters, Publisher Pro has all of the powerful tools and readymade templates you need to turn out spectacular publications!

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