I NEED HELP is a pdf with 400 dpi a close equivalent to a quark document in printing

[iggyboo]

I need to know from an experienced designer if the quality of a quark document in a printing press is better than a 400 dpi .pdf file with a board that is 30 inches by 20 inches.

I have never seemed to have too much of a problem with colors in the past but my employers are hounding me to switch the quark, I have been designing in Indesign and I think the pdf at 400 dpi is fine, is there a reason to switch back to Quark just for printing?

[Mojo_Risin]

Quark doesn't really deal in dpi (as far as I know) - it's more of the dpi of the image(s) that you imported into quark that is important.

We actually do most of our stuff @ 300dpi and it looks fine - so I would be fairly confident that a 400dpi pdf would print well.

[Cone Graff]

Originally posted by Mojo_Risin
Quark doesn't really deal in dpi (as far as I know) - it's more of the dpi of the image(s) that you imported into quark that is important.

That is correct, a Quark document itself is vector based

I don't see no reason to switch. InDesign is actually the same thing. It's a vector based pogram in witch you import images for print (A so called layout program) :grin:
toI myself use Quark 10 hours a day, 5 days a week and would never switch to InDesign, but i'm not saying that there's anything wrong with InDesign, it's just not my cup of tea :)

[iggyboo]

So I am using pdfs at the printers rather than reverting to quark. So I dont want to have to make everything in quark to be honest with you and I was wondering if the 450 dpi file would be ok for a large format piece. I think it should be but I just wanted to check with the forum first big job iam sending through.

[Cone Graff]

PDF is fine

75% of what i send to the printer is in PDF format
450 DPI is a bit large though, 300 DPI is more than enough :)

[Mojo_Risin]

Also, 300 dpi is fine if you work at size. But if your image is say 15"x10" and you are trying to blow it up to 30"x20" you might want to work at a higher resolution.

Printers are definately becoming more PDF friendly - but I still find that a lot still want the original Quark file.

[iggyboo]

I just dont understand why the publishing industry favors quark still to indesign. Maybe I am just an adobe lover but I honestly despise the incompatabilities that quark has, and their newest program trying to do web development is seriously out there.

-iggy

But iam sure people are opinionated against indesign for its beta versions which sucked horrendously but I'd say give both a try and test for yourself. I keep doing it new versions maybe I'll change back some day.. most likely not.

[Cone Graff]

Quark has been around for so much longer than InDesign, therefore it's most common to use it.

Whether it's better than InDesign or not, i can't say. All i can say is that i just can't get bothered by having to learn a new program, when i already has one that can do the exact same things

[iggyboo]

The only difference is the cost. Check it out iam sure you'll like lots of new features like being able to move illustrations from adobe illustrator into indesign and work on them in both programs live.

Stuff like that makes indesign better same goes with all of their products and most of macromedia's

[Boozer]

nice iggyboo...I am about to study indesign and now I know who to bug if I get stuck :D

[iggyboo]

good stuff now i pass out like a log.

[Prepress-Online]

I work in a desktop dept. for a printing company. I would set up your dpi to 2540. If we have a native Quark file we set up our frequency to 400. If we are creating PDFs we set the frequency to 100. Makes the PDF size smaller and your pictures will preview faster when looking at the PDF. Someone mentioned that the only difference between Quark and ID is cost, how about one gives pre press people more headaches then the other. Indesign with all its bells and whistles can cause problems at your printing companies rips. Transparancy is one big problem, alot of printers are not taking ID files - - don't want to deal with them until their rip software vendors find a solution.

If you work in Indesign the key is to find a printing company that will take these files and will work with you to tell you how to set up your files so that their is no problems on the ripping of these files.

There are alot of effects that can be created in Photoshop that will give you the same effect that you want ID. I know alot of designers think this defeats the purpose of buying ID, but for now these work around are the the only things that work for now.

If your unsure what will and won't work with your printing company's ripping software, contact them, and can't hurt. I know of one printing company that had spent almost 12 hours on 1 page because a tranparancy effect was applied to an image in ID and they could not get the page to rip correctly.

The file was sent to us we spent 1/2 hour on the same page, the difference we created the effect the client wanted in ID in Photo shop.

[iggyboo]

I agree with you if I cant print it on my home printer it sure ant being printed at a regular printing press. I agree with what your saying but I totally think that Quark is an outdated piece of crap software, and even their new version I dont understand how it gets even a decent score its just totally incompatible with other types of software that designers use. The whole copy and drop thing is awesome. and that software is not cost efficient. It just released another version so that Mac/Quark users have to buy it roughly three times to get the 6.0 version since they moved to osx 10. I personally am laughing because I love using indesign on a pc. Everyone tries to redicule the designer on the pc around my school, because their all diehard mac fans. I think that the printing industry has to offer the ability to Indesign soon, alot of designers are switching. It's unfortunate that transparencies dont work but their arent that many bells and whistles that I even use. Infact I dont like adobe's software because of them I just like it because it's more intuitive for users who really knew how to use illustrator and photoshop. Quark is like the opposite it tries to make a whole new platform and forces everyone to relearn when something comes out.

Eh Iam a diehard adobe fan, although this printing shenanegans has got to be solved soon.

-Iggy