QuarkXPress Integration with Adobe Creative Suite 3
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Processing an entire job

One of the first things you learn in a layout design course is that if you do anything to your images, such as crop, rotate, scale, and so on, you have to be sure to run over to Photoshop, recreate all of those changes, then import your new optimized images.

Although that was good advice for keeping your print workflow running smoothly, it’s hard to imagine how many hours have been spent doing that over the years.

QuarkXPress 7 users can now have the best of both worlds. Do all of your image transformations right in the layout, and when it is time to send your layout and images to your printer, use file > collect for output then switch over to the Vista tab and check render picture alterations. This triggers a dialogue box where you must indicate what transformations you want to render, at what resolution you will be printing, and even color space and file type. The end result is that you and your printer get a folder full of CMYK TIFFs, for example, at the resolution you requested and each perfectly sized. The only way your printer will know that you didn’t do them one by one in Photoshop is that you’ll get them all right!

Taking images to other creative applications

If you have used picture effects to make an image just the way you like it, then you can use file > save picture to create an image file you can use in any Creative Suite or other graphics applications.

QuarkXPress and Adobe Illustrator

Illustrator is a great tool for creating logos and vector illustrations. Traditionally, the method for getting these illustrations into QuarkXPress has been to save the illustration as an EPS from Illustrator, and that’s still a good option. However, there is another way of doing it that gives you the flexibility of importing your native file into QuarkXPress. What’s the solution? PDF­based Illustrator files. This also gives you the advantage of having an Illustrator file that you can easily share with your non­designer colleagues. When you’re saving an Illustrator CS3 file, you’ll get an option to create a PDF compatible file. Unfortunately, that alone isn’t enough to get QuarkXPress compatibility with your native PDF file, but it’s not much harder.

Instead, choose the Adobe PDF format that you’ll find at the bottom of the file > save as window in Illustrator.

Make sure the preserve Illustrator editing capabilities option is checked so that the file remains fully editable as a native Illustrator document.

Now you have a PDF file, fully editable in Illustrator, and that can be placed in a QuarkXPress picture box.

The only downside is that when you choose edit original, or double click on the file, your OS will open up whatever application you have set up for PDF handling, that is typically Acrobat, Adobe Reader®, or Apple® Preview. Of course, you can change that if it fits your needs.

Heads up: transparency

QuarkXPress has a powerful transparency engine, but it doesn’t support partially transparent objects in PDF yet. So if you are using something like a drop shadow in Illustrator and plan to place that over a non­white background or object, you might see undesirable results.

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