Planet Quark

For a limited time, new subscribers to Design Tools Monthly can use this link to receive a free copy of “QuarkXPress 8 Essential Training“, written and presented by Jay Nelson (that’s me).

This DVD from Lynda.com contains more than 8 hours of video-based training, and includes the exercise files used in the videos! This is the only training that covers every feature in QuarkXPress 8. The movies are short (from 3-7 minutes each), and demonstrate one task or feature.

Design Tools Monthly is a brief, jargon-free monthly newsletter for graphic design professionals. It has no advertisements and has been subscriber-supported since 1992. Our goal is to summarize all the career-enhancing stories of the month for graphic designers, print professionals, and other design-industry pros. Rather than reading dozens of websites and magazines, you get all the news, bug fixes, updates, tips and reviews — from just 12 pages!

Design Tools Monthly is available in printed form, as well as a downloadable PDF. It also includes a special monthly “Software Closet” where we collect the best free utilities, XTensions, plug-ins, brushes, and fonts for professional graphic designers.

You can download a free sample issue and take advantage of this limited-time offer at www.design-tools.com/qxp8_video_offer.

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The IT Enquirer, a cross-media publishing industry website, has released the results of a new, free, in-depth report comparing Web and interactive capabilities in QuarkXPress 8 and InDesign CS5. The report examines the different approaches taken by both companies to interactive and Web design and provides a detailed comparison of both products, rating them on their Web and multimedia support.

If your job involves determining or recommending the most efficient tools for creating Web pages, Flash animations, electronic books and printed documents, this report will give you the factual data that otherwise is buried in hype (from either Adobe or Quark). One of my favorite quotes from the summary is this:

“With InDesign CS5 we believe it has become clear that apart from designing simple moving objects and some video, more complete web and interactive design is not something that Adobe is expecting layout designers to do in InDesign.”

And this: “Graphic designers can work in a more efficient and therefore cost-effective way with QuarkXPress 8, because they can take on projects that would otherwise require training in Dreamweaver and Flash Professional if they were to use InDesign — or handing off a project to a developer much sooner, risking design inconsistencies and higher costs.”

Below is further information from their press release, and how to download the free report:

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The author tests and rates both products on their performance in creating 10 specific types of Web and interactive project that a print designer might want or need to undertake, such as portfolio or product microsites, banner ads, presentations and digital signage.

“We wanted to cut through the feature hype that software companies all too often propagate and look at what both products offered in practical terms to a graphic designer that works in print but wants to extend to Web and interactive design.” said Erik Vlietinck, author of the IT Enquirer Report. “The results somewhat surprised us. We expected with the enhanced Web and interactive functionality that has been added to InDesign CS5 that it would have either substantially closed the gap or even overtaken QuarkXPress 8 in these areas. While InDesign CS5 has certainly closed some of the feature gaps for interactive design, in reality QuarkXPress 8 came out on top in 9 of the 10 project types, matching InDesign CS5 in the other one.”

“QuarkXPress 8 has an edge when it comes to efficiently outputting content to multiple channels. It seems that Adobe considers InDesign CS5 an inferior tool compared to any Integrated Development Environment (IDE) hence the print designers are pushed out of the design process for Web and interactive very early on in the process. For anything more complex than exporting a digital magazine, users of InDesign CS5 are left in the cold and expected to either learn to code or hand-off the work to developers to do” continued Vlietinck.

“This is an area that is evolving very quickly.” said Vlietinck. “With Adobe’s well-publicised issues outputting from InDesign to the iPad and iPhone and Quark’s recent unveiling of Digital Publishing 2.0 to take their customers to digital devices and specifically their new partnerships around the Blio eReader, there will be a continued and rapid evolution in this area over the next 12 months. Desktop publishing is no longer just about print. It’s increasingly important to be able to design for and output to digital including the new generation of digital devices that lend themselves to design-rich layouts. With the right tools, print designers are very well placed to benefit from this revolution.”

The Executive Summary can be found at: www.it-enquirer.com/?p=1105
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In Photoshop, an easy way to crop an image to exactly the same size and resolution as another image is to open both, select the Crop tool, activate the image that has the size you like, and then click the Front Image button in the Options Bar.

When you click on your second image and drag with the Crop tool, the cropping rectangle will be constrained to the same dimensions as the first image. When you press the Return key, the second image will resize to the same resolution and size as the first image.

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You can now use your inkjet printer to print your own old-fashioned decals — the kind you soak and slide off their paper backing onto your car window or model airplane. Check out www.decalpaper.com.

If you’re a fan of this kind of decal, have a look at Sjef van Eijk’s excellent website: www.members.multimania.nl/motelfan/

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