QuarkXPress’s Picture Effects feature (Window> Picture Effects) lets you nondestructively apply all kinds of useful and creative effects to imported images such as this one:

For example, you can desaturate a color image. Just click on the picture box, then click on the first icon on the Picture Effects palette (Adjustments):

Then choose Hue/Saturation for the adjustment and desaturate to your heart’s content! Remember: these changes are nondestructive, meaning that your original image remains untouched. When you print or export, a new version of your image is generated with your changes applied to it.

Here, a little desaturation is applied:

With this result:

When you look back in the Picture Effects palette and click the disclosure triangle next to the Hue/Saturation item, it shows what you’ve done:

You can even take the saturation all the way down for a grayscale effect:

If you like the result and want to share it with someone else, you can export the image with the changes applied to it. Just choose File> Save Picture and choose either Selected Picture or All Pictures:

In the resulting dialog box, choose which adjustments to apply to the exported image(s).

Note that you can choose to include the cropping and scaling of the image that you applied in QuarkXPress, add a bleed (if any of the image was cropped), change its color mode and resolution, and link it to the current layout.

For more info on this powerful Save Picture feature, see our other story at http://www.planetquark.com/2009/11/04/safely-export-pictures-from-quarkxpress

Jay Nelson

Jay Nelson is the editorial director of PlanetQuark.com, and the editor and publisher of Design Tools Monthly. He’s also the author of the QuarkXPress 8 and QuarkXPress 7 training titles at Lynda.com, as well as the training videos Quark includes in the box with QuarkXPress 7 . In addition, Jay writes regularly for Macworld and Photoshop User magazines and speaks at industry events.