InDesign vs. QuarkXpress - the war hots up

Adobe hosted a forum of InDesign users at a function in Sydney yesterday as part of its campaign to capture Quark users faced with making a decision whether to upgrade or switch. The members of the forum gave the challenger software a resounding vote of confidence, citing ease of integration with PhotoShop and Illustrator as the main advantage.

According to forum member David Richards of 4Square Media, the price disparity is also working against the industry standard layout software, with InDesign costing almost half the price of the latest version of Quark. “We calculated we’d have a 60 to 70 per cent savings across the board immediately using InDesign,” he said.

Rule of thumb prices have Quark6.0 likely to cost $3,500 while InDesign is gettable at $1,600.

The forum comprised people from design, IT, prepress and editorial sectors who have all made the switch to InDesign as part of the Adobe targeting of the professional publishing sectors since the advent of version 2.0 18 months ago. According to Craig Tegel, managing director Adobe Pacifc and SE Asia, the company has now achieved its target of having half the professional publishing seats using InDesign. The goal now is to increase that percentage to 75 per cent by this time next year.

He claims the advent of Quark 6 presents Adobe with an opportunity to increase its market share. “Many people have been waiting to see what was going to be in the new version. Now they see there is nothing in Quark 6 that has not been in InDesign 2.0 for the past 18 months, they will make a decision and I’m confident when they compare they’ll choose InDesign.”

While Adobe may be able to claim over half the professional publishing industry has made the switch, it still has a long way to go before its market share rivals that of Quark. Although the users forum was forthright in endorsing InDesign, there is still a huge Quark user-base in small publishing situations that will need to be convinced to make the switch.

The users forum comprised of:

• David Richards XEO and Editorial Director 4Square Media
• Helena Brusic, Senior Graphic Designer, University NSW
• Icarus Klepac, Managing Director, White Lab
• Bill Kaloudis, Systems Administrator, Pacific Publications
• Frazier Crozier, Production Department, Pacific Publications.