QuarkXPress Reviews

Since I first used this software in college (which was more than a while ago) although it has changed and evolved in my opinion it has never stopped being the best layout creation tool there is. I've used it over the years professionally across all kinds of projects and niches and even personally to create materials for the kids' soccer teams etc. And customer service always has been truly top notch, something that is increasingly rare these days.

The newer Adobe integrations can be annoying and for my purposes not that helpful. Yes, there are days when I wish it had never happened but not to the point that I will actively go looking for something else as an alternative.

I like that Quark allows you precision control over text input in documents. It is especially useful in art projects that are text intensive. I like it best for direction labels, books, pamphlets, magazines etc.

I don't find that Quark is near as useful for laying out package design projects. It suffers when compared to Adobe Illustrator for setting up art for boxes, product logo labels or flexible packaging of various types (multi-wall bags, form and fill bags, pouches, etc.). It just is not functional for package design and I have found it is limited in its post script adaptability.

At first it took me a while to get used to the software, but after a while i got the hang of it. the workspace layout is great. It also has a lot of functions and tools to use.

I really have no cons as of yet. So far i love this software its my go to for all flyers, cards, brochures, and model comp cards.

It's a page layout powerhouse and does what it is intended to do. It's fairly user friendly and easy to learn the ins and outs.

Because Quark is a stand alone software, it loses any integration options with other programs that designers use on a daily basis. For this reason alone, it's difficult to rationalize using Quark instead of InDesign, which has so many crossovers with Illustrator, Photoshop and Acrobat.

If you work on book, or you need HTML5 or android/iPhone version of your publication, without additional costs, choose QuarkXPress. In one program you can do everything you need to satisfy your publishing needs. But, if you need more "artistic" look of your publication, Adobe and Affinity suites, even Corel, are better solutions.

It is slow as slow as you hardisk, not your CPU or graphic card. QuarkXPress use too many time more hd than memory cache. Second "least" is price, and it cost too much, and there are no upgrade for 50% or more offs.

First, their customer support for this product is incredible. Hands down some of the best people working with this company, and knowledgable. There is also an online community behind this software that is wonderful and can usually get you where you want to go if you need help. Also the facebook group continues to grow and thrive and the company is pretty involved with keeping the quark world up to date on progress and resources.
Ok the software is pretty wonderful and through the years we continue to choose Quark for book/media publishing over other products that we use more frequently day to day with other media because Quark just has always gotten the job done and done well. That still is the case for a couple specific purposes, like brochure and booklet printing, we use Quark for because most of the tools throughout the years have remained the same. And they make simple what other products cause hair-loss over.
Quark not being a subscription based media creation software is the bee's knees!! And the ability and power of all the software can do for the price is pretty great!!

Over the years, they have tried to do too much in too little of time to compete but they have failed short. In the past Quark was an incredible software and the value was through the roof, but sadly that is not the case anymore. Focusing on becoming a software for producing cross-platform media and new media has taken away from their bread and butter of being the go to software for book and print media publishing over the years. The tools available, advancements and attention to their original staples of print publishing have lacked. PDFs are an area serious attention needs to be given, without having to purchase or use 3rd party integrations. Yearly updates should not have to be purchased or at least discounted much more significantly, especially considering the incompatibility of working between different years of Quark. Saving to a previous version is a must, that I which would come back, without expensive 3rd party software.

QuarkXPress is a very elegant and intuitive software to use for layout. I especially like the ability to create templates, master pages and style sheets when creating multi-page documents. Integrating graphic images and type management are a breeze. Conversion for commercial printing is so easy. I've completed everything from a small postcard to a 350 page coffee table book.

I have no complaints with QuarkXPress, but have heard other complain about how difficult it is to learn. However, if the user is willing to spend a little time with the tutorials, they will find it very easy to use.

I've used Quark for decades and I'm familiar with it. It works well for page layout. Everyone uses InDesign now but I was a Quark diehard until now.

Quark 2018, which I bought on the App Store, crashed every 10-15 minutes. When I upgraded the OS, it wouldn't open. The Quark person explained that it's not compatible with Monterey. I literally had the software for three months but Quark would not give me a credit on an upgrade.

Easy to use. Has lots of features. Integrates well with Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator. Love that you can create digital and interactive files.

Some features are hard to find. Would like to see more training available.

After Apple’s Pages application, it is the easiest and simplest major print design software out there that you can use fairly intuitively if you’ve used a computer graphics program before. Just watching some tutorials online you can easily edit other people’s work fairly easily without much training.

The second best feature of quark is the powerful xtentions that exist out there on the market. Other programs had this too but quark was the first to do this. Xtentions really streamlined and automated a lot of repetitive design tasks like updating prices and phone numbers (xcatalog).

It lacks full transparency gradients and doesn’t have adequate photo layering capabilities like opacities and layer modes. It also lacks a wysiwyg font menu so you can’t see they style of the font you’re using until you select it and enter some type. Quark is also a bit unstable at times. Prone to crashes.

Does everything I need it to do in design for print.
Accurate, fast, reliable and a very powerful bit of kit and that's all that matters in my book.

Not many. The tables function could be a bit more friendly regarding basic editing.
Updates are a bit expensive for the frequency which they offer them.
I miss the little alien, they could bring that back, a little bit of stress relief I miss!

I use Quark in design magazine daily. And it's so easy to set up templates for any job I am gettin ready to do. And I can import InDesign files, pdf, and most other files into my program.

Cost is getting a little out of hand. Seems like each year they are wanting me to pay so I can get an upgrade.

Quark is easy to use and is good for books and single page adverts

i did not like the integration for html web pages

I love everything about QuarkXPress. I've been using Quark since 1990 and also taught Quark for a few years. There is an elegance to the way Quark works that is missing in other page layout software. It was set up by graphic designers for graphic designers. Even though I own Adobe Creative Suite, I prefer to use Quark for print and web projects.

There is nothing that I dislike about Quark. Even if I run into a snag or problem I am able to find a solution easily with the Quark HELP feature or on their website.

User friendly!!! The software is like a desk and the many applications are similar to items on that desk. You can easily drag any item to the place you desire. Open boxes for pictures, text etc are so easy and functional. I love this software. Frequent updates which make the products even more so wonderful.

Need to upgrade my Apple computer as it is not compatible when the software is updated as frequent as it does. It becomes compatible with a new computer OS.

Ever since it was released in 1987 QuarkXPress has dominated the Desktop Publishing.
I use Quarkexpress because when its come to page layout it is the best one out there because of its simplicity.its text tools are very user-friendly and lets you get the job done very quickly and efficiently.
Also, QuarkXPress supports more printers than any other desktop publishing software.

There is not much not to like about QuarkXpress.
Maybe PDF exports could be easier in the future

The many options it offers for layout, working with type and images. I love the Collect for Output, get's everything in one place. Resizing pages when needed, the gradations, the HTML options are great. I have found Quark much easier to use than InDesign.

I'd have to say the cost, it's expensive for a stand-alone product. Because of the high price I am very slow to upgrade to newer version. Which makes for a bigger learning curve when I do upgrade.

Quark is a great way to put together newspaper pages. It's easy to design award-winning, sharp pages, and I have won multiple industry awards using Quark. There are so many useful functions that assist the page builder, and it's a fast program once all the nuances are learned.

Very few cons, maybe the most being that it tends to crash occasionally. But sometimes it crashes more on different computers, so it may not be a total problem with the program.

I can make a newspaper page in just 10 minutes, because of the ease of handling the palette of styles and predesigned templates in a window, the QPS function for me is great for assigning press releases to journalists easily and quickly. equally the way to create the styles is quite easy

It is horrible that this program suddenly closes for no reason, both in mac and pc, I do not know if it is because it requires a lot of memory, because I also do not like it to be quite heavy, and when handling many jpeg files the interface becomes slow , so I'm forced to do it some time in several documents. The way I manage bitmaps does not please me very much.

Very easy to transition to after using InDesign for about ten years. Layout is very easy. The keyboard shortcuts are easy to learn as well.

There are times that files imported from Illustrator do some strange things when you export the Quark file to a pdf.

I used this software regularly at my previous job, and really enjoyed it. I was able to create beautiful advertisements for print, fairly easily. I was able to teach myself how to use it also. When it comes to design software, this is user friendly.

It is kind of outdated. These days, people tend to look for Adobe software proficiency. It is a great stepping stone to Adobe.

There are a variety of tools to accomplish exactly what you need. Options allow you to modify text and photos and to set up pages of all kinds of sizes.

Some of the shortcuts codes involve three or more buttons, which can be difficult to remember, thus nullifying their purpose.

I really like the software ease of use and even with updates that core elements stay the same. I find it easy to create the layout I need without all the extra tools and setting found in some other software.

I do find the software slow to load and I do have frequent crashes. I also find it does not use all the fonts and font weights that my system has, that I know work within Photoshop for example.

I like the fairly straight-forward interface and ease of use after you familiarize yourselves with a few tutorials and hands-on layout projects. Improvements and updates throughout the years have allowed Quark to still have a foothold in layout software, despite the Adobe InDesign market takeover. Being a subscription based service is a plus, since I don't find myself needing to use Quark as often as I used to.

The features and functionality simply haven't been able to match or overtake InDesign's capabilities. Doesn't work as seamlessly with Photoshop and Illustrator the way InDesign does.

Nice abstraction features like paragraph and character styles so you can change a style once and QuarkXPress updates your whole document. Master pages are very useful for streamlining the creation of a large document (we used it to automatically show chapter headings on every page of a user manual). 60 days of free tech support is a nice perk.

Design flaws in software are a constant obstacle. Can't open multiple projects at once, makes transferring things to a new project a huge pain. Table of contents automation lacks customization. Scrolling on a page with 15-20 elements is slow on a modern computer. I call customer support asking for help to get Table styles to work, and they respond that Table styles just don't work on some tables and I have to live with it. User interface hides itself when window is out of focus for no reason, infuriating when trying to follow a tutorial in a web browser. Undo operations frequently crash the program. Anytime you click on one of the palettes in the side bar, the whole user interface goes into a mini-seizure and flashes light and dark. Exporting PDF has no progress bar, the software just goes "not responding" for 10-20 minutes so you have no idea how long you will have to wait. The support community is sparse and their help forum confirmation email didn't send even after requesting new ones, so I wasn't able to join and ask questions.