(not rated)
by Joy JacobPowerful DTP application
It's safe to say that there has never been a lack of design applications on the market for Mac users. Designers have their pick of software that serves specific purposes. Unfortunately, this specificity usually has meant purchasing at least two or three different software packages, which, until recently, may have been acceptable.
But in today's world of yesterday deadlines and skintight budgets, designers look for applications that provide multiple solutions whenever possible.
Quark's QuarkXPress and Multi-Ad Services' Creator are both applications that have been used by designers for years. In the past, Quark targeted the page-layout designer. Since its introduction, QuarkXPress has been marketed to the high-end graphic designer working within the publishing and advertising fields. Previous versions provided superb page-layout abilities but lacked illustration, drawing and photo manipulation tools; to get some of these features, designers had to rely on Adobe Photoshop and either Adobe Illustrator or Macromedia FreeHand.
Multi-Ad Creator aimed for the single-page advertising designer (primarily in newspapers). Creator has carved out a niche by marketing itself as an easy-to-use application. But while Creator offered drawing tools, it lacked document-layout and illustration features.
Both Quark and Multi-Ad recently released new versions that combine a variety of drawing and page-layout features. These upgrades, QuarkXPress 4.0 and Creator2, now position themselves as fully integrated graphics applications that can take a project from conception to completion by providing page-layout, typography, illustration, drawing, color and printing features all in one application.
XPress Yourself
As an art director and a devoted QuarkXPress user for several years and several versions, I have had a number of complaints, some simple, some not so simple, about the application. For years I hoped that each new release would address the lack of illustration, typography and graphics tools. I've had to switch back and forth between illustration and photo applications at least ten times while designing a two-page spread that combined curved type and outlined pictures. The two most impressive features of QuarkXPress 4.0 address these issues.
Quark 4.0 introduces a Bézier and freehand tool that allows you to create shapes, boxes, curved lines and text paths. You can also convert text of any point size into a picture box or text box and combine or divide boxes instead of drawing complex shapes by hand. With graphics, Quark 4.0 allows you to generate editable clipping paths for silhouetting picture elements against backgrounds, and to use existing clipping paths that have been embedded in imported graphics.
Some of the more basic upgrades to Quark 4.0 include the addition of a key command for sending objects from the front to the back. Also, options in the merge submenu let you adjust multiple selected items to create one custom box shape. For example, you can subtract a circular box from the center of a larger circular box to create a single box shaped like a doughnut.
Quark 4.0 has stepped up its features for managing long documents by adding the ability to generate automatically formatted hierarchical lists, such as a table of contents. You can also combine multiple documents into a "book" file, which includes style sheet and color information, to achieve consistent formatting.
To help you prepare files for prepress and printing, Quark 4.0 has added a variety of different features that help improve and streamline the process. You can now produce six-color process separations for HiFi color printing; save print styles and print nonconsecutive pages and individual color separations; and take advantage of a new, more powerful trapping tool.
As most XPress users know, upgrading is an expensive proposition. Version 4.0 has limited compatibility with previous versions: You can open documents created with earlier versions, but those earlier versions can't open documents created or modified with Version 4.0 unless you save them as a version 3.3 document, which won't apply the new features.
The Creator
Creator2 has made significant improvements by adding document management and illustration functionality with flexible editing tools. With these significant changes, Creator2 has come out of nowhere to compete with QuarkXPress.
Creator2 has always been easier to use than QuarkXPress, but in the past, my biggest frustration with it was its inability to handle multipage documents. However, you can now choose from a wide selection of default page sizes for brochures, ads and booklets, or create and store custom page sizes. Better yet, an impressive feature Creator2 has over Quark 4.0 is the ability to create multiple page sizes within a single document.
The package has taken its easy-to-use set of drawing tools and put them on a much better illustration toolbar, with some nice new tools. The Rotate tool allows you to rotate elements in any direction, while the Skew tool lets you skew an element without changing the length of its sides. The new Flip tool lets you reposition and rotate a selected element, and the Path tool gives you the ability to create path elements with both straight and curved lines. None of these is a big deal for Illustrator users, but in a layout application, they're very nice to have.
The popular Starburst and Border tools also have been improved. You can now modify the shape of a Starburst with a variety of new functions. The Points field lets you determine how many flares you want a starburst to have, while the Center button centers its inner circle within its outer circle. In addition, you have more control over the shape of the peaks and valleys, and you can alter the length of every other flare on the starburst with the Alteration field. Over fifty new patterns have been added to the Border tool, making it fast and easy to produce designs without sacrificing creativity.
The only problem with Creator2 is that it requires you to convert your Type 1 fonts for QuickDraw GX compatability. Other graphics applications may not be compatible with QuickDraw GX, so if you convert your fonts, you could be faced with severe font problems.
The Final Decision
Whether you're an art director, designer or graphic artist, both of these applications offer a host of design-specific features that make your creative process easy and productive. Fundamentally, they now share similar abilities. But the sad truth is that XPress is the overwhelming industry standard, and Creator2, as good as it is, will have a hard time breaking that stranglehold. However, Multi-Ad is offering a special price of $299 until July 31. That's a steal.
QuarkXPress has become the standard for good reason, though, and I would never replace it as my primary design application. With the release of version 4.0, QuarkXPress is now an integrated publishing package combining expert type, layout, color and graphics features with professional illustration tools, word processing and sophisticated prepress functions. Quark has added the features that I required to complete my projects. The icing is now on the cake.
However, XPress 4.0's limited backward compatibility means you must upgrade everyone you share files with, which can be very expensive, even with the upgrade price of $298 (from version 3.3).
If you're starting from scratch - that is, looking at a page-layout product for the first time - and if you are working within a home office or small business creating advertising and promotional material, Creator2 offers an easy-to-use solution that provides most of the features of QuarkXPress. It's easier to learn and use than XPress, and that could help it chip away at XPress's dominant position.
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 SRP: $699 ($298 Upgrade from version 3.3) |