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eclipse525
08-22-2007, 09:13 PM
Hey everyone!

I recently took on a job to recreate an existing catalog in InDesign. It was originally designed in QuarkXPress. I've done some simple catalog work in the past but this catalog is a little larger. It is a 200+ page (broken down into 15-20 sections/categories) / full color catalog with many little parts and small table like sections listing the parts #/description/price. Think Radio-Shack type parts. Needless to say each page is going to be jam packed with product. In any case, my question would consist of any advice/tip/tricks that you may have which would make the transition as easy as possible. Also, if you know of any plug-ins that might be useful in the process. Regardless it will be a lot of work but it doesn't hurt to tap into the community and see if I've miss anything. Thank you in advance for any help!

~e

eugenetyson
08-23-2007, 08:40 AM
Moving from Quark to InDesign is a cinch. Once you get used to where everything is in InDesign and how much better it is than Quark then you'll be flying after about your 20th page.

But to make life easier for you

http://www.designtalkboard.com/design-software/quark2indesign.php

GuyB
08-23-2007, 11:16 AM
Hi eclipse525,

QX versions 3 and 4 can be opened by InDesign. Versions 5 and up where encrypted so that ID can't open them. If you can't backsave to QX 4, there is Markzware Q2ID that can convert to ID :

http://www.markzware.com/q2id

Beware that there will be some glitches after the conversion, mainly with .eps images, with text (ID's text engine is not the same than QX) and some other things. But I guess that it will be faster to make those corrections than to rebuild the 200 pages.

For details, you should take a look at this document (in pdf) from Adobe on the conversion :

http://www.adobe.com/go/learn_quarkconv

eugenetyson
08-23-2007, 12:26 PM
To add to that. This might be a huge time saver if you have a PDF, hi-res of course of the catalogue. I am very impressed with this idea, how good it is, I don't know.


http://www.recosoft.com/products/pdf2id/index.htm