Quark XPress
We have Quark XPress 7.0 here at Lithotech, and that is what has been used in this tutorial. Quark 6.0 was the first Quark product to ship with PDF support. If you have an older version of Quark, you will have to print to a postscript file, and use Adobe Distiller, Apple Preview, or some other tool to convert the postscript to PDF. There are free converters available on the internet. Ghostscript comes to mind, although it requires some technical skill to use. (And is well outside of the scope of this webpage.)
Unfortunately, Quark’s built-in PDF Converter doesn’t always work. So, even with Quark 7 you may find yourself needing to generate a postscript file, print to a PDF, or use some other creative way to generate a PDF. Quark is a high-end design program, so I trust that if you are using Quark that you have a good understanding of how to come up with some great work-arounds, and you most likely you don’t need a website to tell you how to make a PDF. However, if you are stuck, hopefully this page can help you to successfully generate a PDF.
First off, go ahead and open the file that you wish to convert. If you are just following along and are testing this out, converting a blank document did not work for me. I actually had to draw an object before it would convert my file. Just thought I would mention this.
Go to File -> Export -> Layout as PDF…
Choose a good file name and location. Click on Options, not Save. We’ll get to that later.
Here’s the window that comes up. There are quite a few changes we have to make here to get your file ready for digital press output.
Go to Hyperlinks and turn them off. Since this is for print, and not for the web, hyperlinks won’t do us any good and may actually cause problems when we do the export.
Go to Compression, and set the Compression to None, and choose the Keep Resolution option. Make sure ASCII Format is unchecked.
When we output from PDF, we use a CMYK color conversion. At this point in the process, it would be best if you left the colors as they are in the file. So make sure Composite and As Is are the selected options here.
IF your document bleeds, that is some of the image extends to the edge of the sheet, THEN set the Marks Mode to Centered. The defaults should work here, but if you need the values, they’re listed above. OTHERWISE, just leave the Mode set to Off.
Again, IF you have bleed, THEN set the Symmetric Amount to .25 inches. 0.125 inches will work, but we would prefer to have a bit too much than not enough. Mostly, the required amount is dependent on what device we will use to output your file. OTHERWISE, just leave the Amount set to 0 inches.
Transparency flattening is a good thing. Our RIPs are unable to handle complex transparencies. 300 dpi is a good (press-quality) rule of thumb to use for most high-quality files.
We can skip the OPI and JDF menus. Just make sure that any OPI or JDF options are off. OPI would be used if we were going to plates for a press. Since we’re a digital shop, we usually ignore the Open Press Interface options.
JDF stands for Job Description Format. This allows quark to generate files to tell presses, cutters, binders, estimating software, etc exactly what your job is. This is for automation in print shops. We do not have any equipment that understands JDF at this time, so we can leave that off as well.
At this point, you should be able to choose Ok to get out of the PDF Export Options window, and then click on Save to actually export the document to the filename and location that you chose a few minutes ago.
Assuming that things went well, you should now have a PDF. Check out our File Submission guide to learn how to get your PDF to us for printing!