PrePress Collection Software Survey

Posted : 12 Feb 2003

The Survey Question :

Just a quick check to see what everybody uses and recommends for collecting bits for sending out for print/output. Mainly for Quark but if you have had good experiences with anything for In Design pls advise..

Extensis Preflight, Extensis Collect, Extensis Printready, Magpie, Markzware Flightcheck, or anything else....

I will pass on the results to everyone so that we all benefit.

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And the Results :

The winner : Extensis Collect Pro

Around 70% of people who used Quark used Extensis Collect Pro for the collection of fonts and images prior to sending them out for print. Also of interest was the fact that no one mentioned anything bad about the software.

Honorable Mentions
Quite a few used the built-in Quark function : Collect for output or manually tracked fonts and associated files.
Two used Magpie but as far as I am aware this only works with Quark 3.3 and most people are using Quark 4.
Several people mentioned the extensive use of sending out pdf's, emphasising the importance of distiller and understanding the various ways and options to embed (and compress) fonts and pictures.
Quite a few clients not in the graphics industry wondered what I was even asking for...
No one was using Flightcheck (or at least anyone who replied)
No one replied who was using Adobe InDesign (all 5 of you)
One client was using some beta software but as this seemed to be crashing frequently I cant recommend it.

Miscellaneous Info
I only have 2 clients who have purchased Quark 5, almost everyone else uses Quark 4.1. A few people also used Quark 3.3 but usually gave priority to Quark 4.1 first. My Apple sales rep at the reseller I buy all my Macs from has never sold a copy of Quark 5 in his entire sales history! Until recently Quark 4.x was available for a discount well below the price of Quark 5. I wonder if Quark are going to have scaled upgrade prices to Quark 6? If so, then they are going to make a veritable fortune on upgrades, as the vast majority of users will have to go for the more expensive upgrade from 4 to 6 rather than from 5 to 6.
My thanks to all those who replied, especially those who gave some lengthy replies and put some real effort into their response. Next survey I might only send back to the results to those who reply. Lets see if I can get some of the lurkers into action.