Migrating from Quark to Adobe

Within the last 2 days we at the office have tried to switch gradually (but later on turned out to be radically) from Quark Express 5.1 and CopyDesk 2.0 to Adobe InDesign and InCopy CS2 that are glued together by SCEnterprise (by WoodWing Software). We needed to test its usabilty and effectiveness before decided to buy some licensed copies. The transition was not as smooth as we thought because there were things to be considered, mainly about the learning process required and how to fit it with our working system.

In current system we use Quark Express to create page geometry and CopyDesk to place the page content and the editorial production flow was glued together by some applications we develop in-house. They work fairly good, especially our own image archive system that streamline the process from entering IPTC information to images (using K-Photo Feeder) to indexing the metadata into our own database for further searching. In addition to that, our customized watch-folder and file transporter that move the file from one place to another (and thus one state to another) accross our servers for load-balancing the process. We have our internal website as a control panel to the automatic process at the application level. As for commercial software we have for example FotoStation Pro for image management, ECRM RIP for TIFF separation from PostScript and Photoshop for automatically turn CMYK-separated TIFF files to JPEG for output visualizer.

Using InDesign and InCopy itself is not difficult for those having familiarity with Quark software. In fact, we have adopt Quark keyboard shortcut to make this transition easier. The difficult part is indeed the gluing application offered by WoodWing Software: SCEnterprise (web based), Smart Browser, Smart Style (for InDesign) and Smart Hyphen. The last 3 apps were embedded into InDesign/InCopy menu and panel once they’re installed. However, having been equipped with our complete range of in-house developed applications we undermined their capabilities the first time we saw them.

Their image archive system is not good enough for us since they can only manage the published images, while we want the rest of them to be archived to create digital image library. The performance issue also arose. Our image archiving system, managed by FotoStation in the front-end and our .NET application in the back-end, is unbeatable by their SmartMover, even if the process interval is set to 1 minute (btw, we use second as unit, unlike them) as their shortest pick-and-process interval. Uploading images/graphics directly to layout pages using SmartBrowser is also too time-consuming. That’s why we use both in this phase in case we don’t want the new ones around for the next few days.

The good side of the new system is the smooth integration of SCEnterprise within InDesign/InCopy. We can just use it and at the same time, invisible to end-users, the apps send files back and forth from the server to local filesystem every time we use Smart Connection for Save Version, CheckIn and CheckOut. The web-based SCEnterprise was meant to be used occasionally, for example in application settings maintenance and page result preview. Apparently it’s a net win over our web-based file transport system in which we should keep our web browser and Quark CopyDesk opened all the time. And on top of it, when it comes to printing to PostScript, well… there’s no need to print at all because the PDF file is created once the status of the layout page is set from “Dummy” to “Finish”. And everybody knows how to create PS file given that one. From feeding PS to ECRM RIP to sending the compressed, CMYK-separated TIFF file to Printing machine follows current standard.

Indeed, we’ve made a couple of stupid mistakes during this transition. Inserting special fraction character like 1/4 or 1/2 isn’t possible for the font Chronicle Text G1 Roman that we frequently use. Being confident enough not to test the PS output before throwing into ECRM RIP resulting in Cyan-only TIFF files. And the worst of all, we never realize until the last minute before deadline that we didn’t have to print using our custmomized print style just to create PS file. The SCEnterprise has created the PDF for us.

I think we should wait for a couple of days to see if the new system fits our needs. The learning process was not that steep; we could manage to produce half section (4 pages) in Adobe’s products (with SCEnterprise) and the rest in Quarks’s the first day we begin trials and made our way to replace all of Quark’s in the second day with no fuss in the output. Despite all the difficulties managing the changes, we are confidently looking forward to what next big hurdle awaiting.