QuarkXPress 6.0

PurpleFistMixer

I've recently acquired QuarkXPress 6 for magazine creation purposes and I have only one question (currently) to ask. I've been messing with it for a while now and I cannot work out how to set opacity anywhere. For example: I have a picture background. Fair enough, I put a white text box over this and I'd very much like for it to be semi transparent so the picture is still visible, but I can't seem to find it.
So my question is; is semitransparency even possible in this program?

I would be making my magazine layouts and stuff in photoshop since I can use that, but I was told that Quark is a lot better.

Shrimp

quark is what u assemble the work in if you will, so in actual fact you should be able to do it all in PS, and just import it into Quark.

heggie

well your better not using photoshop for text at all. Do effects / photo manipulations etc in it, import to illustrator, add your text (or do it all in illy) and save as an eps, import that into quark. Depending on the printers doing the job, you'll need to keep an eye on your colours, and using eps makes this a bit easier i think.

PurpleFistMixer

Hm.. I don't have illustrator. If it's particularly important I could potentially acquire it but I'd rather not have to learn how to use illustrator AND quark...

boidey

Quark does allow what you are looking to do, the method depends on the image file format. Select your picture, Under the style menu there is the option called shade, it may be greyed out, if it is you can use the option beneath it I think its called contrast, its not straight fwd to use. You have to select what sort of file, RGB , CMYK etc. If the image is a grey scale tiff then you can use the shade option, Sorry if this is vague but I do know it can be done. I had this problem with quarkxpress 5. This was one of the few occasions I had to resort to the manual! Let me know how you get on.

PurpleFistMixer

Okay, I tried that but adjusting the contrast/shade just seems to give varying intensities of grey/whatever colour it is, it's not affecting the opacity at all.

boidey

ok if I understand you correctly you just want your text to be visible over the image, have you tried setting the the colour of the text box to none? This will give a fully transparent background to the text box so the image is fully visible

PurpleFistMixer

No, I want the box behind the text to be semi-transparent.

I found an XTension thing which is supposed to do this (ShadowCaster) but I'm having some slight troubles with that and would much rather if there were a simpler, actual in-program way to do it.

ButtermilkJack

You should have bought the full Adobe Creative suite for less than the price of Quark 6!! It includes Photoshop, Illustrator etc, but more importantly, InDesign, which allows you to change the opacity of elements on-the-fly without using external editing software.

I know that doesn't answer your question, but as far as I know, opacity was never an option in Quark. Not sure about 6, but certainly 4 & 5 would not do this.

PurpleFistMixer

I have Photoshop and I think Illustrator somewhere. I'll see about getting InDesign if I can. Would InDesign be like a replacement to Quark, then?

DadaKopf

PurpleFistMixer wrote:

I've recently acquired QuarkXPress 6 for magazine creation purposes and I have only one question (currently) to ask. I've been messing with it for a while now and I cannot work out how to set opacity anywhere. For example: I have a picture background. Fair enough, I put a white text box over this and I'd very much like for it to be semi transparent so the picture is still visible, but I can't seem to find it.
So my question is; is semitransparency even possible in this program?

I would be making my magazine layouts and stuff in photoshop since I can use that, but I was told that Quark is a lot better.

One possibility (not sure) would be to:

(1) Fill text box with a solid colour
(2) Reduce percentage of colour fill to, say 20%
(3) Go to Window > Trapping information...
(4) Set box trapping to 'Overprint'

If you can do that, it mightn't look right on-screen, but when printed by your repro house, the picture will be printed first, then the text box with 20% fill over it. The effect will be for it to look transparent. But you'll have to make sure the text is also set to Overprint if black or a dark or solid (100%) colour, or 'Knockout' otherwise (this doesn't work so well with smaller text).

If you can output the document as an EPS or PDF (you should be as it's built in with Q6), you may be able to preview the effect full-screen.

InDesign is slowly becoming the replacement for QuarkXpress. Printers are beginning to buy it and it's much more versatile, but not every printer takes it, or if they do, not every printer can transfer the artwork to be printed due to some incompatibilities with their printing machines.

scdub

think you should go with InDesign, have used Quark for years and had to do all transparency effects in the ps/ai files before importing to Quark. InDesign allows transparency and better integration with other adobe products, it is also faster at producing pdfs and is cheaper, the new quark has fixed this trans problem btw..

axonware

If anyone wants to give QuarkXpress a whirl you can download a free trial (150 MB+) from our site. Both WIN and MAC trials are there.