Free QuarkXPress 8.1 update now available for download

“We have been collaborating closely with Quark on this release and have been testing QuarkXPress 8.1 in a live production environment. In fact, we are already using it to produce the front covers of all of our 130 magazines and are extremely happy with the results,” said Erwin Danis, Premedia Director at Roularta Media Group. “As both a publisher and a printer, we are in a unique position to understand both sides of the coin and realise the significance of these new improvements. We are extremely impressed with the new native transparency feature, as not only does it improve performance of PDF export, but it gives us the ability to address colour management and other processes that may need to be modified in the PDF. Having this greater level of control has had a major impact on our PDF workflow.”

QuarkXPress 8.1 offers fast and flexible PDF output with its new native transparency mode which allows objects to which transparency has been applied within QuarkXPress to remain unflattened in the final PDF output. In addition, QuarkXPress is the only layout application that gives layer-by-layer controls in its output options – useful when you need to send content with multiple variants to an output provider within a single PDF.

“Greater control of transparency in PDF is becoming increasingly important to our users: enabling output providers to control processes like flattening, optional content and colour management further downstream through native transparency and layer support within PDF is a priority for us. The market is demanding more sophisticated PDF output capabilities and this is a major advance in that direction,” commented Dan Logan, Product Manager, QuarkXPress.