• Price: 199

  • Pros: Leaves original XPress and Acrobat files untouched, so the same document can be easily imposed in different ways.

  • Cons: Imposer Pro for InDesign is no longer available.

  • Our Rating: We rate this 7 out of 10 We rate this 7 out of 10

Quark Print Collection is based on impositioning technology developed by A Lowly Apprentice Productions (ALAP) – which Quark acquired at the end of 2005 – and is comprised of four components.

Imposer for QuarkXPress is an XTension that imposes layout pages into printer flats. When used in conjunction with MarkIt, Imposer also allows for the placement of custom marks, such as trim lines and registration targets. Item Marks, meanwhile, provides an easy way of making crop marks and registration marks for individual items and pages, while Imposer for Acrobat creates a new PDF from your original multi-page PDF, imposing its pages into printer flats.

Aside from the addition of 6-Up printing support and some minor interface finessing, Print Collection introduces nothing new – it’s essentially an update to make the ALAP products work with QuarkXPress 7.

However, there is one significant difference: price. The ALAP products were sold individually, costing a total of £517, while the Print Collection is a comparative snip at £199.

border=0 /><BR></div> </p> <p> This is good news for small- to medium-sized print shops using XPress, as the majority of their jobs are small-press affairs of 8-Up or fewer. It can also help shops still dependent on film stripping make the transition to digital. </p> <p> But Print Collection is bad news for anyone using InDesign, because ALAP’s Imposer Pro for InDesign has been discontinued. Tellingly, ALAP was releasing both Mac and PC updates for Imposer Pro for InDesign CS 2 up to one day before Quark bought the company. </p> <p> Quark has also ‘disappeared’ ALAP’s InBooklet for InDesign, which was a useful plug-in that extended InDesign’s printing capabilities by allowing for fast creation of printer spreads. </p> <p> Yes, Print Collection represents good value for XPress users, yet the real story behind Quark’s acquisition of ALAP is that it was an efficient means of adding value to XPress while simultaneously subtracting it from InDesign. </p> </div> </section> <footer> <div class="shareLinks"> <p>Share this</p> <span class="st_facebook_custom" displayText="Facebook"></span> <span class="st_twitter_custom" displayText="Tweet"></span> <span class= Print

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