Creating PDFs in Quark Xpress 2015 and Later

Starting with Xpress 2015, Quark can directly export PDFs to the industry-standard PDF X4 format. This format avoids some of the transparency flattening and color management issues present in PDFs from earlier versions of Quark. To export directly to PDF X4 format follow the instructions below. If you have an earlier version of Quark refer to the page with instructions for that version, these settings will only work on Quark 2015 or later.

To download and save these instructions, click on the link below.
Download Instructions

  1. Download the Export Settings for Quark 2015 and later
    Download Quark Export Settings
  2. Decompress the settings, then go into the Edit menu and choose Color Setups – Output…In the Output Setups menu, click on the Import button and choose the AS-IS GRACOL.xml color setting you downloaded. This will add the correct color management for Quark to use when making PDFs.
  3. Go into the Edit menu and choose Output Styles. In the Output Styles menu, click on the Import button and pick the JSM QXP PDF X4.xml output style you downloaded. This will add a new PDF output style to your export menu.
  4. Go into the Preferences under the Quark menu. Click on the PDF tab and select Direct to PDF. Increase the Virtual Memory to 1000 MB. For larger files, it can help to give Quark more memory to work with.
  5. Choose File – Export – Layout as PDF. Choose a name and location to save your file. At the bottom of the window under PDF Style, choose “JSM_QXP_PDF_X4” for the export setting. Click on Save and wait for Quark to finish exporting your PDFs.
  6. Check the exported PDF carefully, if everything looks good, upload it to JS McCarthy for processing and printing.
Adobe InDesign

Adobe makes it very easy to create PDFs from InDesign.

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Adobe Illustrator or Photoshop

Adobe makes it very easy to create PDFs.

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Quark Xpress 2015 and Later

Quark can directly export PDFs to the industry-standard PDF X4 format.

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Creating PDFs in Other Programs

We support many different design programs.

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