MacReviews

OmniMarkz combines three great tools for illustrators, designers, more

OmniMarkz is a stand-alone product for designers and illustrators using macOS 10.2 that combines three of Markzware’s three conversion tools — QXPMarkz, IDMarkz and PDFMarkz — along with a complete File Inventory reporting feature. 

This isn’t a product for everyone. However, if you need to preview, report, and/or convert QuarkXPress, InDesign, Illustrator and PDF documents, you should add it to your software portfolio. 

I mainly use it with PDF files, and it works flawlessly. It gives me the ability to preview PDF files and move ‘em to my editing app of choice.

Let’s go a bit more into detail. OmniMarkz can open and preview native InDesign files (.indd, .indt), native QuarkXPress files (.qxp, .qxd files) and PDF files. It can convert these files to different formats. However, it mainly converts all three of these file formats to IDML — even without InDesign, QuarkXPress or Acrobat running on your Mac.

OmniMarkz also also boasts convenient features for opening the converted InDesign, QuarkXPress or PDF file in other apps.

Since OmniMarkz handles multiple types of input, it also lets you convert InDesign files to QuarkXPress , convert QuarkXPress files to InDesign, convert PDF files to InDesign and convert InDesign, QuarkXPress and PDF files to Affinity Publisher. Here are some of the features:

° An Inventory Section which is like a light preflight overview of your open document;

° Accepts InDesign, QuarkXPress, Illustrator and PDF files as input (OmniMarkz is a combination of IDMarkz, QXPMarkz and PDFMarkz in a single application);

° The ability to open an IDML version of your file in QuarkXPress (QXP 2017 and later), InDesign (CS4 and later), or Affinity Publisher (1.8 and later);

° The ability to export your file as IDML, PDF, TIFF, PNG, JPEG or GIF;

° The ability to open multiple files at one time;

° The ability to select an application to open your converted file, either manually or as a more permanent workflow feature;

° Exported PDFs have editable text (unless text in the original PDF was created using placed bitmap images);

° The ability to extract the text out of your file and save it in Plain Text, RTF or HTML formats (unless original text was a placed bitmap image, or text was converted to curves);

° The ability to export reports in five different formats (HTML, JSON, RTF, TXT AND XML);

° The ability to add your own notes to images, fonts and colors. These notes show up in the Reports.

OmniMarkz costs US$599 for a perpetual license or $389/year for a subscription. There’s a freebie version that allows you to preview in InDesign, Illustrator, QuarkXPress, and PDF, but there’s no exporting or annotation features.

Review overview

Usefulness8.1
Conversion abilities10
Ease of use8

The Pros

  • A plethora of conversion options
  • Easy to learn
  • Nice File Inventory reporting feature

The Cons

  • None-design pros may not need it

summary

8.7If you ever, for instance, receive QuarkXPress files, with no way to open them, you’re going to want QXPMarkz.

Dennis Sellers
the authorDennis Sellers
Dennis Sellers is the editor/publisher of Apple World Today. He’s been an “Apple journalist” since 1995 (starting with the first big Apple news site, MacCentral). He loves to read, run, play sports, and watch movies.