Another topic like project management solutions that I didn’t want to get lost in the office suites blog because of the specialist nature of these activities is desktop publishing.
Desktop publishing (DTP) software enables the creation of documents on personal computers. DTP revolves around document layouts, typography, and printing. DTP is useful in the creation of many things, from advertisements to brochures to magazines and books. The following software packages are open source or affordable alternatives to Adobe InDesign, Microsoft Publisher, and PagePlus.
Scribus
Description: Scribus is a reliable, powerful free desktop publishing / page layout programme, with support for multiple platforms.
Benefits: Scribus supports professional publishing features such as CMYK colours, spot colours, ICC colour management, and versatile PDF creation. Scribus also includes powerful vector drawing tools, support for a wide variety of file types for import and export, and can render markup languages such as LaTeX.
Platforms: Available on Windows, Mac, Ubuntu, and more.
iStudio Publisher
Description: iStudio Publisher is a powerful, easy-to-use page layout application at an affordable price.
Benefits: iStudio Publisher offers a comprehensive range of layout and formatting tools, including character and paragraph styling, page and spread management, image management, text wrapping, and text along paths. It also offers image and shape editing tools and more advanced layout and publishing features such as bleed and crop marks, text flow, master pages, snap grids, and export to JPEG, PNG, PSD, EPS, AI, ePub, PDF, booklet PDF, and RTF files.
Platforms: Available on Mac only.
