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ntFive Apps

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nt1. Microsoft Publisher

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ntThis is the king of publishing apps for the Windows platform. Brought to market by Microsoft starting in the early 90s, Publisher gained plenty of features over the years and has become a staple of the desktop publishing user base. Publisher is bundled with the latest Office 2013 product and has adopted a more touch-friendly UI for Windows 8. Unlike the competition however, .pub files are proprietary and don’t play nicely with other third-party publishing software suites.

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ntCredit: Images by Matthew Nawrocki for TechRepublic

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nt2. Adobe InDesign CS6

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ntInDesign is the spiritual successor to the defunct Aldus PageMaker and it brings a nice interface for working in projects. There is also some fantastic documentation and tutorials on the web that can bring even complete newbies up to speed with the full power of the tool. If you are already a serious user of other Adobe products, the deep integration of InDesign with the rest of the suite makes sharing work between tools a snap. InDesign CS6 is sold as part of an Adobe package with the least expensive package in terms of initial cost being the $49.99/month subscription.

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ntCredit: Images by Matthew Nawrocki for TechRepublic

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ntCredit: Images by Matthew Nawrocki for TechRepublic

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nt3. Scribus

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ntFor those in the market for a freeware product that can get the job done satisfactorily, Scribus is an open-source desktop publishing solution that is fairly bare-bones looking. It does allow for imports of Illustrator files, PDF documents, and even EPS graphic files with the help of Ghostscript. The layout can be a bit clunky at first to use, but it’s certainly workable and the addition of multi-platform support makes working in Scribus projects a fairly painless affair. If you know your way around the Python language, Scribus’ functionality can even be extended with custom scripts.

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ntCredit: Images by Matthew Nawrocki for TechRepublic

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ntCredit: Images by Matthew Nawrocki for TechRepublic

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nt4. Serif PagePlus

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ntIf you are looking for software that has a gradual learning curve and can be picked up fairly quickly, Serif PagePlus is an excellent candidate. Every feature is easily accessible, with a dedicated help interface right alongside the work area for quick reference. The free starter edition is sufficient enough for basic needs, while Serif offers a tantalizing $59.99 upgrade offer for their professional edition, filled with extra goodies like eBook exporting, additional templates, and HTML format handling.

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ntCredit: Images by Matthew Nawrocki for TechRepublic

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ntCredit: Images by Matthew Nawrocki for TechRepublic

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nt5. LibreOffice Draw

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ntConceived as a spin-off of the popular OpenOffice.org office suite, LibreOffice builds upon its predecessor’s core and then some, with improved file handling of Microsoft Office formats and increased speed. Draw is no exception to this, with its clean-cut no frills UI. LibreOffice 4.0 has even introduced the capability of Microsoft Publisher document imports, though depending on the content that is converted over, true fidelity to the original document is not guaranteed.

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ntCredit: Images by Matthew Nawrocki for TechRepublic

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ntAlso read:

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• nttScribus desktop publishing: The Right Tool for the Job?

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• nttDesktop publishing in Word: Understanding text boxes

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• nttPresentation publishing and popularity measurement with Google Apps

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ntCredit: Images by Matthew Nawrocki for TechRepublic