Is There A Free Publishing Or Graphic Design Software Available

In the days before computerized page layouts, paste-ups were done with careful measurements and work to put everything in place. Nowadays, publications are designed with specialized software. Whether print or digital, this includes everything: magazines, brochures, newspapers, books and posters. Desktop-publishing software has long been dominated by Adobe’s InDesign program.

Unfortunately, regardless of whether you’re a professional graphic designer or a PTA member making fliers for a bake sale, InDesign costs a pretty penny. Currently a subscription to Adobe InDesign will run you $19.99 a month. Fortunately, there are other programs you can use to get the job done. There aren’t many viable alternatives out there, but we’ve sought out the few that exist just for you.

Scribus One of the more well-known InDesign alternatives out there is. Scribus is a fully-featured desktop-publishing application capable of rendering professional-quality publications. It supports most major bitmap formats, including those composed in Adobe Photoshop. It does have a fairly steep learning curve, although an official manual is provided. Scribus is completely open source and distributed under the GNU General Public License as free software. It is available for Windows, Mac and most Linux distributions. In addition, Scribus is actively maintained, meaning new features, tweaks and fixes are being implemented to improve user experience and functionality.

Lucidpress While Adobe InDesign is really only limited to the user’s imagination, it requires an awful lot of know-how to make your projects reality. Seeks to eliminate the learning curve associated with desktop-publishing apps. While its “drag-and-drop” layouts are intuitive, professional users will find it lacking. Some of these features can be unlocked if you’re willing to pay, however. That being said, the free version of Lucidpress can still get the job done.

Just be aware that the free version limits publications to three pages. One thing Lucidpress has going for it is that it doesn’t require a download. The entire tool runs in the browser of your choice, meaning it’s compatible with any OS. Essentially, Lucidpress is to InDesign as is to Photoshop.

Vivadesigner is another capable desktop-publishing app that comes in both free and premium varieties. As is the case with most free software, some functionality is limited to the premium version. Like Lucidpress, Vivadesigner positions itself as an easy-to-use solution. Its interface is clear and structured intuitively, allowing users to jump right in. Vivadesigner comes in two flavors: in-browser or desktop download. Some users might be working with sensitive information and/or copyrighted material; having the option is beneficial for those concerned about privacy associated with Web-based applications. Canva isn’t a traditional desktop-publishing app.

Instead, it positions itself as more of a graphic design tool. Users will find that Canva excels at creating things heavy on graphics, like posters and flyers. Canva is easy to learn and offers a large selection of free fonts, colors and stock photos.

The premium version of Canva gives users access to an even broader range; however, casual users will find the free version is more than sufficient. Canva can’t really compete with InDesign, but not everyone needs InDesign. Canva’s target audience is those who want to produce attractive graphics quickly and easily.

Therefore, Canva is a cost-effective, easy-to-use alternative to more full-fledged desktop-publishing apps. SpringPublisher It speaks to the competitiveness of this area (or the ruthless dominance of InDesign) that SpringPublisher is no longer being developed, but you can still grab the. (Don’t worry, we’ve checked it for crapware.) It’s not as deep or complex as InDesign, but it still lets you do many fundamental things like working with layers, lining up layouts, and using a number of templates to get you started. Clicking any element on the screen immediately displays precise options for it – alignment, opacity, shadows, angles and so on. You’re locked off from some options in the free version, like saving in 350dpi quality, which is a little frustrating because you can’t even get the Pro version anymore – you’d have hoped the developers would’ve just unlocked everything. Still, it’s a good entry-level design tool. Do you use a desktop-publishing program?

Have you tried any of the programs mentioned above? If so, which one do you think is the best?

Are there any that we forgot? Let us know in the comments! I just wanted to say thanks for making this information available.

I started in the publications design and production business in the late 60s, and have seen.lots. of changes, and the gradual democratization of the process, in the intervening 50 years (remember Aldus Pagemaker, one of the precursors of InDesign?). But having retired a while ago, and limiting myself to one or two times a year when I need something more robust than Microsoft Word, it doesn’t make sense to shell out $20 a month for InDesign. I’m glad for the opportunity to explore alternatives. I truly empathized with your comment.

I’m in the same boat. I worked as a graphic artist since the paste-up days starting in 1980 and have been using a Mac since 1988. I certainly remember Aldus PageMaker and had quite a bit of experience with different versions of Quark starting with 3.0 then used InDesign for many years. Like you I’m also retired and use DTP software on a very infrequent basis. Given that, I’d like to see Adobe offer a daily or weekly subscription — I don’t think that will happen. Like another responder, I was shocked when my CS package no longer worked when I upgraded to OS 10.13. So now, I’m exploring programs like GIMP, InkScape, Fluke, Scribus, et.

Unfortunately — and I may just have a mental block — the Adobe products are so much more robust. I guess I’ll just continue to learn some of the alternative software. Nonetheless, it seems that I now mostly need a bitmap and vector programs since I’m primarily doing web work and have a subscription to Elegant Themes. I also have a couple of clients who like to use WIX because they can more easily edit text. Good luck in your retirement.

Cris, if not for reading your post, I would not have “discovered” alternatives to my work with Adobe. What brought me to this page was the fact that I was looking for an alternative to Indesign, Illustrator, Photoshop, etc. (Since Adobe just announced EOL for Muse, I am curious what else I can use without paying $75 a month.) I am going to attack this one program after another until the madness stops. I have CS5.5 and just learned it will not work on OS 10.13 (so guess who will not be updating one of my machines). Anyway, this has been eye-opening to say the least–THANKS! Well, for a replacement for Illustrator/Photoshop I can’t recommend Affinity Photo and Affinity Designer enough But Affinity Publisher well, it’s still in development. Some of this company’s big fans, recommend PagePlus as an intermediate measure – though I’ve not used that.

And, it’s not actively supported but I think it’s $29 (one time). And if it works even half as well as the Affinity line, I’d be a happy camper – because I like those two better than Photoshop and Illustrator. No, they don’t have a full-fledged suite of somewhat compatible software. But I didn’t have enough time to branch out into anything more than Lightroom & Bridge anyway. I am another retire that started with paste-ups Quark & Freehand InDesign & Illustrator. When CS6 stopped working with the latest Mac OS, I switched to the new Xpress and the Affinity photo & vector applications, which are not free, but very inexpensive and capable— and fast.

Of course Adobe, since it acquired Macromedia, has had a hammerlock on graphic software innovation. Competitors have to find a different way of doing the same procedures. Adobe probably had to open up access to Post Script to avoid anti trust consequences. I don’t think software should be free, though I do agree with low introductory prices while features are added and bugs removed. I don’t mind being the beta-tester. The test of a good print application is the ability to generate a good PDF. I suspect that’s where the free applications may bog down.

I am looking forward to Affinity’s page layout app. By going to the subscription model, Adobe has unleashed a lot of creative energy.

Is There A Free Publishing Or Graphic Design Software Available Download

Sarah Juckes of Completely Novel, an ALLi Partner Member Sarah Juckes of ALLi partner member offers some answers for those in search of the best software to design their own print book, including CompletelyNovel’s own ratings on various criteria. As well as the price (UK rate, as she’s UK based), she’s given a rating for how easy each tool is to master, plus a rating for how much control you can have over what your book looks like. A key aspect of print book design is being able to produce a high quality PDF file, so she’s rated this aspect, too, and has also provided useful further reading resources to help you gain mastery of whichever tool you choose. In the interests of fairness, we should note that other software is also available! 1) Microsoft Word – for interior/manuscript files. Price –. Easy to master? – 4/5.

Degree of control – 3/5. Export to PDF – 3/5 Killer feature: – The key to keeping your formatting consistent. Master these, and your book will look much more professional CompletelyNovel’s verdict: You can achieve professional results from Word, but it does get tricky if you try and do complex formatting, such as images and tables.

Resources and alternatives – a free guide a free (basic) Word alternative 2) InDesign – for interior/manuscript files. Price –. Easy to master? – 2/5. Degree of control – 5/5. Export to PDF – 5/5 Killer feature: – These enable you apply a template to your pages, so you can make changes to a group of pages at a time. Great for keeping your manuscript consistent if you decide to shift things around a bit later.

CompletelyNovel’s verdict: If you have a complex book, with lots of images or tables, then you’ll find InDesign much better than Word. For text-only books however, InDesign has more in it than most people will ever need. Resources: – Good for getting started 3) Scrivener – for interior files. Price –. Easy to master?

– 3/5. Degree of control – 3/5. Export to PDF – 3/5 Killer feature: – Scrivener lets you add notes to each part of your manuscript so you can keep everything organised when writing. Our verdict: A seriously great tool for writing, but overly-complex for formatting a print book.

This being said, if you’ve written your book using Scrivener and you know your way around the program, then it’s possible to get the same kind of results from Scrivener that you could get from Word. Resources: 4) Photoshop – for cover files. Price –. Easy to master? – 2/5.

Degree of control – 5/5. Export to PDF – 5/5 Killer feature: – perfect if you need to expand/doctor an image. Our verdict: Wonderful for experts, but often frustrating for beginners, as there are things that don’t seem to do anything when you click on them. Unless you have a lot of time to dedicate to learning Photoshop, you’ll probably find that you’re better off using simpler software. Resources: 5) Canva – for cover files. Price –. Easy to master?

– 5/5. Degree of control – 3/5. Export to PDF – 2/5 Killer feature: Pre-loaded templates enable you to create an awesome-looking front cover very simply. Our verdict: A great tool for eBooks, but not so good for full-cover print books.

As a high-quality, low-budget option, try creating your front cover in Canva and transferring it to your publishing provider’s Cover Creator (more about.) You can then create a more basic back cover and spine using this tool. Resources: OVER TO YOU Which book creation software have you found the best in these criteria?

Please do share below so others can benefit. I will rant for a moment about producing non-fiction books. MS Word belongs in the dustbin of history. So many things do not work properly. Nor can it control every aspect of the page layout. Worst of all: Word’s inability with footnotes and endnotes is pathetic. The other packages mentioned have just a few of the features to be found in WordPerfect, which elderly persons may remember.

I used WordPerfect 4.2 from around the late 1980s, with only a couple of updates. My files are often more than a million words long, with more than 2,000 subheadings in a five-level contents list, as well as generated indexes.

I used WordPerfect 10 from 2002 until early this year, when I updated to WPX7. I would recommend anybody to start with WP10 however (look around online for a good price).

WP has had troubled financial times recently. What went wrong for WP was that people used it happily for many years so there were no new sales, and of course Microsoft was doing its best to sabotage WP as it was a serious competitor. Try to talk to people who have used both. Or you could do it all with FREE open source tools: LibreOffice – for interior/manuscript files. Easy to master? – 4/5. Degree of control – 4/5.

Export to PDF – 5/5 Gimp – for cover files. Easy to master? – 2/5. Degree of control – 5/5. Export to PDF – 5/5 Sigil – produce full ePub formatted books. Easy to master?

Is There A Free Publishing Or Graphic Design Software Available Free

– 4/5 (Come with a great Help tutorial). Degree of control – 5/5 Just those three applications will save you around £33 per month (by your figures).

But the really great thing about FOSS (Free Open Source Software) is that you can have as many copies on as many machines as you like — desktop, laptop, notebook. Plus the three applications mentioned work on Windows, Macs and Linux machines. I use WriteWay for all my book needs. It is a Windows based program, which Scrivener wasn’t for a long time.

It’s the biggest reason I got it. It works like Scrivener in many ways. Was not difficult to learn to use and they have free videos to help you learn. Can easily import and format documents, or your entire book, to pdf, epub, etc. In just a couple clicks.

It keeps track of your words per day, and deadlines. It has cover formatting ready to use, and allows for the prep and formatting of all those pages at the front. The program was written and designed by the husband of a best selling author for her and her author friends to use because programs like Scrivener were not available to Windows users at the time. I love WriteWay and all of it’s abilities.

It is everything you need for research, word processing, formatting, and development of your writing works, all in one program. And, it is only $35 for the professional edition. They also have a FREE 30-day trial, if you’d like to try it before you buy it. I’ll add #6 – GIMP free photo/image editing software for cover design and images. Price: free open-source software.

Easy to Master: 2/5. Degree of Control: 5/5. Export to.pdf: 4/5.

Export to.jpg /.png: 5/5 Killer features: Does everything Photoshop does without the killer price tag. The verdict: A steep learning curve, but it does everything Photoshop does and is free. There’s a good basic ‘how to’ book out there to master GIMP 2.8 basics use the money you just saved on Photoshop to buy it or you’ll end up ripping out your hair.

If you come over from using Photoshop some of the features seem counter-intuitive until you learn the works. Graphics (text) effects can be clunky to master manually, so if you own a text editing software such as InDesign it might be easier to just import it in.

Tons of free online videos on YouTube to learn fancy features, plus a G+ users group. Download GIMP for free at. I purchased PagePlus after reading this comment and the one below it. Their quickstart video gave me high hopes about the program.

There’s one problem: their software delivery system is a bit antiquated to say the least. After purchasing an instant download, I got a message that it wouldn’t be ready for another week. In other words, there’s no way for me to download the software that I just purchased. I submitted a trouble ticket but customer service is not available on the weekends.

Also their website email queue is slow. It took a few hours to get a confirmation email on my order. After closing the browser I couldn’t get into my account (they did not send a password after purchase). So I did a password recovery request and got a link 4 hours later that said it would expire in 6 hours. I tried the link and guess what it was already expired.

I just submitted another password recovery request. I am still optimistic about this software. At $25 it’s a great deal, but if you’re in a rush to get started you’ll be sadly disappointed as I am right now.

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I just hope that the program works as described in their video, and not like the experience I’ve had with their website. InDesign, like Quark, is for the whole book. Especially the cover. There seems to be confusion between word processing software, such as Word and Scrivener, and Desktop Publishing software like InDesign, Quark, or Publisher. Word processors are great for creating manuscripts, but they are really bad as DTP software, which is why Traditional publisher don’t make book with these programs. Likewise, I would not use InDesign as a word processor to create a MS, even though it has some pretty powerful editing tools. Photoshop is a raster program (images with pixels) and Illustrator a vector art program.

Yes, you can design covers and such with them, but they are not ideal and rather clunky for that. There is one important section missing here. How are you color managing your workflow? Trackbacks/Pingbacks. November 9, 2015 “How to Choose the Best Software for Print Book Design” on Self Publishing Advice. November 9, 2015 “How to Choose the Best Software for Print Book Design” on Self Publishing Advice. August 16, 2015 Juckes on Self-Publishing Advice BlogHow to Choose the Best Software for Print Book Design “Sarah Juckes of ALLi partner member CompletelyNovel offers some answers for those in search of.

August 14, 2015 Sarah Juckes Sarah Juckes of ALLi partner member CompletelyNovel offers some answers for those in search of the.