Scribus Open Source Desktop Publishing

TaddMencer004I used to work for a small Christian non-profit as their in-house design guy. I would take their projects, make graphics and lay them out for print. It was a lot of work and not always as rewarding - but I learned a lot about publishing design.

So it got me thinking, I'd love to have Adobe Indesign at home. Was a great program, worked spectacular for brochure layout, book layout and so on. However, it is also a $600+ program. Who can afford to toss that many greens on a program they'll only used once in a while.

So I did some research and stumbled upon a program called 'Scribus'. This is an open source program that boasts being similar to Indesign. It has a slew of features, runs pretty smoothly and is available on Windows, Mac and Linux - so it's cross platform compatible. Always a good thing.

Scribus is an open-source program that brings award-winning professional page layout to Linux/Unix, MacOS X, OS/2 and Windows desktops with a combination of "press-ready" output and new approaches to page layout. Underneath the modern and user friendly interface, Scribus supports professional publishing features, such as CMYK color, separations, ICC color management and versatile PDF creation.

One of the only programs that I've seen, thus far (haven't dug through a ton yet), is that you need another program installed to import EPS/PS formats. Not a huge deal, but is an extra pain.

So, go check it out. Download.

Oh, did I mention - this is FREE SOFWARE. That's right, it's free. How can you beat that word?

http://www.scribus.net/

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