Desktop Publishing Software

There are so many types of graphics and desktop publishing packages available now that it's a daunting process trying to figure out what's best for you. This is an area that experienced desktop publishers may not even fully understand. Quark? InDesign? Corel? Publisher? Photoshop? What should I get? Before even looking at individual software packages, its important to get a good understanding of what the different types of software actually do.

Essentially, there are three types of Desktop Publishing software packages: photo editing/bitmap editing packages, illustration packages, and page layout packages.

Photo editing packages (such as Adobe Photoshop and Corel Photopaint) are used primarily to edit scanned artwork. When a photo or graphic is scanned, it is rendered on the computer in a series of dots or pixels that (ideally) give the appearance of a continuous tone image. It is photo editing software that we use to manipulate this image. In these software packages, you can colour correct, sharpen and stylize your scans. If you're creative and patient enough, there is virtually nothing you can't do to a scan with this software.

In theory, given enough computing power, there is no design project that can't be undertaken in photo editing packages. In practice, you'd become a raving maniac if you tried to complete a project with much text in it in a photo editing package. Although we are seeing increasingly sophisticated text capabilities in packages like Photoshop, there are some real barriers for the use of text beyond a word or two. One of the barriers is that the text often can't be edited again after the file is saved. Also, the amount of resolution required for text to look crisp is much higher for text than it is for photos. While a 300dpi photo will look great in print, you often require up to 1200 dpi text for it to look crisp. While the obvious answer would be to save a file that mixed text with images at the higher resolution, this is often not practical. A full colour (CMYK) image at 8.5"x11" is about 32 megabytes in size at 300 dpi. At 1200 dpi, it would eat up a whopping 512 megabytes. Even with today's increased processing power, working with files this size is very unpractical when you can do a much better job with text in different software.

Illustration packages include such software packages as Adobe Illustrator and CorelDraw. These packages create "vector" art. One of the huge benefits of vector art is that it is resolution independent. Vector art is based on mathematical formulas that correspond to the "curves" and "nodes" of the vectors. Because formulas are used instead of dots, you can scale a vector graphic to any size without losing resolution or increasing file size. This is a huge help when you are creating graphics or logos. Furthermore, when you want to edit a vector graphic, it is a very simple proposition to change the colours, line thickness, or even the shapes of the objects or curves in it. Although text quality is not an issue, illustration packages are also somewhat limiting with their use of text. Typically, you are best to keep your layouts to a single page as the text tools in this software are rather crude. We have seen some big improvements in recent years, but areas such as text formatting (tabs, indents, etc), text flow, and style sheets are much weaker in illustration packages than they are in page layout packages.

Page layout packages are the tools of preference for creating documents that include text and vector or bitmap (scanned art) images. Page layout software is extremely powerful for formatting text heavy documents. While this software sometimes has features for creating or editing bitmap or vector graphics, these features can usually be described as weak and ineffective. In many ways, page layout software could be considered a much more advanced form of word processing software. The big difference, however, is that page layout software has been designed with the ability to handle placement of bitmap and vector graphics very quickly and effectively. Anyone who has created a long document in a word processor with a lot of placed photos and graphics (if they're still sane enough to talk about it) will tell you that it is a painful experience.

Page Layout Software Packages:
Quark Xpress
Adobe Pagemaker
Adobe InDesign
Corel Ventura
Microsoft Publisher
The author's choices:
- Quark Xpress if you are working on the Mac platform. Quark (Mac) files are accepted at virtually any professional print shop and it's a joy to work with.
- Adobe InDesign if you are working on the PC platform. InDesign is a highly evolved product and is more widely used on the PC platform than Quark. It works well with Illustrator and Photoshop which are both Adobe products also.
Notes: Corel Ventura is a good product but not widely used. Microsoft Publisher 2004 is a big improvement over previous versions, although it has not been in use long enough to see if its "professional" features will work consistently. Illustration Packages:
CorelDraw
Adobe Illustrator
Macromedia Freehand
The author's choices:
-CorelDraw on the PC, Illustrator on the Mac. These are both incredibly powerful packages (despite what true Mac snobs will say about Corel) although Corel has not had huge success with the Mac version of their software. One bonus with Corel is the wide selection of fonts and good quality clipart that comes with their package.

Image Editing Packages:
Adobe Photoshop
Corel Photopaint
MetaCreations Painter
The author's choice:
Photoshop (both platforms). Photoshop was the first professional package and is still the package of choice of an overwhelming majority of professionals.
Notes: There are a number of packages not mentioned above, virtually all of them good. Also, Photopaint is an incredibly powerful package and is a great value as it comes bundled at no charge with CorelDraw (PC).

Appropriate uses for Software types:

Illustration Packages:
Logos, original graphics, business cards, stationery, posters, 1 page brochures/flyers & graphics intensive 2 sided brochures/flyers. Although you can create newsletters & catalogues with this type of software, you are best not to. In the long term, the time you would save purchasing a page layout package for this type of work will pay for the cost of the software many times over.

Page Layout Packages:
Newsletters, magazines, books, catalogues, flyers & stationery.

Photo Editing Packages:
Retouching & colour adjustment of scans, creation of backgrounds (for example, you can make a beautiful sky with a light blue canvas & a white, soft airbrush to create clouds).