Scribus

If you wish to design a new magazine, a brochure or business cards, you would need a professional desktop publishing program, which can be quite expensive. Scribus comes with the same capabilities, but it is absolutely free and it is designed with ease of use in mind. It includes templates for various press-ready layouts and it makes it quite easy to create new concepts and designs.

Besides the fact that Scribus is free and open source, you should also know that it is cross-platform. You can use it on numerous operating systems, including Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, Ubuntu, Solaris and others. It takes several minutes to install the software and you may need to install a few other tools, if you wish to use certain features.

When launched, Scribus will display various options for starting a new project, on a tabbed window. You can choose a predefined layout or configure a new one yourself and build your publication from the ground up. Alternatively, you can load one of many templates and modify it according to your needs.

The software allows you to insert numerous objects on your pages. You may insert text and image boxes, in which you can add images and text. Right clicking a box will reveal numerous options, for fitting images in their boxes or vice versa, moving objects back or forward on the page, bringing up properties or effects windows and more.

There are no automatic alignment features to hinder your work. All objects will stay on the page exactly as you place them. The project can be exported to PDF format. Before exporting, you can insert a series of PDF-specific tools, like PDF push buttons, text fields, links, check boxes and others. Furthermore, you can choose to export the entire document or specific pages, encrypt the output file, embed fonts or make various pre-press settings. You should know that Scribus provides full support for CMYK, so your printed document will look just like on the screen.