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scribus

Create layouts with Scribus

A graphic designer's work becomes much harder if they don't have a canvas. Most top-of-the-line design programs have a large barrier to entry, though. If you want to work your way up to those, Scribus is an awesome place to start. It can run stride for stride with higher-end graphic design programs like Adobe InDesign -- and it's free.

It takes a while to actually get started with Scribus. Not only is it a relatively large file to download and install, but the program takes some exploring to figure out. Most of that can be forgiven for … Read more

Featured Freeware: Scribus

Despite occasional oddities and a distinct lack of polish, Scribus offers up an open-source freeware desktop publisher robust with a full complement of useful features. Available for Windows, in a portable edition, and for Macs, too, they compare very favorably against more expensive competition.

The detailed Web site includes a wealth of documentation, tutorials, and notes on everything from installation problems to drawing a grid to creating a text frame. As with other similar open-source apps like Blender, the online resources for Scribus are nothing less than invaluable. The interface doesn't sing, but it does hit all the right … Read more

Portable Scribus: No Adobe slasher, but it's worth your time

Most desktop publishing types making posters, pamphlets, and newsletters will gravitate toward the largest, shiniest apple on the proverbial tree, most notably Adobe InDesign (there's a free trial of the $700 app for the curious).

However, the smaller, more muted Scribus (for Mac and Windows) or Portable Scribus (read review) could be a riper pick for you. Being able to tote a full program on a USB drive is especially beneficial for students, small businesses, and locale-shifters; amateur users will find more than enough features to create good-looking documents.… Read more

Roll your own Adobe CS3 for free, part 2

(Read about other alternatives for Adobe Creative Suite in the first part of Roll your own Adobe CS3 for free.)

Okay, so you can get the basic functionalities of Photoshop, Illustrator, Acrobat, and Dreamweaver without the gut-punch to your wallet. What's that you say? How about Flash?

Synfig Studio is a great answer to the replace-Flash question. Like Flash, it's a 2D vector-based animation tool, and it's one of several programs I found that tries to conquer that particular programming mountain, and does an admirable job of it--especially for freeware.

Synfig takes a bit of effort, but if you're reading this blog post then you can probably handle it. There are four install files that need to be installed in order: Gtkmm, Gtk+, Synfig Core and Synfig Studio. (Apparently, I can't handle it, since it took me two tries to get a successful installation.) There's also what seems like several metric tons of documentation and tutorials on the Synfig wiki, which is befitting for any app with Linux roots that has been ported to Windows.

Neither Flash nor Synfig make for quick studies without a guide, but both are learnable. Whether Synfig is truly capable of competing with Flash for complex multimedia animations remains to be seen. Is anyone out there giving it a try?… Read more