Swift Publisher 1.3 — Easy page layout on your Mac
reviewed by Harry {doc} Babad
Developer: BeLight Software, Ltd.
PO Box 47 65005, Odessa Ukraine
Voice: +380 48 738-08-49
http://www.belightsoft.com/swiftpublisher/
Release Date: 28 June 2006
Manufacturers List Price: $39.95 (Box), $34.95 (Download USD. Academic pricing is available. Boxed and download editions available. The download edition comes with fewer templates (about 80) and limited clipart (about 800 images).
Download Size: 7.9 MB
Requirements: G3 or later; Mac OS X 10.3 or later; 50 MB hard drive space or 1.8 GB for full clipart install; CD-ROM drive (for install from CD); Printer. Core Imaging requires Mac OS X 10.4 or later. Universal Binary version runs natively on both PowerPC and Intel-based Macintosh computers.
Audience: All user levels except DPT professionals working on high-end projects.
Strength — Doing DPT with Publisher makes desktop publishing fun, easy and intuitive. Choose one of ready-made templates, use a set of editing tools to control transparency, tiling, apply masks and fills, crop images, and enjoy the result. Or start from scratch. ItÕs all easy.
Weakness — Page to page template background rollover issues and as Robert Pritchett noted in an earlier review, still no direct HTML exporting.
The software was tested on a 1 GHz dual processor PowerPC G4 Macintosh with 2 GB DDR SDRAM running under OS X 10.4.7.
Product and company names and logos in this review may be registered trademarks of their respective companies.
PublisherÕs Intro
No doubt that staying in touch with your customers and group members is important for you. Publishing good looking and informative documents for business, social and home activities has become easy. Swift Publisher is an excellent Macintosh page layout application for designing and printing colorful flyers, newsletters, brochures, letterheads, etc. Its detailed choice of templates inspires your creativity and a variety of editing tools lets you quickly apply it.
Introduction
In years gone by, I've had a number of occasions when I wanted to create a brochure or newsletter that was more creatively designed, and therefore hopefully, more attractive than I could do in MS Word. I had taken two courses that focused an introduction to Adobe Illustrator, and even started to read a book or two on the subject. Motivation, all of Robin William's books focus on design tricks and discipline, using QuarkXPress, Illustrator or InDesign. My copy, bought at a MUG raffle, of InDesign CS2 is still an uninstalled bargain.
For my needs, I concluded I did not need work with the top DTP programs, feature laden, and with a price tag to match. Why you might ask? ItÕs all about learning curve. I was and still am not willing to learn a program that I will only use 2-3 times a year. [This paradigm also serves me as well in ignoring Excel [three courses later] when most of what I need can be done in FileMaker Pro.]
Since I on occasion create a newsletter (in this case, my folk music oriented eTalk found at http://www.3RFS.org) is just a bit plain and constrained for my Robin WilliamÕs educated tastes. Over the years IÕve found many of the flyers and brochures, used as hand outs by the non-profits for which I volunteer, are less than eye-catching. So are the newsletters we occasionally produce in MS Word.
Therefore when I read about the new 1.3 update of Swift Publisher, I jumped at the chance to learn and review it. This review also serves to update Robert PritchettÕs assessment of version 1.0.3 in the October 2005 macCompanion. I also hoped that if the software had the ease of use and robustness of Belight SoftwareÕs other products [Disc Cover, Business Card Composer, and Mail Factory.] If so, I would have my DPT needs handled.
Working With the Product
Installation is easy and intuitive. The application is installed in the applications folder (user level) and the remaining materials which include the template and clip art are installed at the root level Harry's Tiger > Library > Application support > Belight Software > Clip Art or Swift Publisher > Templates. Although I have Disc Cover and Business Card Composer installed, only one folder of clip art [23,608 Images] and an equal number of thumbnails allows working with all of the Belight programs.
When launching Swift Publisher you are presented with the "Swift Publisher Assistant", which displays the available document templates categorized by a an end product such as a flyers, newsletters or menu.
Once you have selected a
template or a blank document, the editor window opens; this is divided into a
main editing area, a multi- tabbed media browser and a floating window for
adjusting attributes on the selected page element.
As noted by Victor Mihailescu, Apple News Editor on the Softpedia website:
ÒYou have four basic deign features to work with. These are graphics, text boxes, boxes and lines. You can flow text between multiple text boxes and everything can be filled, borders or shadowed. Another great little feature is the ability to add masks to any image. Those little masks can make all the difference between a boring old square picture that has things sticking in at the edges and a very cool image with a mask and a shadow.
The program works in two layers, the background and the foreground, meaning that you can use the same background and only change things in the fore ground.Ó http://www.softpedia.com/reviews/mac/Swift-Publisher-Review-14424.shtml
The background holds
large graphics, textures shapes, and colors that don't have to interact with
text elements. They stay put when you work on your foreground elements —
usually the text and text specific graphics.
Using the Software - I took several product created in MS Word and attempted to beautify their design in Swift publisher. No, there shall be no before and after images. Suffice it to say the result of replicating the MS Word files when tweaked in BelightÕs software had (I believe) a cleaner look. However, I did study Robin Williams design books and MS Word is a severely limited tool for DPT. I also took and personalized a few of the templates, including a booklet I liked, that was provided with Swift publisher.
This was a straight-forward effort, once I got over a few minor program quirks on how to replace temple images with those I wanted. Hint, first delete the template image, and then replace with your own clipart.
If you, as I am, are an occasional user of layout programs, you will appreciate the ease of use features, the next time you have a special design need. True: whether thatÕs in a few days, few weeks or a few months. ItÕs so easy to use that it could be addicting. I might even abandon MS word for such tasks as creating even simple flyers, newsletters, catalogs, brochures, letterheads, fax covers, certificates, menus, posters, and greetings cards.
To Summarize the Features
Although not one the expensive (ca. $700), leaning curve intensive high-end DPT packages, Swift PublisherÕs feature set is quite impressive. For example, as noted in a May 2006 MacAddict review, Òtypographic features include line spacing (leading), space before paragraphs, standard alignments (left, centered, right, and justified), hyphenation, kerning, baseline shift, drop shadows, OpenType support, and text and paragraph styles. You can also crop, scale, flip, tile, and colorize any graphic.Ó My favorite Swift Publisher features are:
Ease of Use — One of the things that made learning Swift Publisher easy for me is that I had already mastered, almost, both BelightÕs Disc Cover and Business Card Composer. Wisely, the publisher has used most of the same interface conventions and tools in the publisher software allowing me to focus on design details specific to page layout.
Help Files – The software contains an easy to understand extensive well-illustrated help support- you guessed it, under the Help menu. Although the publishers English is somewhat flawed, it is easy to understand. (Something is obviously lost in translation from Ukrainian.) I worked extensively with the help menu pretending I knew less about the user interface that I do. Guess what I really did lean some new methods, shortcuts and tweaks that I will use in future DPT projects.
Thousands of Images and Designs - 23,000 high quality images, 100 unique masks and about 120 professionally designed templates (flyers, brochures, letterheads, newsletters, catalogs, etc.) is what you need for creating high-impact documents. Insert images in many supported formats — TIFF, JPEG, GIF, PDF, EPS from your computer, network. Apply your iPhoto pictures by taking advantage of the built-in iPhoto integration. One minor gripe, many of the templates are so professional looking that I felt they would not represent the real me.
Advanced Page Layout - Flow text from column to column or to another page entirely. Adjustable layout guides are convenient for precise object placement. Text Wrap feature will be helpful if you need to combine graphics and text on a page. Take advantage of rotating each page of your multipage document on a fly. Switching between Background and Foreground layers enables you to create and edit complicated designs.
Shortcomings
While you can add, delete, and move pages, there arenÕt any master pages, per se (each document page has, or can have, its own background). Unless I did something wrong, alas, the templates are only single page long, meaning you have to create complimentary styled background layouts for subsequent pages. But thatÕs simply a cut-and-paste procedure.
Conclusions
Publishing software should have a wide choice of professionally made designs (120 templates on the CD) and the advantage of simple to use but advanced editing capabilities. Swift Publisher not only provides you with intuitive tools, but also makes page layout process pleasant and easy to learn and fun to use.
As noted in a MacAddict Review (May 2006 issue) ÒEven if youÕve spent lots of time with Adobe Illustrator, InDesign or QuarkXPress, youÕll be impressed with Swift Publisher, a consumer-level word-processing and page-layout app. It combines an intuitive interface a limited but versatile feature set, and gobs of templates and clip art.
As MacAddictÕs John Cruise noted: ÒSwift Publisher doesnÕt have nearly as many word-processing features as Microsoft Word (thankfully), nor does it have as many typographic, page-layout, long-document, or printing features as high-end page-layout apps. Then again, Swift Publisher isnÕt aimed at high-end publishers. ItÕs more for schools, students, nonprofits, churches, and small businesses that want to produce nice-looking color publications in small quantities, but donÕt need an expensive, industrial strength (and expensive hard to learn) app.Ó
A very affordable application that you can use to get into DTP to fulfill your layout needs beyond those of your word processor. As noted, it is easy to so you can be up and doing layout work within minutes, well an hour at most. I rate this product 4.5 macCs.
PS
I own, but have not checked out AppleÕs Pages (a part of iWork software), so this review ignores that product.
PPS
For a relaxed review of an earlier version of this product check out [http://www.belightsoft.com/products/swiftpublisher/reviews/mac360.php]
