Using the right tools makes all the difference in the world in getting your job to print right. Our list includes the applications we know from long experience are "the right tools". Here’s what you need to know:

Publications typically contain 3 elements: 1) Text and layout, 2) photos, and 3) illustrations. The best computer applications are optimized to perform only one of these elements. (Some programs claim to handle all three, but this is more hype than reality.)

If you plan to produce trouble-free, professional publications, we strongly recommend you purchase an appropriate trio. However, if cost prevents this, there are some workarounds. Here is our summary of the common programs we encounter and what they can do. (Please note the list is NOT exhaustive, and the fact that a particular program is not mentioned does NOT necessarily mean it is a bad program.)

Text & Page Layout Software

QuarkXPress - Quark is the standard of the electronic publishing industry. It probably has all the tools you need to control your text, layout, and colors. Images and illustrations are easily imported into Quark documents and can be manipulated precisely. And since virtually all printshops use Quark themselves, you are not likely to have any problems bringing your printer a Quark file. We fully support Quark.

Adobe InDesign - InDesign is Adobe's "Quark-killer". Relatively new, it's biggest problem is that so few people are using it. Most printers (as of October, 2002) still have limited experience with InDesign (us included). Having said that, InDesign seems to have all the tools required for professional level text, layout, image, and color control, and we fully support it.

Adobe Pagemaker- PageMaker was the original electronic page layout application. It is similar to Quark in terms of layout, text control, color control, and image control, and in most cases is a perfectly fine program. Most printers support it, but for certain reasons, most printers have built their workflow around Quark, and therefore some printers may encounter some problems with Pagemaker files. We fully support it.

Adobe Illustrator - Illustrator is not primarily a text & layout program, but its tools in this area are strong enough (in certain ways better than) to mention here. See our description of Illustrator in the illustration section.

Microsoft Publisher - Publisher is Microsoft's closest product to real "publishing" software. We support it. In fact, we are an official Microsoft Publisher Service Provider. However, in our experience, the program is "quirky". Color controls are limited, and this can be a real problem in offset printing. Also, we experience problems with images placed in Publisher files - often they seem to print ok on a desktop printer, but they "disappear" when output to an imagesetter for offset printing. There are other issues with page layout options. We have developed techniques to deal with these problems, but extra steps are usually required to ensure Publisher files will image correctly, and these steps lead to at least some additional cost in file preparation.

Microsoft Word - Like Publisher, we support it. But be aware that MS Word’s color, image, and layout controls are even more severely limited than Publisher’s. The program is intended for office word processing and desktop printing, not offset printing or precise color control. If your file is black and white or grayscale, then these files usually work fine. But color files need special handling. In some cases, we will convert you Word file to another application format to get the results you desire. We recommend using a more sophisticated text & layout program, if possible.

Illustration & Image-Manipulation software

Here's why it takes different tools for drawings and photos: “Vector-based” illustration software (for drawing) stores lines and objects as mathematical equations. The advantage of this is that the equations are small (so you don’t get a big file size) and printing your file at an enlarged size doesn’t affect the quality (because the equation can be adjusted for enlarging). The disadvantage is, only objects that can be described geometrically can be created with exactness. So, no photo-creation. “Pixel-based” software (for photos and images) stores “pictures” by describing all the individual pixels in the pictures. Great because anything (like a photo) can be described as a collection of pixels. Bad because large collections of pixels take up very large file sizes, and printing at enlarged sizes can cause blockiness (“pixelation”) because the program has no equation to figure out what new pixels to put between the original ones you spread out. These strengths and weaknesses of the two kinds of tools are why we tend to have different programs to handle each.

Illustration Software

Adobe Illustrator - Whether it is the best program or not, Illustrator is the industry standard for illustration. And, if you can’t afford a good text & layout program, you can use Illustrator for single page publications as well. Illustrator has good text tools, and can even convert text to vector art, so that providing fonts to us isn’t necessary. We fully support Illustrator.

Macromedia Freehand - Freehand is the major competitor to Illustrator. To our knowledge, it is an excellent program, with all the illustration handling capability you need. Although we don’t support Freehand natively (like you, we can’t afford to buy and maintain every program out there), Freehand allows you to save your work in other formats which we can use. Just call us to discuss this.

Image-Manipulation Software

Adobe Photoshop- Photoshop is the industry standard for image and photo manipulation. There is little dispute that it is the best product on the market for this. We fully support it.

Other Image-manipulation software - there are many other programs of this type, from cheap to expensive. We don’t natively support any programs other than Photoshop. However, you can use many of the other programs to scan, edit, and save your images into common formats that we have no problem accepting. The key is to create and save your images with the right characteristics, and that is a whole discussion in itself. So call us if you are using a program other than Photoshop.

Other Programs

Corel Graphics Suite - Corel makes a well known set of software applications to address all three areas we have talked about. It grew up on the PC/Windows platform, and is best known there, but is also available for Mac. Although we don’t support it natively, it supposedly contains all the controls needed to make professional documents, and in many cases you can save Corel files in common formats that we can accept.