Scribus is powerful free program designed for professional layout of documents. It has many possibilities and allows you to typeset simple and complex documents, including printed publications and printed products - newspapers, books, magazines, and others.
Program features
The program allows you to mark up the document, add various blocks, shapes, lines, images, text blocks, tables. There are also Bezier Curve and Freehand Line controls for freehand drawing.
All elements can be customized - rotated, tilted, repositioned, resized, and so on.
Images can be edited directly in the program - add various effects and filters, scale.
Scribus has many settings for working with text - changing the font, text style, various indents, margins and offsets.
Interface
The program interface is quite user-friendly and easy to understand.
The entire main part of the screen is occupied by Workspace, at the top is the menu bar and toolbar, at the bottom additional items and the status bar.
The properties of the elements are changed through a separate window.
Saving and exporting documents
Scribus saves documents in its own * .sla format.
Export to PDF and graphic formats (svg, eps, png, jpg, bmp and others) is supported.
Development of
Scribus is written in the C ++ programming language using the Qt4 libraries. The program has been fully translated into Russian.
Scribus is cross-platform and available for Linux, Windows, Mac OS X, Unix, OS2, * BSD.
Today there are three decent graphic editors for web designers. I will not in any way compare them. I will only do short review and share my opinion on these applications.
Adobe photoshop
The first version was released in 1990
The most popular graphics editor. It appeared a long time ago and was number 1. It is used: f otographers, graphic designers, web designers, interactive designers, video developers. A very powerful application that has it all. The program is used and supported everywhere. In any studio, company, printing industry.
Initially it was intended for retouching and working with photography, but then it acquired wider functionality and capabilities.
My personal opinion:
Pros: A really advanced editor with all sorts of features such as 3d support, animation gifs, scripts, addons. Huge library of ready-made graphics, templates and more. For Photoshop, there are a huge number of cool actions, where in one click from a photo you can make beautiful picture:
Photoshop is great for working with photographs. There are no restrictions, you can create and manipulate the image as soon as your heart desires. There are a huge number of tutorials on Photoshop on Youtube.
Minuses: With the development of Photoshop, which every time tries to cram everything that is possible into itself, it has become very heavy and unwieldy. The program takes a very long time to load, it also performs some functions for a long time. The app only works through a subscription. On the weak computers opening photoshop can be very problematic. There are so many uncomfortable things. Have to imitatesome styles are different.Window with effects neededopen and close each time.Confused managementstyles and sizes of text. And yet, do not forget that the application was originally created to work with raster graphics, not vector graphics.
Conclusion: Photoshop is great for processing photography in the first place. The format and program is supported everywhere and by everyone. If desired, you can create anything in it. Designs, icons, banners and more. But the question is how convenient and fast it will be.
Sketch
The first version was released in 2012
Vector graphics editor for Mac
After Photoshop, Sketch appeared.The developers of Sketch took a powerful vector graphics editor and threw out everything unnecessary. The app interface is similar to classic programs from Apple.
The developers write the following - creating good graphics can be quite a complex process, and you need an application that is designed for this very purpose. So they, rather opaquely, hint that Photoshop was not conceived as a program for drawing website designs, interfaces and icons. Also, in the description of the program, an explicit emphasis is made on the simplicity and accessibility of tools, which in no way diminish the capabilities of the program itself.
One of Sketch's main features is associated styles for shapes and text. This allows you to combine different elements, giving them the same appearance and change the appearance of all your objects in a few clicks. The same goes for text. You can also create symbols, turning the selected layer into an easy-to-use reuse element.
Sketch, in my opinion, is an ideal tool for developing website and app design. The most advanced UI / UX tool available today.
Affinity Designer
Affinity Designer is a new graphics editor for Mac and Win. In comparison with Photoshop, it comes out victorious in several respects: speed of work, smoothness and an easy interface.
Buy: http://affinity.serif.com (unlike Adobe, you buy the program once and use it always)
Affinity Designer was truly a discovery for me. It was developed from scratch especially for designers, taking into account all modern new technologies and trends. Affinity is incredibly fast, convenient, practical and thoughtful.
I got acquainted with this program when it was only in the Beta version and helped developers find bugs, gave recommendations for improvement. Anyway, any designer could take part in the development, thanks to the active discussion of the program on the official developers forum. You can safely call this application from people to people.
Now the program has very quickly acquired new functionality and incredible capabilities. Working in this program, you understand that everything is thought out there to the smallest detail. I'm not going to talk about all of her super-tricks. Detailed description can be found on the official website. Just watch the video:
Replace video
I can definitely recommend this app without any doubt. Do you want to create illustrations, want website layouts, draw icons, logos. Design various layouts for printing. The program is perfect for all these tasks.
If today few people know about it, then in the near future all designers will use it. If you are a beginner, then start with Affinity Designer. If you are an experienced designer, then take a closer look at this program. I am sure it will greatly facilitate your life.
Thanks to Affinity, my work speed after Photoshop has increased by 50-60%, in this application everything is 10 times easier to do than in Photoshop. You get great pleasure working in it. I studied this program just thoroughly. Every button is real, every function is needed, important and good.
Pros: The performance of the program. Friendly interface. Lots of unique features tailored specifically for web design. There are a lot of features, such as: saving a project with history, the ability to view the history of changes with a slider, the ability to customize the interface as you like. Sharpened both for vectors and for working with raster applications and much more. Even the layout can be made responsive in Affinity. Which is also very convenient when you need to make several screen sizes. The program can export and import files of any popular formats.
Minuses: Honestly, I haven't found one for myself. The only thing that distinguishes it from Photoshop is that the developers have made a second application for fine work with photographs. Affinity Photo, almost everything is the same, only sharpened exclusively for photographers. That is, there are many more opportunities for photographs. Well, this is not a big problem. When I need to retouch a photo, do subtle color correction or some other manipulation, I open Affinity Photo and do it. The programs are linked to each other and you can transfer files simply by copying ctrl + c / ctrl + v or by saving the project. Each other's application formats are supported and readable.
Affinity photo
Affinity Photo is a program of the same type as Affinity Designer, they can be safely called brothers, but specializes exclusively in working with photographs. So, this is more of an application for photographers, but it also complements Affinity Designer well and is suitable for certain tasks and for a web designer, sometimes it is also necessary to process a photo, for example.
It has n Fully featured RAW converter.Work with different color spaces: RGB, CMYK, LAB, Grayscale, 16-bit density.File compatibility with Adobe Photoshop PSD. Support for TIFF, JPEG, PNG, EPS, PDF, SVG and other formats.
It is indeed made on the same engine as Affinity Designer, but it is fundamentally different. It is not worth drawing site layouts in it. For example, there is no support for Artboards, and many other functions. Here we work exclusively with photographs. The program has, for example, the ability to automatically glue panoramas, make 3d panoramas, use Liquify tools and much more. If you are developing an application interface, then you do not need all this at all.
Therefore, the developers, in order not to interfere with all the processes in one heap, made two applications. Do you want to work with projects based on Vector graphics(design of sites, applications, banners, icons, and so on) - useAffinity Designer. Need some subtle work with photos or bitmaps - use Affinity Photo.
While working with design, I'll be honest, I rarely open Affinity Photo, as Affinity Designer handles all the basic tasks. In order to cut out a photo, for example, and adjust the color and brightness, it is not necessary to open Affinity Photo, all the basic functions for working with bitmaps are in Affinity Designer (cut out the background, adjust colors, brightness, etc.), but if you need something more (change perspective, use the Liquify tool, you need fine color adjustments, face retouching, etc.) then yes, you can't do without Affinity Photo. Everything is there for working with photographs.
Figma
A relatively new product on the market. Figma is very similar in meaning to Sketch, it is focused on UI / UX for creating applications and websites, but focused more on the cloud and joint work with the team.
Its meaning is that programmers and designers can work together in one window of a website in real time. This is very handy tool for large companies with many designers and developers. There is version control, you can leave comments on layouts, edit layouts and much more.
The disadvantage of the program is that it has a very specific "engine". I don't really like the rough work of the interface in the application. But you can live with it.
What to choose?
I highly recommend purchasing immediately Affinity Designer and Affinity photo to work with design: icons, illustrations, graphics. Start learning with Affinity Designer, since we are still primarily interested in web design and everything related to it.
To test the convenience of the program in terms of working with illustrations, I was not even too lazy and drew a VHS cassette in vector and coped with it in a couple of hours. It was very convenient and simple to work.
Affinity Designer / Photo- ideal for developing icons, illustrations, banners, booking SMM, various print layouts and everything else. Recommend!
When it comes to creating an application design, I recommend studying Sketch or Figma.
3 votesWelcome to my blog. Today I decided to prepare useful selection for designers. I visited the most popular webmaster sites and found 50 of the best tools to help you design.
I present to your attention web design software, the best online services, and the tools recognized by the professionals. I do not agree with all the points, but who am I to argue with specialists working on sites such as Netology , vc.ru, say-hi and others.
I supplemented this list a little on my own and divided it into categories. Now I present it to your attention.
Basic programs
Of course, no web developer can do without standard set from Adobe, through which all the work is carried out. Now the end of 2016 and many professionals argue that the growing popularity of the program Sketch , for several years now replacing the usual Photoshop for many, is about to do it. In 2017, we will all be actively studying this particular program.
This is even despite the fact that it is not yet in Russian and is only suitable for Mac OS. Most professionals claim that it is much better for interface design than Photoshop.
If we talk about other Adobe products, then it's up to you to study them or not. And yet they are still on the lists.
- Illustrator as the best vector graphics and illustration tool.
- InDesign as the ultimate printing utility.
- Adobe Muse as the ideal platform for creating
In addition to Adobe products, professionals recommend paying attention to other brands and their products. Macaw recognized as one of the most popular web design software. Unlike Sketch, it is suitable for Windows and allows you to program without knowing the code. It automatically generates itself. You can download it for free directly from the official website. True only on English language.
Creative Bloq as an alternative to Adobe Muse invites you to see another modern service Pinegrow , it is suitable for drawing any site with subsequent automatic conversion of the picture into code. The same can be achieved with Jetstrap.
Well, if you need to work with applications, then this will help you more. Foundation for Apps .
Graphics bank
Any designer needs graphics. If you draw everything yourself, it will take a long time. Some items can be ordered from someone else, or you can purchase or pick up ready-made pictures from banks. Tyrit good designer never will, but download from a good site - why not.
For example, on endlessicons.com you can find icons, but on coverr.co video covers.
On the freepik.com and IconStore you can find a lot free images... Vectors and even PSD layouts. On my own I can offer Photoshop-master and Pixabay .
Stripemania.com – will quickly generate graphics. Add your colors and you get a striped picture. Want to create your own animated background With smooth transition colors? The site will help to cope with this. gradient-animator.com ... He will not only show the result in real time, but also create a code that will only have to be inserted into the site.
Findguidelin.es this is a collection where you can find icons and all information for designers about popular brands: WatsApp, Facebook, Vkontakte and so on.
Maker of logos and favicons
I was surprised, but on many popular and prestigious sites for designers, you can find a link to a service that helps. On Netology, for example, they offer withoomph.com or designrails.com ... I prefer Logaster .
For quick creation you can use the portal www.favicon.cc ... By the way, I already wrote about him. Good thing.
Working with color
A bad designer who doesn't trust help professional services for creating the best combination colors. To do this, you can find many resources on the Internet. For example, I like ColorScheme .
Service Material palette offers to choose two colors, and it will complete the rest of the scheme for you: fonts, separators, and so on.
On the 0to255 you can look at different shades, although you also have a Russian alternative - Yandex.
If you saw a beautiful picture, you can use the service pictaculous.com extract a color scheme from it. By the way, it helps a lot to decide exactly whether it is worth using this or that image on your portal. If it does not fit well with the underlying schema, then the answer is obvious.
Working with fonts
The first and the most best resource to work with google fonts Fonts. This is a huge collection of fonts, including in Russian. It is convenient to choose, easy to use.
To find the perfect combination of fonts, experts recommend using the service: canva.com/font-combinations or typewolf.com .
You may also find a browser extension useful. fontface.ninja ... Find beautiful font, move the mouse over it and get information. All that remains is to find it.
And in the online editor on the site prototypo.io you can change it a little and make it unique.
The final stage
When the project is ready, you need to check how everything will look in standard browsers from computers and on the screen. mobile phone. Resizemybrowser.com will help you do it quickly.
Using the service dunnnk.com you can insert your screenshot into thousands of images of phones and computers and see how your site will look on different gadgets from multiple angles.
Very useful list located on the site webdesignerschecklist.com ... Have you done everything right, is it possible to hand over the project? Just tick the boxes and make sure you don't forget anything. It's a pity, but the service is only suitable for those who speak English.
If, in addition to design, you also do layout, you can embed the utility into the code tota11y ... It will highlight errors.
Well, don't forget about development. I think that it will be useful for any designer to choose a course on missing knowledge from Photoshop-Master commands .
Courses for designers from the PhotoshopMaster team. In addition, I suggest you subscribe to my blog mailing list and Vkontakte group... This will allow you not to stop in design development for a second and improve every day.
OK it's all over Now. Until next time and good luck.
We can say that it lagged slightly behind its vector brothers Inkscape and Scribus, which already today allow you to work with color at a professional level. I will talk about Scribus, a real open publishing system that provides professional layout and design tools and at the same time works on a wide variety of hardware and software platforms.
I'm not guilty! He came himself!
Those familiar with the Unix world but haven't heard of Scribus yet might think that this is just another TeX / LaTeX / LyX variation. Not! These programs, although called publishers, do not provide a full-fledged WYSIWYG interface. Scribus, written in 2001 by German self-taught programmer Franz Schmidt, was the first to enter the untapped field of industrial-grade open publishing systems.
The main idea behind Scribus is to use the workflows and standards developed by Adobe. Of course, we are talking about PostScript and PDF. Moreover, it is the latter that is used in work and when saving a file. Therefore, whatever one may say, and the Adobe company unwittingly became the initiator of the appearance of a wonderful open program for layout and design. Unable to cope with the temptation, Scribus changed open formats(like SVG) in favor of the industry standard. There is no excuse for him, indeed, he came himself!
However, I personally think that Schmidt's idea to create a layout and design program based on PDF technology is simply genius. Even then, it was clear that this format would become the de facto standard for documents that look the same on any hardware and software platform and when printed. Adobe regularly releases PDF viewers for the most popular platforms, including Linux, Windows, and Mac OS X.
Franz Schmidt's project received support among programmers, and Scribus gained a well-deserved popularity among Linux users. Then the program was ported to Windows, Mac OS X and some other systems. Now there is a well-established simultaneous release of new versions of this program for three leading operating systems(Windows, Linux and Mac OS X) is a special pride of the development team.
Strike iron on the spot!
To ensure the "iron" reliability and portability of your documents, I recommend, without wasting time, installing Ghostscript - an open and free PostScript and PDF interpreter.
Scribus import and export functions for full power use the Ghostscript interpreter. Exporting to PDF is just great: the prelaunch check function will help you identify any errors and ensure the generation PDF files versions 1.3, 1.4 and 1.5 are of excellent quality. In this case, you will acquire a huge amount special features: encryption, creation of input fields and even presentation effects. But that's not all! The most curious feature of this program is that you can not only export the file to PDF, but also open it for editing! Didn't I say that the program works in this format?
Calm down, let's sit down mustache!
Finding a common language with the program is not as difficult as it might seem at first glance, it is within the power of every sane user. The program interface is quite logical and completely Russified - the Russian language is indicated during the installation process. When installing, Scribus will ask if you have a Ghostscript interpreter: it is required to generate PDF files. I highly recommend downloading and installing latest version... It also does not hurt to install in advance the program for processing bitmaps... Open source and free, GIMP or Paint.NET work well for this.
When everything is ready, feel free to launch Scribus and, in order not to reinvent the wheel, turn to ready-made examples or templates for help and ideas. To get started, let's say you can use one of the templates in the File New From Template menu. As a punching bag for my training, I chose a blank for a small A4 newspaper (Newsletter_2).
Well, you have to take action - but what to do?
Keep in mind that the templates included in the delivery of the program, unfortunately, are not yet Russified. Therefore, you have to tinker a lot with the styles to make any template usable. Use the menu item "Edit Paragraph Styles", select a style and click the "Edit" button. You can choose any suitable for of this style Russian font and adjust its parameters, and then repeat this operation for all other styles.
Unfortunately, only after the operation described above (at least in Scribus for Windows) will you be able to use the Russian language in all text fields template. Remember to save your modified template.
In the future, when working with a publication, your best assistants will be the context menu, invoked by the right mouse button on the object, and the "Properties" panel, invoked through the same context menu or by pressing the key. For example, if in the Newsletter_2 template you want to insert a picture in the space provided for it, then you need to call the context menu for this empty frame and select the "Insert image" item. To fit the picture into the frame, you can scale it in the Image area of the Properties panel. But there is another way ...
Babe - flowers, children - ice cream!
Scribus will provide exactly the tools you like best. Whether you need to fit the image into the frame or, conversely, adjust the frame to the selected scale - in Scribus there are tools for both. The main thing is not to confuse flowers with ice cream, and be able to distinguish a text frame from a graphic one!
If you have decided on the scale of the image and now want to fit the frame to it, then disable the "Size Locked" attribute for this frame in the context menu, and then select the "Block to Image Size" item in the same place. By the way, I haven't found anything similar in QuarkXPress!
Function context menu Change Text (+ Y) looks very useful for text frames. It brings up a dialogue with the hard-to-translate title Story Editor. This "Storytelling Editor" allows you to change the content and layout of text elements with the comfort of a word processor.
The Story Editor will give you the opportunity to fully concentrate on the content of the publication and the design of the text elements. On the left side of the window, you can select a style for each paragraph or call the style editor.
Once you learn how to move frames, change styles and edit text, you can assume that Scribus has obeyed you. It creates really complex, structured texts and typeset graphics-rich masterpieces. The program's website has a special section that lists publications that are successfully typeset in this program. Among them are strict scientific journals, and graphic-intensive anime publications.
With a slight movement of the hand, the trousers turn ...
Scribus offers tremendous customization flexibility. Appearance programs with a “flick of the hand” can be transformed beyond recognition by choosing one of seven design styles. From functionality configurable color management system, import and export, hyphenation, fonts, PostScript and PDF validator (prelaunch validation), hotkeys, external tools, short word list and extensions. By the way, if you do not have enough Scribus functionality, then look at the list of available extensions on the developers' site - suddenly there is already what you need there.
To give an idea of the possibilities for expanding the program, the developers included a wizard in the distribution kit that generates a calendar template. If you want to quickly make a beautiful calendar, then select the Scripts Scripts Scribus Calendar Wizard menu. For some reason, in order to select Russian in the dialog box that opens, you must first click. Then turn on the Whole Year option to create a calendar for the whole year and turn off Draw Image Frame (we'll put the picture ourselves somehow). After clicking on OK, dialogs follow for choosing the size of the sheet of paper, then the font, after which the calendar itself is generated.
Making a calendar using the Scribus Calendar Wizard script is easier than brewing instant coffee - after generating the calendar, all you have to do is insert pictures and hum the tune from the "Just add water!"
You have not a closed, but an open fracture here
With all its many professional features and a host of innovations, Scribus is certainly not without its drawbacks. Publishing system in currently experiencing a kind of growing pain. A huge amount of interoperating codes is poorly optimized. The speed and reliability of the latest stable release of Scribus 1.3.3.9 leave much to be desired. Many features do not work as expected by the end user.
Despite all this, Scribus should not be considered hopelessly ill. software product... The existing shortcomings should be considered only as a temporary inconvenience. Upcoming release next version Scribus has actually been re-cut and sewn again. The developers claim that this will increase the speed of the program and its reliability. Scribus is indeed developing rapidly, and new versions of it will continue to amaze with their abilities.
I begin to operate without noise and dust according to the newly approved plan!
At first glance, it may seem incredible that Scribus is a viable alternative to many commercial layout and design software. But it really is. Scribus users already have powerful color management (including CMYK support), advanced bitmap support, layer management, SVG support, plugins, scripts, and even barcode generation at their disposal.
All in all, Scribus has everything you need to prepare a modern illustrated publication, and in my opinion, in the not-too-distant future, Scribus will easily chop off a piece of the pie belonging to monsters like QuarkXPress and Adobe InDesign. Indeed, quite recently Linux has adapted a part of the desktop operating systems market without noise and dust!
Citizens, keep your money in a savings bank!
By default as external program to edit images Scribus calls GIMP, but at the same time naively believes that the path to it is specified in the corresponding system PATH variable. The GIMP installer for Windows is not in the habit of adding a path to itself to this variable, so to get the graphics program to invoke without problems, go to the File Scribus Settings ... menu item, select the External Tools tab, and in the Graphics Processing Tool area write the full path to your favorite graphics editor, for example C: /GIMP-2.0/bin/gimp-2.2.exe or C: / glasgow. 0.2 / cinepaint. exe. In this case, the launch line should not contain spaces, so if the called application is located in the C: Program Files folder, then it will have to be moved or copied to another location.
Scribus
Open source and free program for layout and design.
Grade: 5/5
System requirements: Celeron processor 1000 MHz, 64 MB RAM.
Supported OS: Windows 98 / Me / 2000 / XP, Linux, Unix, Mac OS X.
Distribution size: 18 MB.
Developer: http://www.scribus.net
Ghostscript
PS / PDF interpreter (extends Scribus capabilities).
Grade: 4,5/5
System requirements:
Supported OS:
Distribution size: 11.6 MB.
Developer: http://www.cs.wisc.edu/~ghost/
GSview
PS / PDF viewer (requires Ghostscript to work).
Grade: 4/5
System requirements: Pentium processor II, 200 MHz, 32 MB RAM.
Supported OS: Windows 98 / Me / 2000 / XP, Linux, Unix, Mac OS X.
Distribution size: 1.42 MB.
Developer:
I say right away - there are only two programs for development, layout, creation of a newspaper, magazine, booklet etc.:
Quark xpress
I'm not really familiar with the history of this company, but the program is not bad. Until now, newspapers and magazines use the 4th version (now there is already an 8th version), due to the simplicity. Russian support is NOT built-in and must be installed separately, and each version has its own. Word hyphenation will not work without additional settings,
and at layout of the magazine and newspaper nothing will work without hyphenation, so if you are going to typeset your newspaper or magazine at home, it is better not to use Quark - you will have to install a lot, and this will require additional knowledge and time.
Adobe indesign
Adobe Indesign is a program from the software market dinosaur that created Photoshop. The previous program was called PageMaker. There are problems during installation, of course, and every time some new ones, but this is best program of a kind. The Russian language is built-in, I'm talking about the ability to wrap words. I started working in Indesign already knowing Quark well (I could work, practically, without a mouse - on the keyboard), and even this moment was taken into account by the creators: in Indesing you can install keyboard shortcuts from Quark Exrpress 4.0 (although, similar only approximately, but you quickly get used to ).
For all these programs to install and work well, you need to clean up the mess with the fonts. To do this, install some kind (the most famous - Adobe Font Manager). " Broken fonts»Come across quite often, often the broken font turns out to be Arial (one of the main ones in Windows). That is, of course, you cannot see it with your eyes - the font itself and the font work fine in Word, for example, but some symbols are incorrectly "drawn" and Indesign simply does not install or does not start after installation.
And the most important thing! Programs for layout of newspapers and magazines ( by the way, in Quark Express and Indesign you can collect any layouts for printing: flyers, posters, brochures, booklets) it programs for working with text but not with a photo, or for compositing text and photos. These programs do not have photo editing tools, so at least one more must-have program is Adobe photoshop, it prepares all the raster graphics for your publication.
