How do you do desktop publishing?

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  • Dave2002
    Full Member
    • Dec 2010
    • 18035

    How do you do desktop publishing?

    Another topic which could fit in P3 or in the Techie section!

    Some of us - not professionals as such - have to produce documents including text, graphics etc. from time to time. It is amazing how stupidly difficult this can be sometimes.

    Recently I wanted to produce a document with images and text - directions to a party. "Obviously" I produced the text first, and then tried to add the images, and other features. Right - that's what I did at first.

    Did that work? No!

    How did I eventually do it?

    I actually did write the text first, but then when I'd got the text I wanted I converted it to an image file. I then used Affinity Designer to put all the images - including the text image(s) which I could then place anywhere on the page, and rotate at will.

    Why did I do that?

    It wasn't the only way I tried. I did try OpenOffice, and Pages, and a few previous attempts with Affinity Photo and Affinity Designer. Pages wouldn't let me import the images without getting them into Photos first - then seemed to get in a mess. It also wouldn't let me resize the images - I've no idea why.

    I also used Preview quite a bit with Grab to cut out bits of text and convert to images.

    I was very surprised when using the Affinity tools that I could import PDFs directly - including text, but I was also surprised and somewhat horrified when I discovered that it was dissassembling the text and reformatting it - and also unpacking the layers of images which I'd done using layer techniques.

    So - in the end I just made each component an image (which I feel sure is not ideal), and then just put the whole shebang together.

    I didn't want to produce text and convert to images, but it did the job, and seemed to be the only reliable way - sadly.

    Sometimes I wonder if old fashioned methods using paper, scissors and glue to fix everything, then photocopying would be better!
  • MrGongGong
    Full Member
    • Nov 2010
    • 18357

    #2
    Open Office drawing works fine

    I use that combined with Photoshop Elements (tightwad version) for more control
    or Gimp to process images

    The problem with grabbing from Preview etc is that you can end up with far too low resolution for print

    I think one of our leaders uses Letraset, like we used to use at art college in Birkenhead in the 1980's

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    • french frank
      Administrator/Moderator
      • Feb 2007
      • 30456

      #3
      Originally posted by MrGongGong View Post
      I think one of our leaders uses Letraset, like we used to use at art college in Birkenhead in the 1980's
      That was then! I don't produce documents for commercial printing now, but it depends how sophisticated you want to be. Like Gongers, I use GIMP for producing graphics of various sorts, grab high res photos from wherever and - the Letraset solution ©2017 is simply to drag and drop them into a fully formatted Word doc, wrap the text in whatever style you want round each pic, which you can then resize and position - and then it depends what format is needed for the print-ready file or copy. I most recently had to use Page Plus (PC only) and save as a PP file. Now I save my Word docx as a pdf. Design and picture quality cover a lot of make-do and mend! Depends who's printing and what format they want.
      It isn't given us to know those rare moments when people are wide open and the lightest touch can wither or heal. A moment too late and we can never reach them any more in this world.

      Comment

      • Eine Alpensinfonie
        Host
        • Nov 2010
        • 20572

        #4
        I use OvationPro, and it's absolutely brilliant.

        Ihttp://www.davidpilling.net/ovationpro/opr.html

        Originally conceived for the Acorn (RISCOS) platform, it was eventually transferred to Windows, and is extremely reliable, versatile, and easy to use. I just wish there was a Mac version too.

        It's frame-based, so problems such as those already mentioned should not exist.

        Comment

        • Dave2002
          Full Member
          • Dec 2010
          • 18035

          #5
          I used to use PagePlus, which I liked, and occasionally also Canvas - but I think those are PC only.

          Comment

          • Dave2002
            Full Member
            • Dec 2010
            • 18035

            #6
            Originally posted by MrGongGong View Post
            Open Office drawing works fine

            I use that combined with Photoshop Elements (tightwad version) for more control
            or Gimp to process images

            The problem with grabbing from Preview etc is that you can end up with far too low resolution for print

            I think one of our leaders uses Letraset, like we used to use at art college in Birkenhead in the 1980's
            Thanks for this suggestion. Since I already have the images (including text shown rendered as image files) for my most recent project I tried this out. I do use OpenOffice mostly for text (I generally much prefer this to Word) - but hardly ever use the drawing part. The drawing part works quite well with image files - and also supports overlays (layers). I've only just been exploring this - as I said - I hardly ever use that one. Not sure if it has visibilty on/off switches, or if layers can be moved around - but it may - and I'll just have to check further.

            One thing however - it seems to have the same problem re text as the other systems I've used. If I import text I don't necessarily want it to resize or reformat - simply just to move around. That's why I eventually opted for screen grabs from Preview to convert text to images. Ideally I'd like the text to stay as text, so that it could be edited or the fonts changed etc., but if a software system is going to mess with that I'd rather get the text right, then "freeze" it as an image.

            I take your point about screen grabs not always being high enough resolution from Preview - though for what I've been trying to do recently it seems good enough. Although I quite like Preview, the big failing for me is that it edits destructively. I always (nearly always!) try to remember to only use Preview on copies, as I have been burnt by Preview changing photo images destructively, when all I wanted to do was to do some trial adjustments. Even worse if one inadvertantly uses this when a camera card is plugged in and the wrong source volume is chosen!

            Thanks again - and I'll add it as part of my toolbox.

            PS - if you do photo editing, you might want to try out the Google Nik collection - which works with Photoshop Elements and can give some really good effects. It's Free!

            Comment

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