You’ve probably once thought of writing a book or a magazine. You’ve maybe asked yourself – more than once – whether you couldn’t have done a better job designing book or newspaper layouts than those designed by professional designers. Previously, such a thought would be a very difficult one to materialize because publishing was possible on through the use of sophisticated and expensive industrial equipment. But now, the same can easily be done by use of desktop publishing software installed in your laptop.

So, what is desktop publishing software and what are the most common ones?

Desktop publishing software can basically be defined as software used by graphic designers for the purpose of creating visual communication for professional or desktop printing.

Software Variety

Now, which software should you use for your publication?

There are many DTP software but we shall examine the three most used ones.

Adobe InDesign

Adobe InDesign is one of the most common desktop publishing software in the market today.  Adobe InDesign was meant to be a re-write of Adobe’s other program – Adobe PageMaker. The greatest strength of adobe InDesign is its ability to execute complex procedures while being relatively simple to the average person. It is something that one doesn’t have to be taught in class and is also easy to handle. Apart from having great graphics, adobe InDesign also has a great text layout and this is where we will be concentrating our efforts. Once you’ve installed adobe InDesign on your laptop, you will see that it has a pointer. Anyone who has familiarity with desktop publishing will find adobe InDesign  a pretty friendly software to use.

Corel Ventura

This is desktop publishing software manufactured by Corel Corporation. The software was acquired in 1993 and was repackaged with little changes made to it. This has made it to loose favor among designers who were expecting much better things from Corel.  In-fact, once the pride of Corel Corporation, the software is currently labeled under “other products” on the company’s website.

QuarkExpress

QuarkExpress is powerful design software produced by Quark Corporation. Despite the fact that it is facing stiff competition from Adobe products – mainly Adobe Indesign – QuarkExpress still retains a huge chunk of the market share that it commanded in the 80s and the 90s.

Now that you know the most common DTP software available in the market, how do you choose the proper one?

There are several things that you may need to consider here:

Cost: This is perhaps the easiest of all the factors to understand. Look at the cost of the software and see whether investment in it will be recovered from the benefits that you will enjoy.

Complexity of the program: Depending on how much you are ready to learn, there are various degrees of complexities that you may be willing to tackle. The more complex the software the more difficult it is for you to learn.

Use of the software: Consider what you want to do with the software that you would like to purchase. It does not make sense to buy software that you will not manage to use even 10% of its ability.

All in all, DTP software is important if you want to design a good publication.