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Surprise! Mac Desktop Publishing Is Not Dead. It’s $45.

DTPRemember desktop publishing? It’s what Macs did back in the day that PCs just could not do. Create high quality publications on a desktop computer.

These days you can spend lots of money on desktop publishing for Macs or Windows PCs, or spend $45 for Swift Publisher for your Mac.

I claim to be a desktop publishing original, circa 1985 with the first Apple LaserWriter printer (over $7,000 for 300 x 300 pixels back in the day), and version 1.0 of Aldus Pagemaker (later bought by Adobe) running on a 512k Mac. Do the math. It was expensive.

What did Mac users get for all that money back then? An entry into desktop publishing, inexpensive typesetting and page layout, relatively speaking. These days, your Mac costs half as much and does much more.

These days you can spend hundreds of dollars for Quark Xpress or Adobe InDesign, both highly capable publishing software. Or, you can spend $45 on a very capable, efficient, and adaptable Mac application called Swift Publisher.

Swift comes from one of our favorite Mac software developers, BeLight Software.

Swift Publisher is a page layout tool for designing and printing colorful flyers, letterheads, newsletters, brochures, etc. Wide choice of professionally designed templates provides you with the fastest way to get high quality and professionally looking documents

What you get is vastly superior to desktop publishing applications of days gone by. Swift contains 23,000 images, 130 professionally design templates, perfect for creating page layouts, brochures, catalogs, newsletters, booklets, and more.

Drop in all kinds of images and move them around the pre-set layout designs, or create your own. Swift handles images in TIFF, JPEG, GIF, PDF, and EPS. iPhoto integration is included, so just drag and drop.

I remember the day when page layout was fun. Add columns, drop in images and watch the text wrap around the image. Swift makes it even easier with built-in drawing tools, multiple page navigation, instant preview, and a floating inspector for every element on the page.

Swift

Desktop publishing in the 21st century is still about three things-- design, layout, tools. Swift gives you more than the basics with column to column to another page, page thumbnails, line and character spacing, paragraph indents. There’s even a text to curve feature.

Onscreen guides let you place all objects with precision. Create master pages with re-usable elements common to all pages. Create background and foreground layers.

Swift comes with a lite version of ArtText so you can add high quality text graphics for logos, banners, headings, and anything that marries design with text. Photos can even have their own custom frames.

Unlike decades past, Swift has a spell checker. That alone is worth $45. For me, desktop publishing is about layout and text; fonts. Swift gives you control over fonts which allows you to apply styles throughout a document.

Swift

Despite the $45 price tag, Swift gives you professional tools for pro results. Drop shadows, text flow, cropping, object alignment, multiple layers, repeat common elements.

In the age of the web page, it’s nice to see that value still exists on the desktop. Brochures, flyers, newsletters, booklets, and catalogs have not gone out of style. They’re just easier to produce with Mac applications like Swift Publisher.

If you send work to a printer, and your business has a Mac (you’re reading ‘Mac360’, right?) consider looking at Swift first.

Check out the daily list of our 9 Word mini-Reviews at NoodleMac, and Kate's daily in-depth Mac software reviews at PixoBebo.

   • Article by Ron McElfresh • Published on Monday, April 21, 2008
   • Category: Software • 16 Reader comment(s) • Email This • Digg This • Shop Now
  Page 1 of 1 Page(s) for this article.

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Readers Talk Back:
Stanley White says:

Doesn’t look like Swift imports Pagemaker. Whew! It’s hard to believe that people still use that. Our shop has Adobe InDesign which ‘kinda sorta’ imports Pagemaker. It always required a lot of cleanup. Sometimes it’s easier to start over.

   — Posted on Mon Apr 21 at 10:09 pm by Stanley White

A_D_Bee says:

does swift import from page maker?

   — Posted on Mon Apr 21 at 9:21 pm by A_D_Bee

Carol Miller says:

Sorry, Andy, ‘dissing’ is a word. Language is dynamic and usage rules. To ‘diss’ means to ‘disrespect.’

Check the Urban Dictionary for more details.

   — Posted on Mon Apr 21 at 9:12 pm by Carol Miller

Andrew Titus says:

“Dissing” is not a word.

   — Posted on Mon Apr 21 at 9:02 pm by Andrew Titus

iggy pence says:

Pages is actually quite decent for very basic page layout, but doesn’t have the text control, column flows, or precision of Swift. Word is a beast; difficult to learn for page layout, doesn’t handle graphics well, not nearly as good as Pages or Swift.

Isn’t Swift still a free download and trial?

   — Posted on Mon Apr 21 at 12:44 pm by iggy pence

danvdr says:

Newbie question. How is this better than Pages/Word2008. I thought both of them were fairly good at basic page layout.

   — Posted on Mon Apr 21 at 12:22 pm by danvdr

Dan Blackstone says:

I’m glad they do not charge $199 for Swift. It’s a steal at $45. It does what it does very well. Better than very well. I bought a couple of their products based on customer reviews. The cool things you can do with ArtText can’t be done in Quark or InDesign, either.

   — Posted on Mon Apr 21 at 12:05 pm by Dan Blackstone

Bradley Dichter says:

I guess I did diss it, but I guess my clients tend to the elite side. It’s a good value for the home/small business. Just not compatible with other business users using InDesign or Quark. And by the way, it could in fact help if they charged $199, as it would be assumed or implied that the program and it’s support was worth far more. What do you assume about the driver of a Lexus versus the driver of a Kia? What do you hear about the quality of these cars? Sometimes product positioning gets it respect it doesn’t get when the price is too good to be true.

   — Posted on Mon Apr 21 at 11:53 am by Bradley Dichter

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