Creating documentsĪfter launch, the utility prompts you to create a new document from scratch by establishing the layout. I'm just wondering why I wasn't aware of its existence until now.Scribus is an open-source page layout Windows program for creating, designing and exporting desktop publishing projects to PDF. The project is in development since 2001 and is still going strong. PDF Creation with the addition of PDF interactive elementsįor publishing, Scribus is unequaled as a free and open source application.There are enough video tutorials online for anybody to get competent in a short time. Scribus is not that difficult to use once you know what goes where and you play around with creating a page or two. You can't however curve lines, but drawing is not exactly the high point of Scribus. That's especially useful when fitting text around images. That is you can add nodes, remove nodes and move them around into any shape. you can also treat a picture box like a vector object. In addition to using stacking and layers, you can do inventive stuff using shapes and colors. Pictures are handled really well in Scribus. However it only lights up those sections that are useful for your current selection.

The Properties box contains various sections dedicated to colors, images, shapes, groups et-caetera. By pressing F2, you will gain access to the most convenient way to work in Scribus. Of course, fonts, text size and line spacing is easily editable from the almighty Properties box. You can split your text into multiple boxes and have it appear in almost any configuration you'd like. You rather put an already formatted text into a text box and then play with it until it looks good. You don't write essays in Scribus, although you can if you really want to.

However, to make things easier for you, I'll tell the two most important things about using Scribus: After all, when even when you transition between two applications of the same kind, there's always a period of acclimatization. When starting to use Scribus, it might be a little intimidating. You need full control on margins, layers, spacing, and you need an easy way to juggle these things. Yeah, I know you can paste in images and draw arrows, but that's not enough. If you ever decide to enter the market for brochure and leaflet design, you might want ditch your word processor.

Scribus download