14 DAY TRIAL // With all the podcasts, e-zines and RSS feeds, it might seem that paper is slowly fading away. It's not. DTP is as much a part of today's life as it was yesterday. And DTP is one of the areas that helped make the Mac what it is today. But desktop publishing is moving more and more into our houses and, as the information paradigm is changing, you might find yourself wanting to do some layout work. If you are just starting out at desktop publishing, you are not going to need Quark or InDesign. For one thing they are the top DTP programs, feature laden, and with a price tag to match. So if you are looking for a program to open the doorways into DTP for you, look no further than Swift Publisher. Swift Publisher is an entry level DTP program that is easy to use and has a minimal learning curve.
Plenty to choose from If you are new to DTP, it's very likely you don't have very complex needs... presentations, brochures, greeting cards, catalogs, certificates, fliers, letterheads and fax templates, menus newsletters and posters are all easy and fast to make in Swift. This is because the application comes with a very generous offering of templates. The download version only has sixty, while the CD version has over 90 high quality, good looking templates. These make it easy to choose something that looks like what you are looking for and modify it.
The program also comes with heaps of images, over twenty thousand in the CD version... That's a lot of clipart. Most of it is in SVG(Scalable Vector Graphic) format, which means that it will looks just as good whether it is as small as a Finder icon, or as big as a billboard. The images that are in bitmap formats are large enough to be used as anything, and look good if no bigger than half a A4 page. This is mainly because Swift makes a lot of use of the OS X filters to keep those images looking good, even at 300%. You can even make use of the CoreImage filters built into OS X after you download a plugin from the official Swift website.
If all that clipart is not enough, you can search the Internet using Google Images, from right within the application. It will display the tumbnails right there, in the drawer and all you have to do is drag an image to the page you are working on and that's it. If you have a slow connection, you can keep working on your layout using the thumbnail as a guide while the high resolution is downloading. Swift will even tell you the source of an image you decided to work with so that you know where it is from and can procure permission where it is needed. My only gripe is that you can't choose how many results you want and always have to settle for the first 20.
Working with it The first thing I noticed when opened up a Template to work with it is that anything that is outside of bounds is grayed out. This is a very intuitive way to show exactly what is going to make it on the page and what isn't. You have four basic things to work with, and these are graphics, text boxes, boxes and lines. You can flow text between multiple text boxes and everything can be filled, borders or shadowed. Interestingly enough, this includes bitmap images. If an image has an alpha channel, Swift will use that alpha to generate a shadow that will only be of the visible part of the image. A great feature. Also, another great little feature is the ability to add masks to any image. Those little masks can make all the difference between a boring old square picture that has things sticking in at the edges and a very cool image with a mask and a shadow.
Another great thing is the way the program works in two layers, the background and the foreground, meaning that you can use the same background and only change things in the fore ground. The only thing I just can't understand is why on earth when you create a new page, it doesn't receive the same background as the previous page of the same type (left or right page). It seems absurd, but at least it is easy to just select and copy everything.
Working with elements is easy enough, you get automatic ruler guides that show up whenever the element you have currently selected and are moving aligns with another. Another good time saver is that you can select many objects and change settings for all of them at the same time. The only option that is really missing, and it should not, under any circumstances, be missing, is a group function. That's right, although you can select and move and manipulate objects as a group, you cannot actually group them.
Another serious shortcoming is the way text wrapping is handled. First of all, the text layer has to be behind the object it is to wrap around. This is a silly limitation, the text should wrap regardless of the depth it is at. Also, there is no way of creating a manual wrap form for the text to use. This would have been acceptable if you were able to create a free form shape that you could have used as a wrap shape instead, but you can't.
Other than these limitation the program was very fast and easy to use, and, unless you have already done some DTP work in another program, you won't even see them as limitations for some time.
The Good Easy to use, with a minimal learning curve. Comes packed with clipart and templates so you can start using it right away. All the things it does with alpha channels are just great.
The Bad Lacks some advanced features and some rather basic ones. Should not be a problem until the user is already to advanced for this.
The Truth A very affordable application that you can use to break into DTP or fulfill your own layout needs. Easy to use and with great presets, you can be up and doing layout work within minutes.
Here are some screenshots, click to enlarge:
