Publishing software is a broad term used to describe software that includes a page layout application allowing the user to merge text and graphics for printing. Software for publishing includes graphics application, Web publishing programs, and presentation software. The term has stretched to include software for making greeting cards, banners, calendars.
Publishing applications are included as part of an office suite of software such as MS Office (MS Office publisher), Corel Suite (Corel Ventura). There are also stand alone products designed for business desktop publishing such as Adobe Framemaker or Pagemaker. Specialty programs are also sold specifically for the design of greeting cards, calendars, banners, etc.
Common features available with desktop software include:
- Graphics / Image editor
- PDF management tools
- Templates/Wizards for easy development
- Specialty documents (greeting cards, calendars, etc)
- High level color processing
Because your business's desktop publishing will closely interact with other office software products, it's probably best to use the publisher that comes with your office suite. This will allow for a high degree of integration between your imaging software, word processing software, presentation software etc. Some industries have specialized products used for desktop development such as advertising.
Major providers of desktop publishing applications include:
- Microsoft
- Corel
- Adobe
- Serif
Selection Criteria includes:
- Integration: How well will your publishing software interact with other office applications?
- Ease if use and training requirements
- Uniformity: Most companies or divisions share documents – must be compatible formats
- Old documents: Can they be read into new SW without loss of formatting
- System resources: Not usually an issue, but sometimes small business environments are on over-taxed hardware already.