Desktop Publishing Software What is DTP software and which is the best?

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What is desktop publishing software?
Desktop publishing software (or DTP software) is software used in the process of creating editorial projects. The primary use of DTP is to lay out texts, images and graphics on a page and easily arrange these elements to create the preferred document. Born in the 1980s to create printed and PDF publications, today DTP software is also used to create electronic media, such as e-books and webpages. DTP software enables professional creation and management over the design of a document, and, if correctly used, a typographic quality.

DTP software is used to create both basic documents such as business cards, menus and brochures and more complex editorial projects like books, magazines, catalogs, and price lists. The type of documents you need to create affects your choice of software.

Which desktop publishing software should I choose?
Many diverse software options are currently available for desktop publishing, including the market leaders (professional software such as QuarkXPress and Adobe InDesign), open source software such as Scribus, LaTex, and Libre Office Suite, and the two programs developed by Microsoft (Word and Publisher). Also available is Pagination.com, which is among the most effective desktop publishing software for composing text, data, and images into a complete editorial product. Pagination.com is one of the first cloud-based, automatic-database publishing solutions offered by the publishing market.

Each of these solutions is characterized by different technical features, performance, cost, ease of use, and availability.

Our reviews of the best DTP software
To help you choose the Desktop Publishing Software that is right for you.

Adobe InDesign
In Design is a professional-level desktop publishing software for Windows and Mac that was first produced by Adobe Systems in 1999. InDesign is the heir of Adobe PageMaker and can be used to publish every sort of editorial product (particularly books, magazines, and journals). Its main features are multilingual support, the advanced management of OpenType fonts, the capability to manage transparency effects, and its considerable integration with other products offered by Adobe Systems.

Returning the focus to a single document, a user can handle different page sizes, add text and paragraphs in multiple columns with easy-to-use tools, and screen and easily change the objects. Moreover, the software also allows the user to easily create interactive documents and multimedia proposals with audio and video elements.

Adobe InDesign supports exportation to the EPUB and SWF formats to create e-book and digital publications, such as digital magazines and suitable contents for tablets. Moreover, InDesign also manages XML, style sheets, and other markup coding to consent to the exportation of tagged text content for use in other formats and online.

The newest version of InDesign has several new designs, including “liquid” layouts or “responsive” designs that automatically adjust to become suitable to different devices and the ability to link to different content. The second change is important as it allows changes to be replicated across all formats so they don’t have to be input multiple times (reducing the possibility of error).

From the CS6 version onward, InDesign is sold as a monthly fee subscription so that an Adobe account can be activated. Rental of the licenses (so the software can be accessed from the Adobe Creative Cloud) allows selections among all the monthly options. In this way, the excessive cost that is often an obstacle to use of Adobe’s products overall has been overcome.