Back in May it was announced that [1] Serif, a UK company known for its publishing and design applications, would start offering its software for purchase in the United States. It was exciting news because their four main products align closely with [2] Adobe’s Creative Suite applications and could serve as a low-cost substitute (Serif’s apps cost only $80–100 each while Adobe’s comparable apps cost anywhere from $400–700, if purchased separately). The news was exciting enough for me to jump into the world of Windows and try these applications out for myself.

It’s hard to compare software like this to Adobe’s, since applications like Photoshop and Illustrator practically created the desktop publishing and digital imaging industries. Rather than strictly compare the two product families, I approached the task as a working designer would and tested the Serif products to see if they could work well in an ad agency or design firm. This includes working well with standard graphics and text formats, supporting standard spot color libraries such as the PANTONE Matching System, being easy to use and robust for standard design work, and exporting files that will work well with printers.

Serif’s four products include:

• DrawPlus X2, a graphics program similar to Illustrator,
• PhotoPlus X2, a digital studio similar to Photoshop,
• PagePlus X3 Publisher Professional, similar to InDesign, and
• WebPlus X2, similar to Dreamweaver.

DrawPlus X2: A lot of toys and plays well with others

DrawPlus X2 is a lot of fun to use and has some cool tricks that are either new to me or are similar to what I’ve seen in Illustrator and Freehand. It can open Illustrator and PDF files and import a variety of other formats including Photoshop and EPS files, though when I threw some complex Illustrator files at it, I learned it couldn’t process opacity masks. But as long as you are not migrating a library of Illustrator files to DrawPlus, you should be all right in your daily work.

Working with the application is fairly easy to do and there’s some powerful tools available to users. There’s a library of brushes that are easy to use and look very natural—charcoal, paint, pastel, pencil, pen and waterpaint strokes are all available, and they are good enough to remind me of [3] Corel Painter. While DrawPlus doesn’t have many color libraries, it does have the PANTONE® libraries which is good. Unfortunately, you can only access them within the Color Selector dialog box, and I don’t like how the Color Selector handles—you can change the color mode within the dialog box but it doesn’t seem to affect what color goes into the Color panel.

[4]

DrawPlus X2 is perfect for making simple graphics such as those shown here. Click the image for a larger view.

There are a few other oddities that really bothered me:

• You can’t swap the foreground and background color in the Color panel.
• The Zoom tool is in the lower-right corner of the interface and is easy to miss.
• Autotracing bitmap graphics is an important part of any illustration application, and DrawPlus does have an autotracing feature but it is inferior to Illustrator. You can only preview your work in a very small window, and there are only a couple settings to handle (smoothness and tolerance). Also note that autotracing a complex image will likely crash the application—the dialog box even warns the user about this.

But there’s some things I haven’t seen in other drawing applications that I like:

• A Pressure panel allows you to fine-tune how your drawing tablet’s pen pressure is interpreted and applied to brushstrokes.
• Along with the usual effects like drop shadow and glows, there are some nice 3D filter effects such as bump maps, pattern maps and lighting effects. They make for some really nice effects. I should also note that I’m somewhat disappointed there aren’t more effects and filters, like in Illustrator, but some missing effects (like Roughen) can be found in the toolbar.
• Instant 3D can make a line, shape or image into a 3D object. For an image this means superimposing it on a three-dimensional image box. It creates some really cool graphics quickly.
• The Transparency tool allows you to click and apply transparency effects to any element, and you can apply these in a variety of ways (radial, conical, three points, plasma and more).

[5]

DrawPlus X2 also comes equipped with an impressive array of wet and dry brushes. Click the image for a larger view.

You can’t output a DrawPlus graphic as a Photoshop or Illustrator graphic but you can make a variety of bitmap and vector formats including PDF. The PDF export dialog box only allows compatibility up to Acrobat 6 (the application just went up to version 9). You can produce PDF/X-1a files but since the the dialog box seems to be outdated it doesn’t include any other specs like PDF/X-3 or PDF/X-4. Also, in my testing it took awhile to export from complex documents and the resulting files were large.

I would feel comfortable using DrawPlus for my daily work, though I’m not sure I would want to work with complex documents that need to go to PDF or files that need to be converted from Illustrator. I think Illustrator and DrawPlus are a little too different, though Draw Plus really does do a decent job of getting most of it right. The best customer for DrawPlus may be those who are currently drawing with a bottom-dollar application but don’t want to tackle something like Illustrator. DrawPlus gives you some of Illustrator’s power at a fraction of the cost, and it has some fun toys to play with.

[6]

I didn’t cover it in this review, but DrawPlus X2 also has some animation features including the ability to export to Flash. Click the image for a larger view.

PhotoPlus X2: Not ready for CMYK

I can’t advocate using PhotoPlus X2 in a professional environment because of the lack of features for CMYK images. You can create colors according to the CMYK color model (just change the Color Mode drop-down menu in the Color panel) and you can output CMYK separations if you print from PhotoPlus, but images cannot be saved as CMYK. Moreover, if you bring a CMYK image into PhotoPlus (and it’s easy to do, even with Photoshop files) when you save or export the image you will end up with a RGB file. PhotoPlus has no support for spot channels either. There is a Channels panel, but the only channels you can have there are Red, Green and Blue. This lack of support for CMYK and spot colors means that PhotoPlus cannot create images for use on a commercial press. Since the application only handles RGB images, its color management is also spotty: all you can really do is turn color management on or off, and specify a RGB profile to use for internal RGB and the monitor profile. For a professional user this does not cut it.

[7]

PhotoPlus X2 has several tools for quick and easy fixes to your digital photos. Click the image for a larger view.

Despite the failure to handle professional work, PhotoPlus does have some merit if you work with RGB images such as digital photos and you only need to print to your inkjet printer or at the local big-box store. Many important tools are available to you, such as those that fix red-eye, remove blemishes and spot lighten or darken. There is a strong engine to handle layers and it also has the full complement of adjustment layers you’ll find in Photoshop or Photoshop Elements. Some aspects of the application aren’t as good as they can be (Curves is particularly weak) but other adjustment options like Levels or Hue/Saturation have the full set of features. You will also find a variety of tools to warp and distort images, as well as an Effects menu that has most of the filters you’ll find in Photoshop, plus a few new ones such as the Instant Artist effect that does a great job of converting images to artwork with a few settings.

[8]

Like Photoshop, PhotoPlus X2 has a Filter Gallery to help you select what filters to apply to your images. Click the image for a larger view.

In the end PhotoPlus X2 is more comparable to Photoshop Elements than it is to Photoshop—Photoshop Elements can’t handle CMYK images either, and it is designed for amateur users too. They are comparable in more ways than one: both sport an image browser of some kind. But PhotoPlus’s Image Browser is rather weak—all you get is a file tree for browsing images, and a grid area to see accessible images and their pixel sizes. Other digital asset management options offer far more information and ease of use—even the Organizer found in Photoshop Elements, which [9] in my recent review I complimented for its ease of use and power.

[10]

PhotoPlus X2 has superior tools for applying painterly and illustrative qualities to images. Click the image for a larger view.

The main advantage of using PhotoPlus X2 over similar applications would have been its price, but since it’s really an entry-level application and competing with the likes of Photoshop Elements (which is only $60 more than PhotoPlus and being upgraded to version 7) its advantage is pretty well eliminated. I would recommend it only for users who use Serif’s other products and are familiar with their look and feel.

PagePlus X3 Publisher Professional: A nice choice for layouts

PagePlus is one version up compared to the other three apps, and it shows. Out of all the applications, PagePlus X3 Publisher Professional is the most robust and has an interesting combination of [11] InDesign, Word and Publisher. For Word and Publisher users, I recommend trying PagePlus out to see how it can enliven your layouts and make your work easier.

PagePlus has most of the tools you’ll find in PageMaker or InDesign, plus a few new ones that are quite interesting for novice users. If you want to make some text into a logo on the fly, just type it and take it into LogoStudio, a standalone module that can will walk you through placing it on a path, applying effects, fills, clip art from the included gallery, and/or arranging it as you wish. I don’t think it’s something a design firm or ad agency would use—brands are created with much more sophisticated applications and with a whole lot more research and testing—but a student or a non-professional may get a lot of use out of this.

[12]

I think PagePlus X3 has as much in common with graphics and image applications as it does with standard layout applications like InDesign. Click the image for a larger view.

As with DrawPlus and PhotoPlus, PagePlus has tools for applying effects, 3D twists and turns, and warping elements. This is the kind of thing I try to do in Photoshop or Illustrator, but it works here and users will enjoy the fun things they can do with type. The same Transparency tool in DrawPlus can also be found here, which is actually a nice way to apply transparency effects to elements. Other layout applications should have a tool like this.

One of the most important things for working designers to do is to control text formatting with styles—character, paragraph and object styles. Object styles can be found in the Styles panel but controlling text styles is a more complicated and disappointing matter. You’ll find the Text Style Palette under the Format menu, and from there you can create character and paragraph styles as usual. You can apply styles only from a small drop-down menu up in the top-left corner of the interface—there’s no way to apply a keyboard shortcut. I’ve never understood why InDesign character and paragraph style keyboard shortcuts require the numeric keypad, but at least you can make some kind of shortcut.

[13]

Some great object styles come with PagePlus X3 right out of the box. Click the image for a larger view.

The Character panel and the typography engine in general are also not quite up to standards. I don’t understand why tracking is called spacing, and I don’t understand why it and leading both are measured in percentages rather than points, which is standard typographic practice. You can work with points from the Format –> Character dialog box, but not from the Character panel. There’s also a strange “slope” setting in the Character panel that will skew your selected text a specified amount. I think it’s designed make a typeface italic, but it’s actually oblique and not italic (true italics are designed differently and you can’t achieve them just by slanting text). PagePlus doesn’t offer control of OpenType and its many typographic options either.

If you are used to designing layouts in Word or some cheap (or free) layout application that came with your PC, then PagePlus X3 Publisher Professional will open a new world of desktop publishing to you. The price is affordable and the features are quite robust for the price. It can import and export all the right file formats including PDF, but many other products on the market have better typographical tools and generally handle text better so I would steer professional designers to [14] Quark or InDesign. But if these two programs have always seemed too complex and expensive, PagePlus is a good alternative.

WebPlus X2: WYSIWYG or HTML?

Web design is a different type of work than print design—we are often working with code and we can never control how exactly the user will view our work, so we must think like an engineer or an architect. Both of these titles have been applied to web designers over the years. So I was very curious to see if WebPlus X2 would be a left-brained, analytical, code-based experience or a right-brained, creative experience where what you see is what you get (WYSIWYG). Serif has chosen to deliver the latter, and this means the user gets a web design experience that is both good and bad.

[15]

WebPlus X2 can create some very appealing webpages with plenty of eye candy. Click the image for a larger view.

Several WebPlus tools are familiar to users of the other three applications: the Rotate, Transparency, Warp, Filter Effects and Shadow tools are all here, plus several others like it. HTML editors usually have to rely on supporting graphics applications for these functions. Having it all in one application creates a more comfortable creative experience. I personally believe that in ten years, all web design applications will be able to create layouts without requiring users to know how to code—designers used to write PostScript code in order to create print layouts, and that’s been replaced by WYSIWYG applications like PagePlus. Designers who don’t know HTML will consider WebPlus a lifesaver.

WebPlus also makes complex web elements easy to add and implement: there are tools for adding a variety of web media (including Flash and YouTube), [16] CAPTCHAs, file uploading interfaces, RSS feeds and RSS readers, e-commerce, search fields and more. It’s not often that an application makes drag-and-drop functions like this so easy. But users should also be warned that web design is not as easy as drag-and-drop, and while working with tools like this can put the elements on the page it can only get you so far. If you want a complete e-commerce solution, for example, WebPlus’s e-commerce tool will not get you there: it allows integration with one of three standard third-party e-commerce solutions (PayPal, RomanCart and Mal’s E-Commerce).

[17]

As with PagePlus, some of the tools in WebPlus X2 are usually found in graphics applications, not in HTML editors. Click the image for a larger view.

For me the true test of a professional web design application, whether it’s a pure HTML editor or a WYSIWYG application like WebPlus, is whether or not the end result uses clean code and works well for as many users as possible. Another test is whether or not a user can work with the HTML code and fix any errors or oddities. In this regard WebPlus is not very strong. It’s difficult to work with the underlying HTML in WebPlus. This can be a good thing if you’re a complete novice, but in a professional environment it’s essential. You can get to the source code but editing it is a chore and there’s a lot of tags specific to WebPlus that show up. It’s easy to test a webpage in any browser that’s installed on your system, but as far as I can tell there’s no validation against a particular spec. The Site Checker dialog box does allow “W3C validation” but I can’t tell how to check the site against, for example, the XHTML 1.1 spec or XHTML 1 Transitional spec.

[18]

Novice users will like the templates that ship with WebPlus X2. Click the image for a larger view.

WebPlus creates HTML 4.01 Transitional pages with CSS either inline or in the head of the webpage, but never as a separate stylesheet. I couldn’t even find “style sheet” or “CSS” in the WebPlus Help pages. Moreover, the code that WebPlus creates seems overly complex and long, which can affect download times for users. This lack of control over code is why I would not use WebPlus X2 as a professional web design application—even with a WYSIWYG application like this one, things do happen and it’s necessary sometimes to handle the HTML. I would recommend anyone who is new to web design to get a demo and give it a try. It will certainly be more comfortable than trying out Adobe Dreamweaver.

Conclusion

These four applications from across the pond do a passable job of producing professional work but there are some deficiencies that I would not tolerate in my own work. As with all things, a product that may not work for me may be perfect for others, and I think these applications (DrawPlus and PagePlus in particular) are a good fit for people learning design or creating personal projects.

[19] DrawPlus X2
Rating: 8/10
US $99.99

[20] PhotoPlus X2
Rating: 6/10
US $79.99

[21] PagePlus X3 Publisher Professional
Rating: 8/10
US $99.99

[22] WebPlus X2
Rating: 7/10
US $79.99

All products published by [1] Serif and all prices are suggested retail prices.