Serif PagePlus 11, the Review

Take it from a designer who has started off using QuarkXPress and can use InDesign just as well, since the first moment I opened Serif PagePlus 11, I was impressed. The interface is clean and smooth, menus are clear and functions are cleverly grouped, giving a very intuitive and streamlined user interface.

I have gone through several DTP applications and many of them disappeared from my computer within 1 hour they were installed. Serif PagePlus 11 is one of those who has made the grade. The program is quite user friendly. It offers smart templates you can use to jump start your designs. I found the templates are actually quite professionally done, and of course you can start documents from scratch if you don‘t want to use them. Beginners will recognize some of the terms in PagePlus 11’s menus from word processing applications, thus finding the bridge to the DTP world not such a long one to cross, while expert designers will find their way around this program in very little time, finding most functions where they are supposed to be. The interface has definitely been designed with the user in mind, whether that be an expert user or not. The User Guide is also very simple but thorough.

DEALING WITH GRAPHICS

While I don’t find PagePlus’s typographic abilities up to the ones of programs such as InDesign or QuarkXPress, Serif has boosted PagePlus 11’s ability to edit graphics quite a lot. There are a lot of functions which can be done directly within the layout application, without the need to jump back and forth between PagePlus 11 and your graphic editing program.

Filter Effects
Filter Effects will be familiar to Adobe Photoshop users. You can find effects such as Drop Shadow, Inner Shadow, Outer Glow, Inner Glow, Bevel and Emboss and Colour Fill (Photoshop users know this as Colour Overlay). There are some other effects which are actually quite nice, such as the Feather effect (similar to InDesign’s Feather effect) and 3D effects.

Image Adjustments
Basic photo editing can be done within Serif PagePlus 11. In the Image Adjustments options, easily found under the Format menu, you find an array of options that allows you to adjust your graphics right within PagePlus and without the use of a third party image editing program. Again, if you used Photoshop before, you will know your way around these adjustment options in a snap. You can apply any of these to your graphics:

• Levels
• Curves
• Colour Balance
• Brightness and Contrast
• Hue/Saturation/Lightness
• Selective Colour
• Channel Mixer
• Gradient Map
• Invert
• Threshold
• Posterize
• Gaussian Blur
• Motion Blur
• Zoom Blur
• Median
• Diffuse Glow
• Noise
• Dust and Scratch Remover
• Unsharp Mask
• Shadows and Highlights

Image Adjustment Options (enlarged version)

You can also quickly edit a picture through the use of a toolbar placed at the top of the user interface, which changes depending on what you have selected. When images are selected, the toolbar shows you the basic commands for photo editing such as Auto Levels, Adjust Brightness and contrast, take off the red eye effect and more. In that toolbar you find a button conveniently placed which brings you to the more advanced image adjustment options I listed above. As this toolbar changes depending on what you have selected, it is called–no surprise–the Context toolbar. It took me seconds to find out its intuitive name and how to switch it on and off as it was placed under the Toolbars submenu, within the View menu. A person who has just started doing Desktop Publishing and who comes from the world of word processing will find this very familiar.

THE TOOLS

Serif PagePlus 11 presents you with the standard tools such as the Standard Frame Tool (the equivalent of the text/type tool) or the Quick Rectangle tool. It also lets you create several types of shapes which can be filled with text. There are a couple of tools that deserve particular mention–the Line and the Crop tools.

The three line tools

Line Tools
PagePlus 11 has 3 line tools. The first one is the Freehand Line Tool. As the name says it lets you draw freely, though it does correct the jagged lines which are inevitable when drawing with a mouse and produces smooth lines.

The second tool is the Straight Line Tool. The name is quite self explanatory.

The third one is the Curved Line Tool, with which you can create Bezier curves. When the Curved Line Tool is selected, the Context Toolbar presents you with all the options necessary to modify and customize your curved lines. Adobe Illustrator users will find the Curved Line Tool fairly easy to use, though PagePlus 11 manages it a bit differently.

Crop Tools
Serif PagePlus 11 deals with bounding boxes around images in a different way than InDesign or QuarkXPress. With InDesign or QuarkXPress, dragging from an anchor point of the image frame with the Selection Tool will cause the frame to be resized, leaving the image inside untouched. You need to use the Direct Selection Tool (InDesign) or the Content Tool (QuarkXPress) in order to modify size or position of the content in a graphic frame.

An image cropped with the Irregular Crop Tool

With Serif PagePlus 11, dragging from an anchor point of the image frame will cause both the frame and its content to resize at the same time. However PagePlus 11 has 3 Crop tools that allow you to crop the image, so that only part of it is shown. You can also do irregularly shaped crops so you don’t have to stick to rectangular ones. The invisible part of the cropped image isn’t deleted, it is just hidden, and will be visible if you decide to change or get rid of the crop. When selecting the Crop tools, you can also move the content within the frame without moving the frame itself. In other words, it works like InDesign‘s Direct Selection Tool or QuarkXPress‘ Content Tool, but once you know this, it is very easy to use.

SERIF WRITEPLUS

Bundled with PagePlus 11 is Serif WritePlus. This application is a word processor in itself that can be used for more advanced text editing, which you cannot do within PagePlus 11 itself. Whenever you enter a text frame, the Context Toolbar shows you the buttons for basic text formatting, and with them there is also a button that will start up WritePlus. Any editing you do in WritePlus will edit the text in the original text frame within PagePlus 11.

TRASPARENCY

Serif PagePlus 11 is very strong when talking about transparency. You can create a variety of effects that use transparency, from gradient based effects to bitmap based, or even plain solid and uniform transparency.

Gradient transparency works in a very similar way to Photoshop’s, but without the need of Quick Masks. Simply choose a type of gradient and decide whether it will apply to all or just part of your image and you are done.

One of the effects attainable with gradient transparency (enlarged version)

Bitmap based transparency is again very similar to Photoshop’s use of masks to create transparencies based on patterns. While in Photoshop you have to do a couple of steps, for example switching to Quick Mask mode, pasting the pattern on top of the Quick Mask and then switching back to normal view, with Serif PagePlus you can simply choose the pattern you want to apply on your image as a transparency.

One of the effects attainable with bitmap transparency (enlarged version)

PDFs FOR PROFESSIONAL OUTPUT

When I first heard of the release of PagePlus 11, I immediately asked myself whether this program could produce files for professional offset printing. I was pleased to find out that it can. While PagePlus files might not be widely accepted by print bureaus, Serif’s page layout application can produce PDF/X compliant files which are accepted by most printers.

PagePlus offers two ways of making PDFs: either through the Publish as PDF or the Prepare Publication for Professional Printing command. The first one gives you more options that allow you to create PDFs for other purposes other than printing or that are not necessarily PDF/X compliant. The second option is totally automated and will produce PDF/X compliant files. Yet errors are still possible, but PagePlus 11 will alert you of those prior to the production of the PDF, so you can fix them and create a PDF that is error free.

When styles for type such as bold or italic are used, if they are not installed in the computer, Serif will convert the affected type to outlines to retain the appearance of the original layout.

The Publish as PDF option under the File menu opens up this window. You can see here the General tab. (enlarged version)

In the Prepress tab you can set printer’s marks and bleed (enlarged version)

The compression, type and quality, is set in the Compression tab of the Publish PDF window (enlarged version)

You can also set passwords for your PDF documents in the Security tab (enlarged version)

Manage font embedding, transparency settings and Colour Management in the Advanced tab (enlarged version)

OPENING AND EDITING PDFs

Opening PDFs with Serif PagePlus is quite easy. Once they are in PagePlus 11, PDF files are editable and can even be saved as a PagePlus documents. The conversion is not perfect, but it certainly makes it very easy to edit PDFs. One of the flaws in importing PDF files, is that PagePlus divides up text blocks in smaller boxes than the ones that were in the original layout application. This is actually a problem that I was expecting. Another caveat is that font substitution for missing fonts will occur without any warning. Aside from the font substitution, the general layout of PDF files is left as it is in the untouched PDF.

PagePlus lets you create PDF forms which can be used even online. This is a nice feature which goes beyond the printing field of design, but, again, Serif makes it very easy to use.

OTHER FEATURES

Serif PagePlus has some other useful features, some of which are not present even on other professional DTP applications. You can make use of layers, master pages (you can even do master pages for each layer), automatic bullets and numbering, styles and patterns, gallery of vector objects, Pantone Swatch palettes, mail merge, book building, database linking, ability to make web pages and many more functions. While it might not be as strong as other layout applications when it comes to prepress, PagePlus 11 has all the needed functions to create press worthy PDFs. It also offers basic imposition for desktop printers.

For those people who can’t yet invest into other programs such as InDesign or QuarkXPress, Serif PagePlus is a good alternative, although it doesn’t better them just yet. If you are thinking about having a home office or producing your designs in-house, Serif PagePlus 11 will do for you. If you want to use it for professional offset printing it should also work just fine. Serif PagePlus is a cheap alternative, but don’t be fooled by its price, it’s cheap, but I’d say it’s worth more than its cost.

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