Art Explosion Publisher Pro Reviewer's Comments

Our first pick for desktop publishing software and our "TopTenREVIEWS Gold Award Winner" is Art Explosion Publisher Pro by Nova Development. The program comes with a myriad of professional-looking templates that make any desktop publishing project a snap.

Art Explosion Publisher Pro is fun and reasonably simple to use. The wide variety of templates, tools and options allow for virtually unlimited desktop publishing projects, and the intuitive screen controls and tutorials set Art Explosion Publisher Pro above the rest.

Art Explosion Publisher Pro Screenshots. Click for more
       


Ease of Use:  

Installing Art Explosion Publisher Pro requires three CDs: one program CD and two CDs for all the different templates they provide. Once the program is installed, you may need to view their tutorials or briefly read their help content before you fully understand all the available tools.

While the control panel and various tools take some getting used to, once you're familiar with them, they're easy to use. Unfortunately, you cannot simply drag-and-drop while working with clipart and other images.

Projects:  

Art Explosion Publisher Pro is equipped with some great tools for running a business: you can create advertisements, direct mailers, brochures and flyers. The program also has one of the best selections of business form sets for creating estimates, expense reports, fax covers, and more.

Not only does Art Explosion Publisher Pro include a great selection of templates, the quality of the templates is very professional and easy to edit and use.

Photo/Graphic Tools:  

Art Explosion Publisher Pro has some great tools for working with graphics and images, including a 3—D tool that adds 3-D effects to any image. The software's database includes a wide variety of clipart and images. Art Explosion Publisher Pro includes four CDs of images ranging from fun art for kids, to web graphics.

Art Explosion Publisher Pro includes Publisher Pro Imager, a program similar to Adobe Elements which allows you to create your own images. Unfortunately, Publisher Pro Imager is a little difficult to access.

Text Tools:  

Art Explosion Publisher Pro includes spell-checking features and even has a built-in thesaurus.

Art Explosion Publisher Pro's tools for enhancing the appearance of your text are excellent. You can add 3—D, drop shadow, glow and bevel effects to text.

Printing/Sharing:  

Through Art Explosion Publisher Pro you can send your project to an email address. You can also adjust your project's layout, color separations, prepress file information, crop marks, registration targets and more.

Help/Support:  

Art Explosion Publisher Pro comes with a user guide, tutorials and content help. If these aren't sufficient for answering your questions, you can also contact tech support via phone or email.

Summary:  

Overall, Art Explosion Publisher Pro's tools and features excel at creating stunning projects. We were especially impressed with their templates and how easy they were to edit.