If you're looking for more of a business solution for publishing desktop documents for commercial printing, email, and web documents then Microsoft Publisher might be the desktop publishing software for you. With their large collection of templates you can create personal and business publications ranging from brochures, newsletters, to resumes. It comes packaged with the most prestigious office software on the planet, Microsoft Office, so you can find solace in the fact your business is going with a trusted company. Now, just because a program is included in a trusted software package doesn't mean it should be considered excellent by default. But, in the case of this program, you're definitely not going to leave disappointed.
While this program is versatile enough for home use, we feel that it was designed with the business owner in mind. Microsoft Publisher comes with more than 600 template choices. You can download additional templates from the Microsoft website based on categories such as business and legal, calendars, labels, planners and stationary. The program also gives you the option to create every kind of project we included in our comparison, except for CD slideshows, brochures and iron-ons. Their library of templates might be small, but the make up for it with the quality of templates they present. We couldn't have been happier with the options we had for project creation.
We felt Microsoft Publisher was one of the easiest desktop publishing programs to use. If you're familiar with most word processors, then you'll be familiar with using this program. The control panel is easy to use and the many templates are easy to edit.
Microsoft Publisher has a great variety of clipart and images as well as online resources for downloading additional images. This program's tools for enhancing images, however, were disappointing. The program includes options to crop an image, resize, adjusting contrast and color, and a few more, but none of the shapes and special effects our top-ranked product can.
While Microsoft Publisher doesn't have all the tools for creating text effects like the higher ranked desktop publishing programs, it does come with a spellchecker, thesaurus and proofreader.
This program has word art you can add to your headlines, though you can't customize your own like the higher-ranked products allow.
Microsoft Publisher has some good printing and file sharing options, including commercial printing tools that allow you to choose whether or not to embed true type fonts as well as subset font embedding. You can also set your registration printing settings to "for publication" or "per object."
Overall, Microsoft Publisher offers a variety of help and support, though we were disappointed with the cost involved. With Publisher you get one support request online or via phone at no charge. After that support can get costly if you need help and can't find it in the help content, knowledge base or FAQs. All additional support requests cost $35.00 per request in the United States and advanced requests can cost up to $245.00.
Microsoft Publisher has some powerful tools for the small business owner who wants to design effective and creative publications for print. If you're not sure of your own design skills the program offers a wide variety of categories to choose from to get you started.
However, if you're looking for desktop publishing software that allows you to be more creative when working with photographic images, then we suggest one of the higher-ranked products.
