Projects:  

While Publisher 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.

Ease of Use:  

We felt 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 Publisher 2007. The control panel is easy to use and the many templates are easy to edit.

Photo/Graphic Tools:  

Publisher has a great variety of clipart and images as well as online resources for downloading additional images. Publisher'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.

Text Tools:  

While 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.

Publisher has word art you can add to your headlines, though you can't customize your own like the higher-ranked products allow.

Printing/Sharing:  

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."

Help/Support:  

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 publication software that allows you to be more creative when working with photographic images, then we suggest one of the higher-ranked products.