Inkscape is a free and open source vector drawing app for Windows, MacOS & Linux, available for download free under the GPLv3+ license. The tools aims to support illustrators, designers, web designers or anyone wanting to create vector graphics.
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Microsoft Publisher
Score 8.2 out of 10
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Microsoft Publisher is a desktop publishing application available with an Office 365 subscription, or as a standalone download.
$139
one time purchase
Scribus
Score 7.0 out of 10
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Scribus is open source desktop publishing software.
I would 100% recommend Inkscape to anyone starting out with graphic design or illustration, as it isn't that difficult to get the hang of on the first day of using it. I am not recommending Inkscape for beginners alone, even experts in the field can use Inkscape professionally as it cuts of the expense of needing to buy a paid graphic design software which provides almost the same features. Inkscape is also great for beginners because it can be treated like a stepping stone to move onto a paid graphic designing software like Adobe Illustrator, so Inkscape can be used to test the waters before making the leap. Inkscape and Illustrator are almost the same so there wont be any difficulty in switching later on.
Microsoft Publisher is well suited for almost any situation. It is something that I'm sure has far more advanced tools than I use or am aware of, but it is also very simple for entry-level users to create professional documents quickly. I have used it for very involved brochures in real estate scenarios and I have also used it for very simple "Construction Zone" signs at a job site under construction. There are so many uses for this program!
Formatting in general. It's a pain to refine a layout in Publisher in my opinion.
Microsoft is so invested in their approach to software and making it look and feel like an Office 365 application that they inadvertantly cripple applications like Publisher.
Earlier versions of Publisher gave you a lot more latitude and creative freedom. They were also much easier to work with. Not everything has to look like it's part of Office 365. They did the same ... thing to Access.
There are a few quirks with Microsoft Publisher that make some functions a little tricky for new users at first, but most of our employees are able to figure out the quirks and work around them to use the product for their job. It is relatively high on the scale of usability.
While I have not directly used support for Microsoft Publisher, I have used their help files and found them to be useful. I have also found that most answers that I need can be found through simple web searches and chat platforms. In all though, there are very few times when the preloaded help files have not given me the answers that I need.
It is free. Easy to install Easy and simple to use and master. I find it as the best solution to do simple things without spending much time loading the API and trying to find the menu necessary to do the job. It produces vector graphics which is very well suited to illustrate research papers.
Microsoft Publisher is more for beginners, or for basic needs, anyone with some familiarity with the Microsoft suite should be able to use it easily. If you’re looking to create something more graphic and advanced, you’d probably want to look into something like InDesign, which is not as user friendly if you’re not familiar with it at all. For basic needs the average employee should be able to use Microsoft Publisher with ease.
we have invested on our Microsoft license for our team and that has made a very big productivity for making banners and holdings for our projects as making it from third party would cost much higher and the return is very well over the comparison with third-party vendors
Functionality is very easy, so we don’t have to train much to get it in production and use it efficiently so we don’t have to invest much on training and learning things and we can work on it directly with a very basic knowledge as well
It has functionality to get stored and share things directly to the OneDrive and using curated links, which is very secure and reliable to transfer files without losing picture and banners quality and share them in lossless quality.
