Adobe PageMaker 6.5

I have been using Pagemaker for almost 7 years from now, so feel its better to review it now. I haven't used much of Quark Express of Publisher so don't know what they provide but I personally like to Use Photoshop & Pagemaker Combination to make my designs, In Exceptional cases I use CorelDRAW but not very often.

Basically I am Art Director in USA based publication COmpany I design Monthly Magazine (Desh-Videsh published in Florida USA) which is half Multicolor and Half two color. and as said I have been using Pagemaker to do my 70% of work and 30% of graphical/photo work in Photoshop.

Its really versatile software, I use Pagemaker 7.0 where I can setup text whatever way I want to setup, they gave some image control facilities too so just to brighten the images I don't have to open photoshop. Several Other facilities provided like Drop Caps, Align Objects, Bullets are much needed. Specially Build Booklet which I can't live without while making Magazine as after finishing composition I need to setup things as per booklet format for final printing which pagemaker provides as plugin, without that I would take more than 90 minutes to setup 80 pages magazine but plugin does it in less than 5 mins.

Last but not least, once I needed 1000 receipts which 1 to 1000 numbers e.g. 1 on first page receipt, 2 on second and so on, but script provided in pagemaker and using it with Frame made my job in just 2 minutes otherwise I would have pasted each number on each page and wasted more than an hour.

All and all pagemaker is good package to generate any kind of pages for graphic use coreldraw/illustrator/photoshop whatever you are confirtable with and rest pagemaker does beautifully, color separation / spot colors everything is provided to make the work really easy.

Onlything I am missing is Write text in curve format I like that kind of text and just to do that I have to use photoshop, same thing is provided in QuarkExpress, if pagemaker provides it than it will be really great, but that doesn't bother too much except that I like pagemaker really cool (Except I really start looking at Quark Express)

Thanks

Manoj Soni

Review : If you manage a newspaper or any other type magazine computing system and pagemaking and you don't use Adobe pagemaker software, you are really wasting your time on that newspaper or magazine and I advice you give up working there because If your administrator notified of being software such as pagemaker 6.5 or 7.00 will punish you and then expell you from your office! But if you want to stay at that newspaper and do the pagination of that newspaper just buy adobe collection CD and only install the software named ADOBE PAGEMAKER 7.00 This software can change your world and can enhace your newspaper pagination unbeleiveably This software has many abilities. advantages and disadvantages. its column Guid and rulers help you more than any other softwares even QuarkXpress. when you place a text on the page you can easily move it from one place to other place. it is great. you can change coulmn size and numbers easily from 2 to 20! the ability of work wih pictures is great and unexpected. And the advantages of text editing is unbeleivable. you can make texts negative , elastic! , big, small, change the fonts, italic, bold, bold very much and many other featurs. also text shadowing and embossing. the fill effects of rectangles and circles is very great. you can fill each rectangle with unbeleivable effects and get them dotted, dashed or solid. with horizental, vertical or each angle lines. you can revers pictures in many angles. right, left, up and down. in other hand it has a great relation with adobe photoshop in each version for example if you place a picture on the page, you can affect photoshop effects on it directly without opening photoshop and redoing the filter and effect In a word this is on of the greatest software of the adobe compnay that can help graphists and pagemakers!

Adobe is a smart corporation. They market to the executives and the large corporations that will buy the full versions of expensive products and will not want to have to learn anything too complicated.

This is why PageMaker is design for dummies - but is still used by the Professionals.

It doesn't have nearly the power or expansability that QuarkXPress does, and it manages to actually wreck a lot of the great features that Quark introduced. But it does interface well with the more standard Adobe products, like Photoshop and Illustrator, and with that trio you can make a heck of a newsletter.

Adobe all but admitted that Pagemaker was best for newsletters with the release of Adobe InDesign, which is supposed to be the True rival to Quark. But let's face it - the Adobe programs have become too bloated for their own good. While Macromedia knocks at Photoshop's door, Quark has broken down PageMaker's, because the new products are just so much smaller and faster and easier to use than the giant behemoth Adobe standards.

If you just want to make some nice newsletters, and you don't want to have to think, PageMaker is not a bad bet. But if you're going to make the huge investment of purchasing any of these bloatedly expensive packages, make sure that it best suits your needs. If you have ever even uttered the phrase ''page layout' or ''design schematic'' in your life, you probably want to think strongly about Quark before committing to this inferior, not-really-for-design-after-all program.

If you're involved in desktop publishing, the name PageMaker is as common as IBM and Microsoft. If you're a graphics designer, you'll likely remember that Adobe failed to keep pace with the market and Quark Xpress long ago surpassed PageMaker in its quest for the professional market.

While Quark was a dream to use, PageMaker seemed unwieldly, cumbersome and, rarely intuitive. As a result, PageMaker continued to lose market share to its rival for years. Even the high cost of Quark (the current U.S. street price is $790 or 36,800 INR) has failed to check its domination. About the only advantages offered by PageMaker was its lower price and availability for both the Mac and PC. Quark steadfastly maintained its Mac only stance for years before finally offering a PC version.

Now, with version 6.5, Adobe seems to have abandoned the professional struggle and set its sights on another market niche. Recognizing that most small businesses aren't equipped with duel platform graphics shops and can't afford high end layout programs, PageMaker 6.5 features a price that's about $200 (9,320 INR) lower than its rival. It also offers an array of new features that makes it easier to use and takes advantage of the wider availability of the PC and Windows operating systems.

This new version offers plenty of incentives to the publishers of newsletters and graphics for small businesses and organizations. There are over 300 templates offering professional designs for everything from business cards to brochures. It's possible to select a design, add copy and illustrations, save the file to disk and, have it printed.

To make the PageMaker package even more attractive, several thousand quality photos, illustrations, and clip art files are included. There are also plenty of type fonts plus many of the True Type fonts on your computer are also available for PageMaker import.

Unlike some of the low-end layout programs, PageMaker has a long heritage of producing ready to print materials. Once you've used your computer's printer to make proofing samples of your work, the software will reset the file for high resolution printing, save the file to disk, or prepare it for electronic transmission to the printer of your choice.

If most of your work is directed toward the Internet, it's unlikely that PageMaker will be of much interest. Its output files are designed primarily for printing. Converting them to jpeg or gif formats is impossible without additional software. While PageMaker readily imports scans and files from most other photo and graphic programs, this tends to be a one-way street. Importing PageMaker files to Adobe's own Photoshop, for example, is almost impossible.

If you're in that graphics niche I mentioned above, PageMaker can be a real asset. It's easy to learn and can help you turn out quality materials for dozens of requirements.

Adobe offers one other added attraction. A copy of Photoshop 5.0 LE is included in the software package at no additional cost. The street price for the full version of PageMaker 6.5 is currently $475 (22,135 INR.) However, if you have an older version, an upgrade is available for about $150 (6,990 INR.)