Freeware software for doing a simple newspaper ad?

Doosht · 24 Feb 2009 at 12:03

Can anyone tell me if there is any basic software out there which might be suitable for doing a small and simple newspaper ad with some graphics?

Illustrator seems to be the thing but we cant afford it. I do however have Microsoft publisher - would this be suitable? Ive never used it.

Alternatively, is there some freeware program that could meet our needs.

Many thanks

joey1211 · 24 Feb 2009 at 12:06

Inkscape is a free Illustrator alternative. Seems a bit overkill for a simple newspaper ad though. And the learning curve is almost vertical.

Doosht · 24 Feb 2009 at 12:45

what is a simple program then, publisher?

joey1211 · 24 Feb 2009 at 12:56

For a beginner, Publisher is quite good. Do you know the working difference between CMYK and RGB, not just what they mean?

Doosht · 24 Feb 2009 at 12:58

no, i have not got a clue to be honest. I believe though that whatever CMYK is its needed for paper advertisements as opposed to web which is RGB?

valve90210 · 24 Feb 2009 at 13:10

Who is going to be printing this for you?

If it's going to a print house, chance are, they would much rather you gave them a pdf of your artwork rather than a publisher file as publisher is not very widely used by most print places due to it being rather rubbish when it comes to outputting in a suitable format.

The actual production of an advertisement (if it's simple) will be easy in Publisher as it's just a case of dropping text into text boxes and images into picture boxes, but it's level of control of the text etc is fairly minimal when compared to the likes of Quark and Indesign.

Valve

Sherbs · 24 Feb 2009 at 22:50

Maybe post what you need and one of us lot might be able to knock something up in Indy.

May come out better!