software for making a catalouge for print

Spinal2k2 · 22 Mar 2009 at 19:58

what would be the best software to use for making a catalouge that will have photos in (either high res jpg or tiff format).

Layout is simple 8 photos per page with descriptions etc.

The catalouge wil be A4 in size and they will be printed at a printers.

Theguy · 22 Mar 2009 at 20:03

a simple program to use could be publisher? that would do the trick.. iam not sure how professional it would look though?

asim18 · 22 Mar 2009 at 20:39

I would use InDesign CS4.

philjohn · 22 Mar 2009 at 21:28

asim18 said:
I would use InDesign CS4.

Not a great suggestion, it's a professional app and as such has a near-vertical learning curve.

As someone else suggested, something like Publisher will make it fairly easy.

joey1211 · 22 Mar 2009 at 21:43

If it's a one-off and the design is pretty simple, it might be worth asking the printers how much they charge for a quick design. Where I work it's £30/hour. Should take no more than 2 hours if the photos and text and supplied ready to go.

SourChipmunk · 22 Mar 2009 at 21:51

Agreed with Publisher. I currently use it for my organisation's newsletter and found it very easy to learn and pretty powerful.

After done, I use PDF Creator to dump it to a format everyone can use, including the printers.

edit: I haven't learned yet how to do a booklet style, where I can do my pages normally and have Publisher arrange it automatically to print the proper page order front and back to an 11x17 paper (not sure what the equivalent size is in the UK). Then you fold it in half, staple it down the middle, and voila! instant book. I'll be looking into that.

asim18 · 22 Mar 2009 at 22:16

philjohn said:
Not a great suggestion, it's a professional app and as such has a near-vertical learning curve.

Good point. I was assuming he had Adobe CS already.

Spinal2k2 · 23 Mar 2009 at 21:34

im currently using Corel Draw to do a few test ones etc - not sure if it is the best prob to use, but all the photos etc load nice a shapre etc when resized but the file size is massive. 9 pages so far and its a 300mb file and there is about 32 pages for it.

Ive got publisher, but never though of using that, i'll have a try with it.

Mr_Orange · 24 Mar 2009 at 13:47

Scribus might be worth a look. Never used it myself tho.

valve90210 · 24 Mar 2009 at 14:46

Certainly wouldn't be using Corel Draw!!!

The only problems you might encounter with Publisher is compatability with the printers you are going to use. However most printers these days are fairly well setup for most file types.

If you can export to a pdf, check what settings etc your printers would like and if you can do that then that should be fine.

For the photos, Tiff would probably be the printers preferred choice of format.

Sin_Chase · 24 Mar 2009 at 14:50

For print DPI is important, 72DPI might leave you a little disappointed in terms of printing quality

reflux · 24 Mar 2009 at 15:14

philjohn said:
Not a great suggestion, it's a professional app and as such has a near-vertical learning curve.

I disagree - I've always found InDesign and Quark to be a piece of wee to use. In fact, I'd say they're among some of the easiest creative apps to use.

But yes, Publisher would be much better in this situation

swinnie · 24 Mar 2009 at 16:45

If it's just a one off, just get hold of the InDesign trial, use it. I found it very easy to get on with.

For print, you really need to be looking at 300DPI. 72DPI will leave you very disappointed with quality.

Spinal2k2 · 28 Mar 2009 at 21:52

all the photos i am using are all 350DPI or higher some are in TIFF some are in JPG.

Im having a play about with InDesign, i have a template page set to import the photos nto frames then i have been clicking on the frame with the poto and selecting frame > fit contents to frame.

Is that the correct way to do it -dont want to downsize the quality of the photos.

Also with InDesign, each pages has the page boarder then what must be a margin boarder how do it change the margin boarder.

Pho · 28 Mar 2009 at 22:41

Assuming I've not completely misunderstood, Lightroom? Depends how complex you want it I guess. Although you can automatically insert descriptions (I choose to use shutter speed) you could just leave it blank and Photoshop in later.

*Ignore the random subject matter

Spinal2k2 · 29 Mar 2009 at 00:39

the middle section of that screen is almost what we are looking for, but below the photo will be the description.

joey1211 · 29 Mar 2009 at 02:29

Border as in guide?

Preflight to check picture dpi.

SourChipmunk · 29 Mar 2009 at 12:18

Spinal2k2 said:
all the photos i am using are all 350DPI or higher some are in TIFF some are in JPG.

Printers use increments of 300DPI (600, 1200, 2400), so if you use something that's odd (350?) it won't be able to resample and scale properly. You might experience some quality loss.

Again, 300DPI is ideal.

Pho · 29 Mar 2009 at 13:23

Spinal2k2 said:
the middle section of that screen is almost what we are looking for, but below the photo will be the description.

Whilst I choose shutter speed, you can select the field(s) you want to display either from the EXIF data or from additional descriptions. If you typed the descriptions into the Photo and choose that it should work as you want.

Here's what I can select just from the ITPC data (which you can fill in through Lightroom if you wanted):