May, 2006

By: Doug Davlin

From the Pearl of the Black Sea and the creative minds of BeLight Software comes an absolutely great application that will enable anyone to easily and quickly create flyers, brochures, letterheads, etc. without encountering a steep learning curve or needing a degree in graphic design.

One of the most attractive qualities of the Apple Mac platform is the ease with which applications may be used, the "carry over" of what we learn in one program to another, and the intuitive feel that we know how and what to do. All these factors have been studied and applied by the crew in Odessa.

I have spent many years working with computer publishing applications; most noteably Aldus PageMaker, In Design II CS, and most recently Pages 2, from Apple's iWork6. Now, I must state, the people from the Ukraine have won me over for small publishing needs. The graphical interface is a delight to see and use. All your graphics are pictured to the left and a double click imports them into your document. If you do not need or want to see your graphics, that window may be colapsed and/or opened with a click of the mouse. The editing tools are within easy reach on the menu bar, as well as the abilty to print or get a picture off the internet, chose colors or change fonts.

Screen shot of Swift Publisher showing the data, document & Inspector windows.

Key Features

Graphics
1. Over 60 professionally designed templates
2. Over 23K clip art images
3. Over 100 masks
4. iPhoto integration
5. Smart shapes
6. Work exportable to TIFF, JPEG and PDF

Publishing Tools
1. Text flow is automatic
2. Text wrap is in real time
3. Layout guides available
4. Character kerning
5. Line spacing
6. Background and foreground layers for creative development
7. Multipage documents

Easy Graphics and Text Editing
1. Transparency control, rotational ability and text blocks may be filled with color.
2. Images may be rotated
3. Spell checking available
4. Image cropping , both proportional and directional available
5. Styles for text and graphics
6. Smart (auto) guides to help image and text alignment

Technical Support
1. A well written user manual is availble for downloading and is one of the best I've seen/read in a long time. It is easy to find directions and solutions to your current problem.
2. On line support via email was rapid and courteous. In the course of using this application I had to write to Odessa three times and all questions were answered within hours ..... one, within in minutes!

Image Tricks included for FREE
Swift Publisher is the only company of which I am aware that includes a nifty and FREE image editor that uses Tiger OS Core Image filters. For more data, go to http://www.apple.com/macosx/features/coreimage/

Just double clicking on an image brings a wealth of "tricks" to allow you to customize your picture and enhance your document.
1. Images may be color adjusted - hue, brightness, contrast, etc.
2. Images may be blurred in many ways
3. Distortion available — (twirl, pinch, bump, etc.)
4. Stylize available — (mosiac, crystal, half-tone, etc.)
5. Images may be cropped, tiled, and/or turned into a kalidoscope.
6. Image Tricks also has iPhoto integration.

Random thoughts and experiences 1. This is one fantastic publishing application, not because it is "swift" but because it is easy and has most of the features needed to accomplish a good looking and informative document. 2. As Robert Pritchett, of Maccompanion says, "Swift Publisher is a product that Apple's Pages should have been." 3. However, as I learned, this application is for small publications. A ten page 738 MB document brought SP to its knees. Files should be less than 100 to 300 MB for optimum efficiency. 4. Swift Publisher works well on small screens. One does not need a lot of "real estate" to make it all work. ... though large screens are always nice to use. 5. The ability to toggle guide lines on/off is really nice! Use this 6. Highly recommended ........ a definite "Buy" & "Hold" and Use!

Pricing 1. Available in download and CD editions — $34.95 & $39.95 NOTE: Special academic pricing availble for as low as $10.50/lic. 2. Trial version available, but will have a watermark on printed docs. 3. BeLight Software offers club members a 15% discount off any of their programs. Please go to SMMUG's Special Offers System Requirements 1. Apple Macintosh G3 or better 2. Mac OS X 10.3 or later 3. This is a Universal Binary version, for Power PC and Mac Intel machines 4. 50 MB of available hard drive space (1.8 GB for full clip art collection.

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