Which Software Is Best For Me

mikeopvc

I'm designing adverts to go in the local papers for my business and need to know which software to get.
My current advert was designed using microsoft publisher and is not the best quality, When on my screen it looks great but every week I look at the advert in the paper and it's pretty poor, I phone the advertisement dept for the paper and they don't really say much apart from suggesting I spend more money and let them design my adverts.:rolleyes:

I think maybe I should invest in some new software but am not really sure what's best for me, I don't want to spend a fortune so I guess that rules out the likes of Adobe cs3.

any ideas?

thanks in advance

Mike

Larumbelle

What about trying the (fantastically named) GIMP software?

It is open source and does a lot of what CS3 will do. If you ever have used adobe software it will be pretty straightforward. If you haven't there are loads of online tutorials, or you can just experiment yourself.

http://www.gimp.org/

Poor how, exactly? Pixelly, blurry, just badly designed....

Give us a clue and we might be able to help. Can you post a link to it?

Riq

You don't have those god awful stick men on do you?
I refuse to ring an advert with those on through principle!

GIMP is a great bit of kit if you can't afford the adobe version.

mikeopvc

ha ha no Riq I don't have those god awful stick men on my ad.

Silvercharming, the quality is blurry, just spoke to another person from paper and she said I need to send the ads in 300 dpi or something, not sure how to do this.

Basically I just open publisher, type text, insert a couple of nice pictures from my portfolio, (conservatory, nice front door etc), save the whole thing as a jpeg and send to the paper via e-mail.

can't post a link to the advert as it's not online, just a paper advert.

thanks

Mike

Badger_Lady

I normally use Adobe Photoshop for this sort of thing - sorry, don't know much about Publisher.

But if it's anything like Photoshop, is there a setting when you create a file that allows you to set the 300dpi (dots per inch) so that it's print quality? It could be that your program is automatically set to 72dpi, which is web quality and therefore perfect for your screen, but not good enough for a printed advert.

If you can change this setting, you might not need any new software

Of course, you'll also make sure that the images you're importing are big enough too - if you're talking about pictures taken from a digital camera, you should be fine.

Badger_Lady

Oo - here's a good answer!

http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=605280

totalsolutions

output to linotronic

Marty999

I wonder if by converting it to jpeg you are losing quality. Are your local papers happy to accept your ads in PDF format? I work for a commercial printing company and most artwork comes to us as high res PDFs nowadays. We can easily impose it on our pre-press system for printing (as do most other printers) and the quality is always very good.

mikeopvc

Marty999 wrote: »

I wonder if by converting it to jpeg you are losing quality. Are your local papers happy to accept your ads in PDF format? I work for a commercial printing company and most artwork comes to us as high res PDFs nowadays. We can easily impose it on our pre-press system for printing (as do most other printers) and the quality is always very good.

I did a test and yes your right, when saving my publisher doc as a jpeg it reduced the dpi to 150 from 300.
How do I go about saving as PDF format, It's not on the list under save as file type

thanks

Mike

bookduck

Ask your local paper what they use and are they happy with their results. Also tell them about your problem and I'm sure they will be eager to help

mikeopvc

I have asked a number of times but they're not really helpfull, they just said it needs to be sent in min 300dpi or alternatively they could just scan some pics from brochures etc. They suggested I let their team do the ads for me but for extra cost, This is not an option for me as I would like to be able to do my own designs and learn a bit more along the way.

thanks

Mike