iStudio Publisher 4+

When I converted to an all “Mac” enviroment I missed the feel of the Mircosoft “Office” suite, and after around six months of trying to get on with the Mac equiverlants, I bought Office 365. No looking back, however I was disappointed to find MS Publisher is not made for the Mac. I had an urgent need to produce a professional publication to go out to around 4000 homes, and knew the restrictions of MS Word would make using that a non-starter for a multipage document. I did my research, and rejected a good number because of cost or problems people had found with the software.

At first iStudio seems too good to be true. Great reviews, low price. The way it works also seems strange when you first open it. However if you persist you will be hansomely rewarded. Once you understand that EVERYTHING starts by being placed in it’s own box, be it titles, text, pictures graphics; the ease of moving and editing the boxes is a breeze. Rerpurposing a document is so simple, and saves a great deal of time. I am yet to find something it can’t achieve in a complex layout. Buy iStudio, put in the time to understand how it works, and it will become one of your favourite office tools.

Hi Peter, many thanks for your excellent review and great to hear iStudio has been working well for you.

I have been a long-time user of several “high end” (aka very expensive!) DTP programs, and I only picked this up to see what it was like and to give it a try for laying out a book cover. I have to say that it exceeded all expectations. I was half-expecting a clunky, amateur level program - but what I got was something that delivered 85% of what some $1K programs deliver at price that bears no relation to the level of content. You can do serious work with this. I have been using the previous version for a few months, and it has been very stable. This new update includes several very helpful new features. One thing I’d like to see included as a priority in the next update is the ability to export a complete layout as a JPG or TIFF, as this is very useful for producing web content or promotional illustrations. Some in-built spell checking would also be helpful. Other than that, this really does offer a very comprehensive set of intuitive DTP tools. I have produced several book covers with it, some posters, and a CD package - all delivered for professional printing and the results are indistinguishable from those produced with costly “high end” options. It is extremely easy to use and to navigate around. I really have no complaints. A great job, and just a few more tweaks will make it unbeatable in the cost-effective page layout market. Well done iStudio Publisher!

Thanks for the very kind comments, and glad you're enjoying the new update. We've had a lot of requests for image export capabilities, so it's now high on our to-do list. Although File > Export Document as PDF is the only image related export option available as an iStudio Publisher menu item, you can print to other image file formats via the standard OS X print dialog and Preview, as follows:

1. In iStudio Publisher, choose menu option File > Print.
2. In the print dialog box, click the "PDF" button and choose "Open PDF in Preview”.
3. In Preview, choose menu option File > Export (or File > Save As on some versions of OS X).
4. Choose Format: JPEG, PNG or TIFF.
5. Set the save location and filename and click the "Save" button to finish.
6. If required, open the image in Preview or other image editing app and crop to size.

iStudio Publisher does have built-in spell checking, but it doesn’t yet offer the checking as you type. Use the key combination ‘⌘;’ to run the checker, or choose menu option Edit > Check Spelling…

This is a fantastic app for the money and very simple to use. You don't have to create complex documents for it to be useful - we've found it invaluable for 'quick' jobs where we just want to knock something together and print it, like labels, door hangers, notes (a note from the tooth fairy is a good one).

My kids use it for their school work, and just about anything they want to quickly lay out and print. They are really keen on tracing at the moment, so they just drag a few images in from web pages, arrange them on a page and print them out ready for tracing. Takes about 1 minute.

We've had the desktop version for a while, and so far we've also used it for loads of things like creating music manuscript, coloured lined writing paper, reward charts for the kids ('star' charts for them to tick off), flyers for our community, school notices…the list goes on.

We'd find it hard to do without it now, and I can thoroughly recommend it.

*** Update ****
After several years of using this app, I still find I frequently depend on it. I’m not sure what they did when they designed it, but it seems really easy to put stuff where you want it on a page. They clearly got something right.

Just installed 1.3
Personally I’m really pleased, as it contains loads of stuff I’ve been wanting for ages. My favourite is definitely drag n drop page rearrangement.

Very glad you like the design. We aimed for clearly arranged real estate on the UI.