Art Explosion Publisher Pro 2.0

This is by far the best publishing and design program to be found anywhere. I have been in the printing business for over 35 years, spent thousands of dollars on high end programs. This application will do 99% of what most people will want to do from designing a brochure to a really high end publication. Buy it! it truly a wonderful program!

I was using MS Publisher and this has got it beat. It has a lot of features yet it is easy to use, good help screens. I am already more than halfway done with our catalog and I am thrilled with it.

I'm a seasoned CS2 user but thought this was worth a try. It's not a bad way for folks to create collateral materials, business cards, greeting cards, etc. In fact, this aspect of the program is quite good.

What I found to be highly annoying was the packaging of the fonts. There are supposedly over 750 fonts included with this program - which you are expected to load ONE-AT-A-TIME!

You're may be thinking "decide which ones you need and just load those", but my friends, that is easier said than done without an exhaustive online search. The publisher should think about adding some type of "key" to help users select a font style.

The manual is of little help regarding fonts - in fact the index at the back of the book doesn't even include "fonts" in the listing.

Users who have not had much experience loading fonts on their machines should be aware that they are not given any instructions on how to do this. Out of curiosity I visted the company's web site and types "fonts" 'into their frequently asked questions area. The first thing that came up was instructions on how to load fonts - one at a time, of course.

Apparently this question comes up often enough to be included on their web site... and with good reason.

I received Publisher Pro 2.0 as a gift and it's great but there is a lot to be learned. Luckily, it comes with a manual (which I consider a rarity these days) and the program itself as tutorials in the Help section. Some things I can do intuitively if I'm working on a ready-made template but I still have to learn to create original documents. I find Microsoft Publisher easier to learn by just winging it but it doesn't have all the features Publisher Pro has like creating PDF files and turning ordinary documents into web pages. It's a plus that it comes with a photo editor software although the photo editor does not save pictures in a .jpg format. It has interesting features like changing the color of any image and has some filters. I probably will stick with my Arcsoft Photo Studio or Microsoft Picture Manager. Overall, it's exceptional and easier to use for people who have had previous experience in desktop publishing.

Publisher Pro does what it says it will do with a reasonable learning curve. It is much more stable and flexible than its competition and will produce professional quality documents.