Can Publisher be used as Layout Software?

[handleodhran]

I've got my own business set up -

http://www.club-print.com.

In the past I've got a graphic designer to design posters for me. He's got a template that he put together using Quark on the MAC. I sell ads and they take a space on the poster. I collect Business Cards, Brochures etc and put the ads together, based off those. People know how big their ads are, and the designer just puts their info into these spaces. I've got a copy of Adobe Photoshop CS2 and was told that if I'm going to design my own posters for the boards I set up, I'll need some layout software. People have mentioned Quark and Adobe Creative Suite. I don't have the money to buy the software mentioned above & was wondering if it would be possible to use publisher. Any ideas? Can I design in Adobe CS2 and then lay them out in Publisher? Cheers.

 

[Volk359]

Can't speak for Adobe CS2 but Publisher works great for layout. The problem is it's designed for desktop publishing, which is fine, but once you take the publishing off the desktop, i.e. to a professional printer you're in trouble. Any time we've needed something printed they've always asked for the files to be in an Illustrator format at the very least. Quark is another, generally, accepted format, too. Any place I've ever looked into refuses to work with anything from Publisher or Microsoft for that matter.

If you've got your own printer/plotter to use then you're OK, if not then you may need to shell out some $$$.