How to Make a One Page Document With Scribus Page Makeup Software

By Richard Burke, eHow Expert in Photography

Scribus Open Sourceware

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Scribus is a free, open source page makeup program. It compares in some way to Quark and InDesign, but is not as robust in some features. It can be downloaded at scribus.net (see link below). When used in conjunction with Ghostscript software, you can render perfect PDF and PostScript files. Ghostscript can be downloaded at ghostscript.com (see link below).

In this article we will demonstrate how to make a simple document, and in future articles will explore Scribus features in more detail.

Difficulty: Moderate

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

Scribus software installed and running on a PC (XP or 2000 with GDI+ installed) or MAC
Ghostscript software installed on a PC or MAC
Install Ghostscript first

Step 1

Create New Document

After downloading and installing Scribus and Ghostscript, double click on the Scribus program. You will not have to access Ghostscript at all; it will run as part of the Scribus rendering engine. Notice that you have a variety of sizes and layouts to choose from, including Elephant (23” x 28”). The program defaults to European sizes. In this case we will choose A4. Click OK.
Step 2

Draw the Text Box

First, let’s create a text box. Choose INSERT /TEXT FRAME from the drop down menu. Draw the text box on the page where you want to place your text. This is very similar to other page makeup programs. You can import text or type text directly into the text box.
Step 3

Insert Text

To import text, select FILE/IMPORT/GET TEXT. This will cause a browse box to appear. You can select a variety of files to import, including Word documents and TXT documents. In this case, since we have a small amount of text, we just typed the text directly into the text box.
Step 4

Set text attributes

Once we have the text in place, we can change the style, size and other text attributes using the various tools under the STYLE menu. In this case, we chose Comic Sans and centered the text within the box.
Step 5

Change background color

Now let’s change the color background of our text box. In this case, we wanted the text to compliment the color of the picture we are going to add. Select the text frame with your mouse and click on colors to open up the colors palette. To change the actual text color, select the text, not the text block. Notice that you can adjust shade and opacity for each color. We chose Firebrick Red and set the shade to 50 percent.
Step 6

Add image

Now let’s add an image. First select INSERT/IMAGE FRAME to draw the image frame in the same way you drew the text frame. A box will appear with a red x drawn through it. This shows you where your image will be placed. RIGHT CLICK on the box and select GET IMAGE. Browse for your image. The preview displays the resolution, color space and size of the image making it easy to know what you are inserting.
Step 7

Happy Holidays!

Once the image is placed, you can resize and edit the image. The program works well with GIMP as the image editor, and if you chose to edit the image it will automatically open GIMP to permit easy editing without leaving Scribus.