Free desktop publishing software for Windows

If you want free desktop publishing software for Windows, Publish by Zaweba is a good place to start. It's an offline page layout app for flyers, newsletters, posters, menus, certificates, cards, tickets and leaflets, with linked text frames, pictures that text wraps around, master pages and print-ready PDF export. It's free software under the EULA, and it needs no account.

Desktop publishing is different from word processing. In a word processor the text is the main thing and pictures sit inside it. In a layout app every element lives in its own frame on the page, so you decide exactly where the headline, the photo and the small print go, and they stay there.

What the app covers

The core of Publish is the text box. You draw one, type in it, and style the words with fonts, sizes, colours and named paragraph and character styles. When a box is too full a red plus appears. Click it, click an empty box (even on another page) and the story carries on there, which is how a newsletter article flows from page one to page three.

Pictures can be inserted, pasted or dragged in. Double-click one to crop it inside its frame, and set text to wrap square, tight to the outline, or top and bottom. Shapes, tables, gradients, drop shadows and WordArt styles are there for the decorative side. Master pages carry headers, footers and page numbers, so you set them up once and every page that uses the master shows them.

There's also a document palette of named colours. Change one colour and it updates everywhere it is used, so restyling a whole publication takes a moment rather than an afternoon.

Starting your first publication

The quickest route is a template. The built-in set includes event, sale and club flyers, a concert poster, 2-page and 4-page newsletters, restaurant and cafe menus, certificates, folded cards, business cards, tickets, a trifold leaflet, a brochure, invitations, calendars, a gift voucher, a letterhead, an envelope and name badges. Pictures in the templates are generated rather than third-party photos, so you can keep them in your design or swap in your own.

If none of those fits, start blank. A blank publication can be A4, A5, A3, Letter, DL, business card, postcard or a custom size, portrait or landscape, with margins, bleed, and single or facing pages. Rulers, guides and a grid help you line things up, and frames snap to guides, margins and each other as you drag.

Publications save as .ozp files. Saves are atomic and versioned, which means a crash part way through saving won't leave you with a broken file.

Getting it out of the app

When the layout is done, Publish gives you several ways to share it. The print-ready PDF has bleed, crop marks, trim and bleed boxes, embedded fonts and full-resolution pictures, which is what a print shop expects. A web PDF at trim size reduces pictures to 150 dpi JPEG so it's small enough to e-mail. You can also export each page as a PNG or JPEG at 96, 150 or 300 dpi for social media or a website, or print straight from the Windows print dialog.

One thing to know before you send work to a commercial printer: colour is RGB only, with no CMYK or spot colours. Plenty of printers handle RGB PDFs without trouble, but ask yours if colour accuracy matters.

Who it suits

Publish is aimed at clubs, schools, churches, small businesses and families who make printed things now and then and don't want a subscription or a cloud account. If you have years of old .pub files, File > Import .pub brings them in when Pub Converter by Zaweba is installed. And if you later outgrow it and need a heavier layout tool, Layout by Zaweba is the bigger sibling.

Install it, open a template close to what you need, and change the words. A printable flyer is well within reach in your first sitting.