The Mac is generally recognized as a platform that is ideal for publishing and design professionals. But what about those of us who are not professional designers?  What desktop publishing solutions do we have?

At version 1.0.1, BeLight Software’s Swift Publisher is a new kid on the block of sorts. Swift Publisher is designed with the average consumer in mind, with such features as integrated iPhoto Library support, a large number of generally attractive templates, clipart, and a clean interface. Does Swift Publisher live up to the challenge of providing an easy-to-use desktop publishing app to the masses?

The main window is clear and easy to use; the left panel lets you choose clipart, shapes, or photos for use in your project. Swift Publisher leverages your iPhoto Library much like other applications. The right panel is where you edit your document. Simple enough. For various editing options, Swift Publisher uses a floating inspector. Despite some non-standard interface widgets, Swift Publisher is indeed a Mac-like application.

Starting a document in Swift Publisher is easy enough; it will ask you to choose from a number of templates, not unlike Pages. Swift Publisher also includes a number of blank templates with guides to assist in making tri-fold brochures, for example.  Most templates are attractive, though some left me underwhelmed; especially the certificate templates. From there, it’s your turn to get creative.

Entering text is simple as expected, but adding photographs to a project can be slightly cumbersome. Unlike Pages, the placeholder images do not allow you to drop your photo into them. If you want to add your photo where the placeholder images are, but want your images in the same location and size of the placeholder images, you’re going to run into annoyances. You must first delete the placeholder image, drop your image in, then resize it and position it manually. By the same token, dropping an image into a shape dropped into the project from the shapes list does not cause the image to take that shape (e.g. dropping a photo into a circle drops the image on top of the circle, not into it).To make images take different shapes, you must choose an image mask from the Image inspector. These masks, however, are non-destructive; the image itself is unchanged.

One nice touch is the ability to apply Core Image filters to images, allowing for many cool effects. However, for whatever reason I had difficulty making the filters “stick”. That is, I would apply a filter to an image in the “Edit Image” window, click “OK”, but sometimes the edit I made wouldn’t be applied to the image for whatever reason. Image handling is by far my biggest complaint with Swift Publisher.

A nice editing tool is the ability to edit the background separately from the foreground of the document. For example, if you want a certain design for the background, you can edit that separately from the text. When editing the foreground, the background can not be edited; when editing the background, the foreground can not be edited.

Overall, Swift Publisher is a decent 1.0 application. However, the image editing quirks I encountered prove it isn’t quite ready for prime time yet. If these quirks existed in a basic word processor, they wouldn’t be a huge issue. However, for desktop publishing, image handling is a major issue. Aside from that, Swift Publisher is not bad at all. Many will find it to be a useful addition to their application collection. However, there is quite a bit of room for improvement, especially in image handling. All-in-all, Swift Publisher is built on a solid foundation. I look forward to seeing what BeLight can do in the next revision of Swift Publisher.