Scribus
Open-source desktop publishing software offering flexible layouts and typesetting, professional image setting, CMYK support, interactive PDFs, vector tools, and wide format support, perfect for creating newspapers, brochures, and more on Mac, Windows, Linux, and BSD.
Cost / License
- Free
- Open Source
Application type
EUPlatforms
- Mac
- Windows
- Linux
- BSD
- Flathub
- PortableApps.com
- Oracle Solaris
- Flatpak
Features
Properties
- Lightweight
- Privacy focused
Features
- Desktop Publishing
- Publishing
- Interactive PDF forms
- Fill PDF Forms
- Color management
- Works Offline
- No registration required
- Ad-free
- Portable
- Create PDF files
- Knowledge base
- WYSIWYG Support
- QT Based
- No Tracking
Support for LaTeX- Built-in Color Picker
- Support for scripting
- Support for CMYK Mode
- Dark Mode
- Presets
- Convert images to PDF
- Color Palette
- Page labeling
Tags
- Support PDF layers
- newspapers
- create-table-of-contents
- icc
- publisher
- xml
- Newsletters
- pdf-form-creation
- brochures
- create-pdf-presentations
- poster
- icc-profiles
- pdf-presentations
Scribus News & Activities
Recent News
- POX published news article about Scribus
Scribus 1.7.0 has been released with an enhanced UI, new SVG icons, and many enhancementsScribus, the popular open-source desktop publishing software, has released version 1.7.0, introduci...
- POX published news article about Scribus
Open source desktop publishing software Scribus releases v1.6.3 with numerous bug fixesScribus has released version 1.6.3 of its open source desktop publishing software, primarily addres...
- Danilo_Venom published news article about Scribus
Scribus 1.6.0 Major Update introduces Revamped UI, New Features and Enhanced CompatibilityThe open-source desktop publishing software, Scribus, has launched a major update, version 1.6.0, f...
Recent activities
- leahxgonz liked Scribus
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What is Scribus?
Scribus is a desktop publishing (DTP) application. Scribus is designed for flexible layout and typesetting, and the ability to prepare files for professional quality image setting equipment. It can also create animated and interactive PDF presentations and forms. Example uses include writing small newspapers, brochures, newsletters, posters, and books.
Underneath a user-friendly interface, Scribus supports professional publishing features, such as CMYK colors, spot colors, ICC color management and versatile PDF creation.
Scribus has many unexpected touches, such as powerful vector drawing tools, support for a huge number of file types via import/export filters, emulation of color blindness or the rendering of markup languages like LaTeX or Lilypond inside Scribus. The Scribus file format is XML-based and open. Unlike proprietary binary file formats, even damaged documents can be recovered with a simple text editor – sometimes a challenging problem with other page layout programs. Scribus has been translated into more than 25 languages, and more are coming in the future.
Scribus information
Developed by
Scribus Licensing
Open Source (GPL-3.0) and Free product.Alternatives
26 alternatives listedNews
3 news article related to ScribusSupported Languages
- English
- Slovene
- Portuguese
- Dutch
- Croatian
- Hungarian
- Chinese
- Esperanto
- Basque
- Russian
- Italian
- Polish
- Ukrainian
- Arabic
- Spanish
- Galician
- German
- French
- Danish
- Norwegian
- Norwegian Bokmål
- Norwegian Nynorsk
- Serbian
- Breton
- Catalan; Valencian
- Slovak
- Czech
- Estonian
- Lithuanian
- Swedish
- Indonesian
- Japanese
- Korean
- Finnish
- Sanskrit (Sa?sk?ta)
- Greek
- Turkish
- Welsh
- Malayalam
- Persian
- Georgian
- Albanian
- Kannada
- Hebrew
- Afrikaans
- Occitan
- Luxembourgish
- Tamil
- Malay
- Bulgarian
- Telugu
- Hindi
- Interlingua
- Tatar
- Somali
- Bengali
- Mongolian
- Sinhala, Sinhalese
- Belarusian
- Romanian
- Thai
- Azerbaijani
Comments and Reviews
I have used scribus for years for personal as well as professional usage. I have used it to create flyers, pvc banners, business stationery, signage as well as social media content eg twitter or facebook or youtube cover photos. I have also used it to create slider images for websites as the software allows custom page sizes apart from standard page sizes.
Once you know how to use this software, your creative imagination is the limit of what you can do with this software as you can see the examples of usage i have provided above.
Before installing the software, you should install ghostscript which is available for free online. Watch this video on how to install ghostscript and scribus successfully.
Hope you have a lovely time using the software :)
[Edited by Sabire, May 19]
I really wanted to ditch Adobe and its always bad to crap on an OS project, but if you want an alternative to indesign, just get Afinitys' solution.
a true PDF editor for Linux
I am interested in creating greeting cards. Has anyone used Scribus for this, and how does it perform? Thanks.
Scribus is not very good looking or sleek, but if this doesn't bother you, you will find it is a great program, especially versions from 1.5 onwards. The only thing that irks me is the difficulty of importing text with italics and bolds preserved. But its CMYK color management and font management is one of the best among DTP programs. I learned book formatting with Scribus and I continue using it for this purpose, but I also use the proprietary VivaDesigner.
On Ubuntu Linux the AppImage version works the best. That is the best publisher for Linux that I have found that is free. I ma sure there are paid ones that are better but this is more than enough for me.
Scribus is a very refined and user friendly software that I use to create PDF documents with Combo Boxes, List Boxes, etc. at my office.
We prefer the PDF rather than working with a WORD doc or Excel spreadsheet, so whenever possible I'll make the interactive document (usually a form of some type) with Scribus.
This is another great Open Source software that is amazingly well developed and powerful.