Thursday, June 9, 2011

What others are saying about "Using FREE Scribus Software to Create Professional Presentations"...

An Important New Book
"Using FREE Scribus Scribus Software to Produce Professional Presentations" is a brand new book that I wish that had had sooner. It is a very detailed book that goes through every step you need to produce professional graphics art results using free software that can be downloaded from the Internet. Versions of Scribus are available for Windows, Linus, and Mac OSX. I used very expensive Adobe InDesign for my last book cover but I expect to use Scribus in the future. Scribus is a professional quality graphic arts program that is available under the Open Software License. This book makes it possible for even the rank beginner to achieve professional results in just a few hours. Every step is spelled out in minute detail. It is a small, but very important book.
---Fred Sias, Woodsmere Press.

Outstanding! Easy to understand, easy to create great presentations!
In a word ...Outstanding! Clear, crisp screen shots and graphics. A must for any book cover designer or publisher. Recommended for authors interested in designing their own book covers and just about anyone else who wants to create professionally published materials.

I wish I had this book when I started out. Chen has unlocked Pandora's Box to free book cover design. It really explains the easy, pull down, windows-like Scribus software way to book cover design. A perfect addition to the library of all design professionals.

I had heard so much about Scribus as a great software program but also knew there was little in the way of easy to understand documentation for it. Finally, a simple, easy-to-follow user's manual everyone can use!
---Sam Hendricks

Highly Recommended - You WILL Get What You Pay For
I read the book "Using Free Scribus Software to Create Professional Presentations" and I could hardly wait to begin utilizing the procedures outlined in it. Alice and Gang have done an outstanding job of making the creative process easy to understand by following their easy-flowing step-by-step instructions. The book provides accurate links to all the necessary software and offers eye-popping examples of the anticipated outcome. I found these examples to be inspirational and it made me work toward achieving the same results. Through its proper use, this book will advance the user from being a novice designer to an expert in a relatively short period of time. This book delivers exactly what the title projects. If you can read, you WILL be able to create professional presentations.
--- EllieW

Presentations Made Easy
"Using FREE Scribus Software to Create Professional Presentations" gives you an EASY formula to create book covers and professional documents. It guides you through step by step instructions that anyone who uses a computer can follow. The software is free and can be downloaded from the web. You do not have to search for anything! This will save you money and time. It is a wonderful concept and is written extremely well.
--- City Girl

Well thought out!
This book is very professionally done. Each page breaks the instructions down to only what you need. The color illustrations are clear and easy to read. If you want a book that will take you from beginning to end with the design of your front and back cover, this is it.
--- Sandra

You Can Do This - For Free!
A short, easy-to-read book that tells you how to design book covers yourself using Scribus and other free websites. No more paying big prices to create quality covers.

This is a truly useful book, particularly if you're a self-published author who has paid in the past to get published. With a little work, patience, and tenacity, you can complete the cover design process yourself. You might use ... other free publication sites and this book to complete the publishing process basically for free - and have a professional looking product.

It might also be useful for product instructions for your invention, your group's cookbook, or manuals for your office. If you want a presentation that people keep, make up a quality cover using the step-by-step instructions provided here.

From beginner to expert in easy to understand steps leading you through the creation of a professional cover
This book, while being fairly short as far as standard books go (only 70 pages) this book is concise and to the point. It is not just a book telling you what to do, but it goes step by step into how you do it.

Chapter One is Preparation - downloading the free software which includes Scribus and 5 other software you will need. Also included is getting the Cover Template, PDF and EPS files, the Bleed area, and Safety Area and Minimum Margins.

Chapter Two is Setting up the Sheet and Preparing the Background. It includes setting up the basic dimensions of the book cover, bleeds guides and layers (You will understand these as you go along), extracting the barcode, setting your RGB or CMYK colors (it tells you which ones to use) and adding the background color to the cover.

Chapter Three has adding the Barcode, Images, Titles and Text, and includes getting free or inexpensive pictures for your book cover. Exporting to a PDF file and making revisions, as well as a FAQ page (frequently asked questions) and a trouble shooting guide.

Then there are the appendices: List of Figures, Annotated Bibliography, and Back Page Promotion.

By the time you finish this book you will have made your book cover, and be pleasantly surprised at how much you have learned and how well these authors have presented, in their meticulous fashion, the secrets to having a professional looking cover for your book, as well as other forms of presentations.

Some useful links mentioned in our book

Scribus is constantly evolving. Here is the latest link for downloading the FREE Scribus software:
http://wiki.scribus.net/canvas/Download

We choose to list the specific links in our book, but if the links have been changed, you just need to go to the root directory of the links in our books, do a quick search at the website, or even do a Google search, and you can easily find the latest links.

Where can I download the FREE book cover design templates for use in the book cover design exercise in your book?

See link below:
http://GreenExamEducation.com/

Click on "FREE Downloads & Forums" on the top menu, go to Forums and then you can find the instructions.

Gang Chen, Author, AIA, LEED AP BD+C

Why is "Using FREE Scribus Software to Create Professional Presentations" needed?

Scribus is great FREE software, but there is NO easy-to-read manual available. The available Scribus books are too technical, too complicated, too long, and have too many words.

For example, it is good to read the 452-page Scribus manual from cover to cover if you have the time. The problem is that few people have the time to read the whole Scribus manual. Even if you do read the whole manual, you may not understand it, or be able to absorb, memorize, and master the the important information to use Scribus skillfully. You need to reread the material several times before you can remember much of it.

"Using FREE Scribus Software to Create Professional Presentations" will save your time and money, and allow you to master the fundamentals of Scribus quickly. It will make Scribus more accessible for an average reader. Our goal is to make Scribus as easy to use as a telephone.

I wish I could have such a book when I started to learn Scribus: very few words, and filled with screen shots, ideal for people who want to master the fundamentals of Scribus in the shortest time. It could have saved me hundreds of dollars and many, many hours of trial and errors, and research.

"Using FREE Scribus Software to Create Professional Presentations" has color interior. The interior white paper for the color books is stronger, heavier and thicker than the white paper for the black and white interior books. I am very happy with the cover quality, the interior CMYK colors are not as bright as the RGB eBooks colors, but they still look good. The book printer did a good job. I am excited when I hold these color books in my hand.

Table of Contents for "Using FREE Scribus Software to Create Professional Presentations"

Dedication

Disclaimer

How to Use This Book

Table of Contents

Chapter One Preparation

A. Downloading the FREE Software
Adobe Reader; Ghostscript; OpenOffice.org; GIMP or PhotoScape; Scribus

B. Getting the Cover Template
PDF and EPS files; Bleed area; Safety Area and Minimum Margin

Chapter Two Setting up the Sheet and Preparing the Background

A. Setting up the basic dimensions of the book cover
Default Unit; Size; Margin Guides

B. Adding the bleed area

C. Adding guides

D. Setting up layers

E. Importing the EPS cover template and extracting the barcode
Overlaying the EPS cover template with your book cover; Moving all the barcode elements together; Ungroup & Group

F. Another way to obtain the barcode from the cover template
Adding the barcode as a JPEG image

G. Setting colors for the cover
RGB or CMYK; Creating your own colors

H. Adding background color to the cover
Shape or image frame; Going to the correct layer; Adding the background color

Chapter Three Adding the Barcode, Images, Titles, and Text

A. Selecting FREE or affordable images for your book cover

B. Cropping or modifying images

C. Adding the images
Calculating the ACCURATE location of the spine edge and EXACT image width for full bleed images; The use of Level; Locking an element

D. Adding text
Selecting the types of fonts and font sizes; Calculating the ACCURATE location of the left text frame edge and the text frame width; Adding text accurately and drawing an ACCURATE text frame for the title; Adding and centering the text; Changing the text color; Rotating and aligning the spine text; Aligning multiple text frames

E. Exporting to a PDF file
Open the PDF file you just made to confirm all unwanted layers are set to unprintable, and all fonts are embedded

F. Making revisions

G. Modifying for NO bleeds eBook covers

H. Special requirements for book covers with COLOR interiors
¼" bleed area; page set up; PDF/x-1a:2001 compatible files: export your book cover as an EPS file from Scribus; open the EPS file in Adobe Acrobat Distiller 8 Professional or newer and convert it to a PDF/x-1a:2001 compatible file; Use Adobe Acrobat Pro Version 8 or 9 to check the PDF file; Another way to create a PDF/X-1a:2001 compliant file

I. Using Scribus software to create other professional presentations

J. Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) and Trouble-shooting

Appendixes

A. List of Figures

B. Annotated Bibliography

Back Page Promotion

Index

How to Use This Book?

We suggest you read "Using FREE Scribus Software to Create Professional Presentations" at least three times:

Read once all the way through to highlight unfamiliar or important information.

Read twice focusing on the highlighted information to memorize. You can repeat this process as many times as you want until you master the content of the book.

The Table of Contents is very detailed so you can locate information quickly. If you are on a tight schedule you can forgo reading the book linearly and jump around to the sections you need. To make your tasks easier, we included concise command descriptions and straightforward color screen shots. After you read the book once, you should know enough to simply read the bolded command lines and look through the screen shots, to perform tasks.

All commands are described in an abbreviated manner. For example, View > Fit to Width means go to the pull down menu on the top of your computer screen, click View, and then click Fit to Width. This is typical for ALL pull down menu commands throughout the book.

This book is designed as a turnkey operation manual. Since book cover design is one of the most difficult forms of professional presentations, we focused on this type of design to document the procedure of creating professional presentations step by step. Anyone with a seventh grade education should be able to consistently produce book covers or apply the information to create other types of professional presentations.

Synopsis for "Using Free Scribus Software to Create Professional Presentations: Book Covers, Magazine Covers, Graphic Designs, Posters, Newsletters, Renderings and More"

About 80% of people have the desire to write a book at some point. With the advance of computer and printing technology, this dream can become a reality. One important factor of publishing a book is to create a professional looking book cover. This book uses book cover design as a case study to teach you how to use FREE Scribus software (instead of expensive professional software like InDesign, Photoshop, and QuarkXpress) to create professional presentations. With fewer words and many full color screenshots, we walk you step by step through the entire process. No prior experience is needed.

You will learn how to:
1. Download all the FREE software needed.
2. Put the cover template in correct formats.
3. Set up the sheet correctly using units, colors (RGB or CMYK), layers, the imported cover template, sizes, guides, bleed area, and safety margin.
4. Add the background color for the cover with a shape or image frame.
5. Add the cover image and author's photo, as well as how to handle a fully bleed image.
6. Add the titles and text accurately, including information on selecting or changing the text color, using the text box, centering the text, aligning different text boxes, and rotating the text.
7. Add the barcode by extracting the barcode from an EPS file and moving all the barcode elements together or by adding the barcode as a JPEG image file.
8. Use Scribus software to create professional presentations such as book covers, magazine covers, graphic designs, posters, newsletters, renderings, and more.


About the authors
Alice Chen is an avid Scribus user. She has extensive interest in presentation software, and resides in California.

Gang Chen holds a master's degree from the School of Architecture, University of Southern California (USC), Los Angeles, and a bachelor's degree from the School of Architecture, South China University of Technology. He has over 20 years of professional experience. Many of the projects he was in charge of or participated in have been published extensively in Architecture, Architectural Record, The Los Angeles Times, The Orange County Register, etc. He has worked on a variety of unusual projects, including well-known, large-scale healthcare and hospitality projects with over one billion dollars in construction costs, award-winning school designs, highly-acclaimed urban design and streetscape projects, multifamily housing, high-end custom homes, and regional and neighborhood shopping centers.

Gang Chen is a LEED AP and a licensed architect in California. He is also the internationally acclaimed author for other fascinating books, including Building Construction, Planting Design Illustrated, and the LEED Exam Guide series, which includes one guidebook for each of the LEED exams.