Scribus is free!
Press-ready output from a free app? That’s the claim, and Scribus has plenty of features to back it up. Colour separations, CMYK and spot colours support, ICC colour profiles, and plenty of control over PDF output are just a few of its many attractions.
Scribus uses an XML-based file format called SLA, and it sadly can’t open native InDesign or QuarkXPress documents. It can, however, deal with just about every image format you can throw at it, including TIFF, Photoshop, Illustrator, and EPS. Vector shapes can be imported and edited, or created within Scribus, and have text wrapped around them. Import modules are being developed regularly too; there’s one for iWork’s Pages currently in testing.
Scribus supports OpenType and TrueType fonts and has its own PostScript Level 3 driver, with support for PostScript Level 2.
While licensing issues mean there are no Pantone palettes in Scribus, there are over 100 colour palettes in total, many of them donated by commercial organisations, including several government and scientific standards.
Importantly for a tool aimed at professional use, updates are frequent, the community is thriving and helpful, and the documentation comprehensive and detailed.
The interface, as with most cross-platform open-source software, may come as something as a shock if you’ve been immersed in InDesign or QuarkXPress, but the tools are all there, and the wiki documentation is a great help when it comes to finding and using them.
Many Scribus users use it in conjunction with GIMP and Inkscape, and indeed the publishers of GIMP magazine, aimed at users of the opensource bitmap editor, produce it using Scribus.
The scribusstuff.org user forum has lots of templates and stationary, flyers and other documents, as well as freely available content for use in Scribus projects.
If you’re prepared to learn how to use it, and aren’t put off by the interface (which is by no means ugly), Scribus could save you a fortune.