 Swift Publisher
July, 2006
By: Janet Mobley
 Manufacturer: BeLight Software
Retail Price: 34.95 - $39.95 (see below)
BeLight has done it again! “Done what?” you might wonder. BeLight
has created another easy and excellent software program to add to their other great products;
Business Card Composer and Mail Factory. All easy to use products are packed with options so you
can use your own creativity with the help of their guidelines.
I started with one of Swift Publisher’s included patterns for a newsletter.
I could easily see how it was created. When I looked at the panel, going down the left side of the
page was a long double column of graphics set at the drop down menu on Agriculture.
When I pressed on the down arrow, I got a list of 34 topics ending with Travel and
Leisure. I noticed that the selections were at the top of the column and it was set to a little
square with four colored squares within in it. The next box had a camera so I clicked on that and
much to my surprise it opened my iPhoto library and there were my photos of Greece! Seeing that,
the decision was made to select the newsletter topic.
Having recently returned from a trip to Greece, I decided to use Swift Publisher to
create a newsletter about my trip. As I changed some of the type, I thought it rather funny that I
was writing about Greece when the demo type was in Latin. And, of course, the parts that I wrote are
in English.
Although I used my own photos and graphics, (Figure 3) there are over 23,000 images
from which to choose. Another nice feature is that there are new graphics on the BeLight web site
that you can download which will go right into Swift Publisher or other BeLight programs.
If you select New from the Menu bar, you will see the nine choices you have as you
can see from Figure 1. You can also make a template and add it to the Custom Templates folder.
When I had a little trouble getting the text to wrap around my photo of the Parthenon,
I went to the very extensive and easy to understand Help menu and it solved my problem quickly.
You can also go the BeLight web site and get Technical Support. There is a page called
Support Resources, which also has a download site for the Latest Update, something I have never seen
from other companies. Another surprising addition to this site is a great section of Frequently Asked
Questions. All in all, BeLight’s customer support is superior to anything I’ve encountered
so far from most companies.
Swift Publisher is not trying to compete with InDesignCS but I wouldn’t be
surprised if it could be used to produce a long newsletter. Teens, and maybe younger children who are
technologically competent, could use Swift Publisher and still produce very sophisticated results.
BeLight Software, also makers of Business Card Composer and Mail Factory. This company
provides free upgrades. I got a free Christmas package to download to use with their applications.
Buy CD edition at $39.95+S&H
Buy download edition at $34.95
Upgrade to Boxed edition $5+ S&H
* NOTE! The download edition of Swift Publisher contains a limited number of clipart images
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