Workflow and Scribus

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Creating a Good Workflow

As already noted in Basic Concepts, a good DTP workflow is one of the keys to your success. While this is also true for many kinds of production environments, in DTP a well-thought-out workflow is essential. Below you will find advice for organizing your work.

Rule Number One: Communicate

Always keep in mind that successful layout and print is the result of communication and interaction between human beings. Computers can help with achieving a given task, but during the process from idea to print it's the people in front of the screens who count. Since hardly anyone involved has a detailed overview of all parts of the process, it's essential to communicate openly and probably often.

Keep Creative Processes Separated

Many people are used to editing documents (especially in collaborative office environments) in a quite chaotic way. While it looks easier in the beginning to let various people write copy, proofread, and format text, as well as inserting or moving images, this will almost certainly end up with an unprofessional layout.

In well thought-out workflow, text editing, proofreading, image and vector drawing creation are kept separate from each other. It's up to the one who's doing the final layout (you) to assemble all the different pieces. Make sure you have received final copies of all texts, images, and graphics. If you're working commercially, let authors, photographers, and graphic artists sign a so-called imprimatur, a guarantee that the delivered version is final and approved for release.

The reasoning is simple: Once you've finished a document, even changing a few letters or the size of an image frame may change the whole layout, and in the worst case you would need to start from scratch. Requiring an imprimatur is not a sign of distrust, it's just an effective means to create trust and to impose discipline on all participants in a workflow.

Use Local Project Folders

While it's possible to edit Scribus files in shared network folders, it's better to work with local copies, since as we all know, networks can occasionally be undependable, and thus you guarantee access to a project file when the local network is down.

You should also create separate project directories that contain all the layout components (text files, images, and so on) that you need. To improve your workflow even more, put those content files in subdirectories. Having all content available in one project directory with its subdirectories will make it easier to copy all content to another hard drive, a USB stick, or a network. Since Scribus stores relative paths to external content, the content can be found even if the project directory has been moved somewhere else.

Don't Bite Off More Than Scribus Can Chew

If you're working on a huge project, it is recommended that you split up your project into smaller chunks. As a rule of thumb, a single file shouldn't exceed about 30 pages, especially if it contains much text or lots of high-resolution images, as this will result in slow performance in Scribus.

Once you've finished all files, adjust the page numbering as described in Pagination.ENDNOTE The use of master pages (as described in Master PagesENDNOTE) will help you to keep a consistent layout throughout the final document.

Help Your Writers

Some selected guidelines for your writers will not only help them, but also smooth out the overall process. Most writers are working with a word processor, but this kind of program is quite different from a text editor or a layout application. Here are some hints that will save you and your writers a lot of time:

  • Do not use hyphenation in texts that will be imported into a layout program. Ever! Just like automatic line breaks, whether or not to hyphenate will be decided by Scribus, so this is quite unnecessary.
  • Other word processing options like page breaks or automatic numbering should also be avoided. They may disappear during import or even create some ugly artefacts.
  • Create a style guide for the authors. Explain what quotation marks will be used, how text is going to be emphasized etc.
  • Explain the difference between a hyphen and en-/em-dashes, since the typographic uses are different, and need to be consistent.
  • If your authors are using OpenOffice.org, StarOffice or any other ODF compliant word processor, you can create an example file with the paragraph styles that will be used in your Scribus document. They can then use them for their texts, and the styles will match those you are going to use in your Scribus document. If they use another word processor, you can either ask them to create a PDF with all the formatting information and then save as plain text (in this case you will have to re-create the formatting yourself). Or you can open their files in OpenOffice.org/StarOffice and save them as ODT from within Writer.

Use Appropriate Bitmap Formats

Many people think their neatly blinking GIF file or the web-optimized progressive JPEG (a JPEG version that partially displays as it is downloading in a web browser) they use for their website can also be used for professional printing. The opposite is true, and these files should be avoided at all costs in a print workflow. An exception to this occurs whenever you are creating a PDF for the web, where low resolution graphics are the norm.

If you're going to print commercially, you are well advised to use TIFF files whenever possible, as this format is well-tested in print workflows. Native Photoshop files or EPS files (more precisely: bitmap files contained in an EPS file) should also work without issues. It's also possible to use JPEG files in print workflows, but be aware that JPEGs become worse each time they're opened and re-saved by an image editor. It's better to convert an existing JPEG file, eg. from a digital camera, to TIFF before you consider editing it. You should also note that saving a low-resolution GIF or JPEG file as a TIFF with a higher resolution won't improve the quality at all. No matter how you slice it, the print result will look bad.

If you need to work with bitmap files that contain screenshots or line art, the PNG format is probably your best choice. Logos and other images with large single-coloured areas can often be converted to vector files by using pstoedit or GSview ENDNOTE. Their print quality will be dramatically enhanced if converted to vector files.

While this subsection hopefully has made you aware of the risks and potential points of failure, there is also some good news. Many DTP programs, even some of the more widely used applications, ask their users to import images in the CMYK color space if the exported PDF or EPS file(s) are used for offset printing. That's different in Scribus, as Scribus will convert the color spaces for you, depending on the output target you choose. See PDF ExportENDNOTE for more information.

For more information about the image formats supported by Scribus see Working With Images.ENDNOTE

Don't Waste Resources

A properly organized workflow can save time and prevent headaches, and furthermore is easier on physical resources like disk and memory space, even energy usage.

While it's possible to mask or transform images in Scribus, it's better to use an image editing program for those tasks whenever possible. For instance, if you import an image into Scribus and then mask it, so that only a small part of it is visible, Scribus will nonetheless export the whole image into a PDF or EPS file. This means that a printer or a Raster Image Processor (RIP) will have to process the whole image, not just the visible part. While this may be acceptable if a document contains only one image, it's going to become a problem with many pictures at high resolutions. Processing time is still a real issue in modern printing.

You can try this yourself by creating a document with only a few pages and some high-resolution images: Print this document to a PostScript file and start the clock ... You'll notice that the operation is not only taking a lot of time, but also that your computer will become very slow at times, because the operation requires a lot of CPU and memory capacity. This, in turn, means a lot of electrical power, which could have been saved by using the right tool for the job earlier in the process. Even if you don't think “green”, you will appreciate the extra time gained for fine-tuning your document by reducing masked or hidden pixels to a minimum.

Ask your printer

As described in Preparing for Commercial Printing,ENDNOTE talk to your printing company before you start your layout. Their demands may directly influence the way you need to handle a Scribus document from the beginning. See Rule Number One above – remember that your printer is part of the workflow team.

Save Frequently

In case you haven't noticed with other programs, saving your changes regularly can avoid data loss in case of a crash (yes, even Scribus may crash once in a while). In Opening, Creating, SavingENDNOTE you will find all the necessary information about the different AutoSave and emergency backups in Scribus. As with most programs, excessively relying on AutoSave and emergency backups can be a mistake.

Use Templates

If you are working on projects with a recurring design, for example, newsletters, you should use templates. Create a sample file with all the necessary fixed content like logos, headlines (eg. imprint), and guides, then use Save as Template. This will help you to achieve a consistent layout in every issue.

The Preflight Verifier Is Your Friend

While there is an option in the Document Setup and the Preferences to ignore the warnings of the Preflight Verifier, you shouldn't enable it. The Preflight Verifier will detect errors you may easily overlook and will thus prevent problems downstream. Some of these warnings are simply informational, yet still good as a reminder about your layout and content.

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