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SPECIFICTION
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Layout Department vs Publisher Plus

Layout Department

layoutdepartment.com

Publisher Plus

pearlmountainsoft.com

Side by side

FigureLayout DepartmentPublisher Plus
Price fromFree—
Free planYes—
Free trial—Yes
Open source——
WindowsYes—
macOSYesYes
Plans published21
Spec score · Desktop Publishing Software8.1 (#11)7.7 (#18)
HeadquartersLeavenworth, Washington, United StatesChengdu, Sichuan, China
PurposeLayout Department arranges PDFs into imposed print files for books, zines, and booklets.Publisher Plus is a Mac desktop publishing and page layout application for creating printable documents such as brochures, flyers, newsletters, magazines, posters, business cards, and calendars.
UpdatesThe app checks for updates when opened and downloads updates in the background when available.The FAQ says minor upgrades are free, with purchased version 1.x updates included until version 2.0.

Plans

Layout Department

  • Community EditionFree
  • Paid License$29, paid once

Layout Department pricing →

Publisher Plus

  • Publisher Plus$39.90, paid once

Publisher Plus pricing →

In their own words

Layout Department

Layout Department turns PDFs into imposed print files for books, zines, and booklets. Choose a sheet size, pages per sheet, binding, and other settings, then export a print-ready PDF. Its documented layouts include Booklet, Perfect Bound, Magic Zine, and Cover; the default Booklet arrangement prepares pages for folding into a zine, and books can be divided into sections or signatures. Printer marks can include trim, bleed, center marks, page numbers, and sheet labels, with options to disable them or choose defaults. PDF processing happens locally on the user’s computer rather than through an upload. The free Community Edition has no time or page-count limit, needs no payment details, and exports without watermarks or downsampling. It includes basic book and zine layouts, page creep adjustment, cover layouts, and full print-file export. The one-time Paid License costs $29 as a one-time purchase and adds resizing, custom trim size, more imposition layouts, sections, multi-fold, and other options; it includes one year of updates. The app runs on macOS and Windows.

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Publisher Plus

Publisher Plus has no write-up on Specifiction yet; its figures are above.

Visit pearlmountainsoft.com