Layout Department vs VivaDesigner

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.

VivaDesigner is a desktop and web program for design, publishing, layout, typesetting and illustration. It supports projects such as books, brochures, flyers, newspapers, magazines, catalogs, business cards, resumes, logos and social media ads. Its tools cover typography, structured text, styles, tables, paths and barcodes, with support for all languages and writing directions. AI features include automatic translation in more than 30 languages and automatic image clipping. VivaDesigner imports native InDesign documents, and users can edit VivaDesigner or InDesign files in a browser. Teams can work online or offline, add text notes and track visual changes. Documents can be printed or exported to PDF, XML, PNG, JPG and other formats. The server can connect to websites and web applications through an API, or be deployed on premises; the hosted offer includes a German data center and automatic backup. The free edition can open, edit, save and print documents, but lacks hyphenation, spell check and PDF export. The SaaS / IaaS offer costs €299 a month, net plus VAT, on a one-year contract.