Layout Department is software for laying out books, zines, and booklets. You drag and drop PDFs to make the imposed print files. It’s a tool for artist publishers, small printshops, and people who like making print publications.
Made by ANEMONE, the makers of Spectrolite.
Download
The free community edition has what you need to make your PDFs into layouts that you can print. You can also upgrade to a paid license with even more features.
Are you on your phone? Don’t download the desktop app to your phone, instead: email yourself a link to download later.
Silicon macs are newer with Apple M1, M2, M3, M4 chips, Intel is the older type of chip. Not sure which kind of Mac you have? Click the Apple menu > About This Mac, and check the Processor / Chip label. See more info here if you need help figuring out which version is right for your computer.
Requires MacOS v12 (Monterey) or later.
This is new
If you’re seeing this, you’re here in the very beginning. There will be a new app icon and color scheme! The app is under construction: it will change and there is a lot to be built. We’ve built in bug reporting that automatically sends us error logs (not your PDF file) when you see a bug alert pop-up. (In settings, you’ll see an option to turn this off if you need to.) When a bug happens, you’ll have an option to add a note about what you were doing when the problem occurred — if you have time to add context, this can really help us track down problems and fix them. Thanks for trying it out and let us know if you have suggestions or run into problems.
Read the Documentation for how-to content for book making and using the app.
Pairs well with Spectrolite
Just one click to open your layouts in Spectrolite. And if you include printer’s marks, Spectrolite sees that they came from Layout Department and puts the marks on the appropriate color layer(s). See more in Spectrolite Integration.
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