PagePlusX3 Publisher Professional (Serif, www.serif.com, $99) is the latest version of a desktop publishing program that has a wealth of new and enhanced features to help you create professional-looking brochures, newsletters, business cards, stationery, booklets and the like. The program is easy enough to use for simple greeting cards, calendars and posters but advanced enough for making complex catalogs, real estate flyers or web pages--and much more.

PagePlusX3 Publisher Professional includes 2,500 templates for just about any type of publication you want, but you can easily change or revise any template item(s) to suit your project. Or, use the many included features to create your own materials from scratch.

New to this version is the Image Cutout Studio that lets you remove parts of images and keep just the parts you want. Also new is the LogoStudio, which includes a wide range of professional quality logo templates and images and also allows you to have your fonts, linked graphics and media files (and more) embedded in a project so it can be used on another computer. Other new features offer better photo import options, new text, graphics and image options, manual duplex printing options, and more.

Most of the layout, graphics, text and publishing tools found in earlier versions have been enhanced or updated, and the included Premium Content Pack DVD gives you an additional 1,300 templates and more than 100 royalty-free images.

We started with some of the simple projects and used the design templates to make it easier. Templates are listed by category (such as photo albums, publications, flyers and posters, business forms, scrapbooks and others); each category also includes a set of additional templates, and each option offers more choices of layouts and page styles.

We made a greeting card for our first project and found a template with a design we liked. We substituted the person’s name and personalized the greeting with our own text, then changed the font and color of the text. We had a personalized, colorful card in minutes. We also tried our hand at a newsletter, where we could easily substitute the background images we wanted, insert our own text and add a photo. We found it easiest to edit in the LogoStudio, where a click on any of the options allows a wide range of effects, colors, styles and shapes. Minor problem: it was a challenge to keep from continuing to experiment with all the features included here.

Once you've created a document, you can print it on your own printer, save it as a PDF file, or set it up to send to a professional printer. Options for preparing materials for professional printing are extensive and include the ability to create PostScript files, color separations, auto-imposition, and much more.

A feature we especially like is Acolor schemes,@ which allows you to view the document with different combinations of colors for the text, background, graphics, borders and the like. A click on the Attributes tab displays the list of pre-set color schemes, and scrolling down the list shows a preview of how your document would look with each of the different color schemes. Very cool. There are other equally useful features, such as Master Pages, which lets you save elements you want to appear on each page, (such as a logo, background, border design and the like), and have all those elements automatically included on each page. This feature is especially useful in projects such as a newsletter, booklet or catalog.

The Templates option could fill the needs for the most common print projects, but there’s an equally wide range of options for doing your project from scratch. Text can be placed at an angle, written on any type of curve (very cool), and used in any place or shape on the page; graphics and photos can be sized, shaped and/or altered, and they can also be placed inside one of the many included shapes (such as a heart, octagon, circle and others).