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James BaillieJubalBarca@scholar.social
Oct 12, 2026, 9:45 AM
With Microsoft shutting down Publisher and apparently making it fully unusable someday very soon - I was still using it as I had access to it anyway via a family 365 subscription - I need to work out what to make posters with now.
Anyone got any suggestions? Ideally, you know, functional and reasonably simple, I don't like event making posters and I'm bad at it but I have to do it regularly. And free or at least not on a subscription.
Boosts welcome!
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Replies

Adampseudomonas@mastodon.social
Oct 12, 2026, 9:48 AM
@JubalBarca I use Inkscape.
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Roberto von ArchimboldiRobertoArchimboldi@kolektiva.social
Oct 12, 2026, 10:36 AM
@pseudomonas @JubalBarca I find scribus very easy to use:
https://www.scribus.net/
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James BaillieJubalBarca@scholar.social
Oct 12, 2026, 11:05 AM
@RobertoArchimboldi @pseudomonas Oou, Scribus looks like a pretty good solution - seems to be pretty solidly situated in the kind of niche publisher was in which is the kind of like-for-like replacement that might make things smoothest for me.
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MostlyTatoMostlyTato@mstdn.social
Oct 12, 2026, 6:13 PM
@JubalBarca @RobertoArchimboldi @pseudomonas
Scribus is very competant and professional for print work. And ofc its free! Inkscape will do posters but is more of an illustration program. The Affinity suite is very powerful, but whilst technically free it does send quite a lot if telemetry back to Canva. You can block that by using it offline or blocking it with a firewall.
I did a brief review of various programs here:
https://mstdn.social/@MostlyTato/115667234144133821
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Cornelius Flynncflynnbooks@mastodonapp.uk
Oct 12, 2026, 10:04 AM
@JubalBarca
Canva still has a ‘free plan’, that can easily do them. I used it years ago to mock up book covers and it was always solid.
https://www.canva.com/
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toerrortoerror@mastodon.gamedev.place
Oct 12, 2026, 10:11 AM
@JubalBarca I moved over to affinity to get away from Adobe products; Affinity studio basic is free, and is kinda photoshop, illustrator, indesign rolled into one. I haven't upgraded to the canva owned version (product was acquired by them), but I expect it's alright.
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Verena RuppVerenaRupp@vivaldi.net
Oct 12, 2026, 10:33 AM
@JubalBarca Have you considered switching to Linux? Best decision I ever made. Has GIMP pre-installed. I'd just ditch any US-owned software and devices, if I were you.
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James BaillieJubalBarca@scholar.social
Oct 12, 2026, 11:04 AM
@VerenaRupp Of course I've looked into it, from a work perspective there are a *lot* of other software and utility reasons I can't reasonably switch to Linux at the moment. Would be nice in theory, keeping it under review, but not feasible right now.
Also GIMP (which I do use) isn't quite what I'm after here: making a quick poster is mostly about having a tool that's good for doing the background and image alignment fast, it's not something I usually want a fully fledged image editor for.
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der.hanslufthans@mastodon.social
Oct 13, 2026, 6:58 AM
@JubalBarca @VerenaRupp a lot of the Free Software applications like Inkscape and LibreOffice work on multiple platforms, so you don't need to switch to Linux to use them
Scribus download page lists several platforms
https://www.scribus.net/downloads/
Hope you get time to play with whatever you choose like it's a new toy rather than instant deadlines!
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Verena RuppVerenaRupp@vivaldi.net
Oct 14, 2026, 9:17 AM
@JubalBarca https://fosstodon.org/@libreoffice/117438169512681889
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Dominik Waßenhovendomwass@scholar.social
Oct 12, 2026, 4:03 PM
@JubalBarca You could try draw.io. It’s free, easy to use and highly customizable. You can use it in a browser or download an app (Windows, Mac, Linux). There’s documentation (https://www.drawio.com/docs/getting-started/) and lots of videos on youtube.
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Martha BridegamMBridegam@federate.social
Oct 12, 2026, 7:19 PM
@JubalBarca
LibreOffice Draw. Free, no AI, and remarkably flexible. When you get used to its conventions it is very much like the best of 1990s PageMaker with the fuss removed.
[Edited to say LibreOffice NOT OpenOffice. Sorry!]
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Matthew Vernondemoographics@wikis.world
Oct 12, 2026, 9:42 PM
@JubalBarca I'm ancient enough to use LaTeX and pgf/tikz on the occasions I need to do something like this.
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Ra (Freyja) (it/its)𒀭𒈹𒍠𒊩 (cringe EU-brained military girl)freya@highenergymagic.net
Oct 13, 2026, 1:38 AM
@JubalBarca thought: grab a copy of like Publisher 2010 off archive.org or something? would that work for your usecase?
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