Church Directories

Can anyone suggest a good software option for creating church directories? I'm looking for something that is easy, efficient, and offers a large variety of templates. Thanks

What exactly is a church directory?

bdp23 wrote in post #12154654
What exactly is a church directory?

Its essentially a custom phone book that usually includes photos of the members/families that attend a particular church.

Is the OP looking for a webpage solution or for printing?

bdp23 wrote in post #12154962
Is the OP looking for a webpage solution or for printing?

It would be printed and I do have a local printer. I'm just looking for software to create it.
Church directories are simply directories that contain a photo and contact information for the individuals in a particular church. They can be quite elaborate with lots of photos, templates and additional information or very basic.

I used to have to do a church directory a few years ago. We used a custom MS Access program to do it. My wife currently does a similar directory for a women's charitable organization she leads. She uses a template she made in MS Publisher. Both were not ideal.

I would be interested in see what others have used...

You should really use a high end desktop publishing program like Quark or InDesign to get the best results.
I am a commercial printer. We don't do color in house so we outsource to larger companies. Most will not take MS Word or Publisher. MS Word has problems from computer to computer. What views on one computer may not view the same on another computer (graphics move, type not quite the same). Not many printers use MS Publisher.
I have had to convert more files to InDesign to get them print ready. The higher quality program you have to start, the better the results.

Quark is losing enough market share that you may want to avoid it.

InDesign uses enough of the familiar Adobe practices that the learning curve isn't too bad. The price for even a single seat is, however, not trivial.

If you would rather not pay through both nostrils you may want to give Acrobat a try. It would work well for a church directory and most all printers deal well with pdfs. Some will give you detailed instructions for Acrobat options and settings.

I just did mine with photoshop. then they printed it in their office with their rented color laser printer.

I use Comic Life for construction instructions for electronics projects, and for advertising flyers for my radio club's projects.

It's intended for comic strip and fun photo story books, but it offers me customizable 'bins' for the images, handles text, overlaps and flow, as well as all the typeface colours and manipulations

http://plasq.com/produ​cts/comiclife
$25 or $30 for win or mac (see also comic life 2 and comic life magiq for alternative features)

their gallery: http://plasq.com/produ​cts/comiclife/gallery

example of how I use it (rough draft, awaiting opportunity to take pic 'in the field'):
you can do colourful backgrounds and drag and resize the images. different boarders, drop shadow, etc. it links into your Pictures folder, even plugs into Aperture and iPhoto libraries on the Mac. (haven't used it on PC)

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