No more PDF ping-pong.

The whole team works in one document, with no checking out and no files going back and forth.

• Everyone in the same document: changes appear for all at once, even mid-paragraph, with names, pointers and text cursors in their own colour
• Chat and video chat in the document: short messages with an unread counter, picture and sound straight from browser to browser
• Links instead of passwords: one link each for editing, copy editing, commenting and viewing
• Teams with their own storage: admins create teams and decide who edits and who only views. All members see the documents in the team's storage, and whoever leaves loses access at once
• Comments on the object: with @-mentions and an email to the people mentioned
• Named versions: restore or compare, text word by word and objects new, removed or moved; one click jumps to the spot
• Change once, current everywhere: publish a logo or an imprint once and place it in many documents. Copies follow, deliberate deviations stay
• Brand kits and libraries: colours, styles, fonts, logos, workspaces and export presets for the whole team
• Flat plan for production: status and owner per page, a warning when a finished page still changes, reset for the next edition
• Keep working offline: installable as an app, offline documents live in the browser and can be shared later
• Tested with 20 people in one document at the same time: not a single change was lost

Clients correct in the layout themselves. They need a link and no account.

• Clients correct without an account: one link is enough to change text in the locked layout, comment and approve
• Track changes: inserted text carries name, time and colour, deleted text stays as a mark; accept or reject one by one, per person or all at once; PDF and print show the final version
• Take in PDF corrections: annotations from a marked-up PDF arrive as comments in the right place, comments go out as PDF notes, for everyone without Medusa too
• See what the client changed: everything since sending at a glance; through the copy-editing link clients can also swap images in released frames
• Editorial link per person: a link of its own for a section or single pages; text and images only there, changes carry the link's name, each link can be revoked on its own
• Everyone fills in their own card: one link per person from the list, live preview, upload their own photo, approve; links with an expiry date, locked fields, a record of corrections
• A proof marked as a proof: every sheet carries document, page, date and “not for print” in the margin
• Approval per page: clients approve individual pages or everything, approved pages lock until you lift the approval. The rest stays editable, a version is created and a mail goes out; with several reviewers each person agrees individually, pages lock only when all have agreed

Screen and PDF show the same typesetting: one engine for editor, image and print.

• Styles that build on each other: paragraph, character and object styles with based-on and next style, line styles, nested styles and GREP styles, arranged in collapsible groups
• Justification down to the detail: word and letter spacing, glyph scaling, paragraph composer, balanced ragged lines, hyphenation with preview
• Calm margins, clean register: optical margin alignment with a reference size and your own rules per character, baseline grid for all lines or only the first, a grid per frame
• Kerning: metric from the font's own pairs (even across style changes), optical, or by hand with Alt+arrow
• Characters as in professional typesetting: horizontal and vertical scale, skew, stroke, character background, underline and strikethrough with weight, offset and colour, true and synthetic small caps
• Everything about characters and paragraphs in one panel: OpenType, variable axes, tabs, drop caps, breaks, nested styles and GREP styles
• Text frames made to measure: fixed or flexible columns, inset per side, vertical justification, first baseline, column rules, auto-size to the text
• Breaks under control: break characters for column, frame, odd and even page, keep paragraphs together, no widows and orphans, paragraphs spanning columns or in a split column
• Drop caps, paragraph rules, paragraph shading and borders, per column and across frame boundaries too
• Tabs with a ruler and leaders; bullets and numbering with your own character, number formats, five levels and a start number
• Text around the real shape: wrap around paths, ellipses, images in a shape, groups and the alpha channel of cut-out images, with distance, side and a contour you can edit point by point; type on a path
• Ligatures only where they fit: a colour change breaks them up, tracked text sets without them
• Conditional text: show or hide passages by condition; hidden text is neither composed nor exported
• Find and replace by text, style and font, with GREP, back references and presets for double spaces, dates or phone numbers too; save a search as a sequence, “Tidy up typography” puts double spaces, ellipses and dashes in order in one step
• Formulas in LaTeX notation: fractions, roots, sums, integrals; preview as you type, vectors in the PDF
• Text count at a glance: characters, lines and overset, standard lines of 55 and standard pages of 1800 characters, plus a story mode for writing without layout
• Show hidden characters, a special-characters menu with every space and “Indent to here”, a glyph panel

Your own fonts, many scripts, and Medusa sets type by the rules of each language.

• Around 1800 Google Fonts: browse, preview and add to the document in one click, as TTF, so they make it into the PDF
• Variable fonts on the text: handles for width, weight, slant and optical size, further axes as drag tabs, settings saved under a name
• OpenType with preview: ligatures, figure styles, titling alternates, stylistic sets and character variants, showing what the font can do
• Upload your own TTF and OTF files; variable fonts arrive with all their axes and named instances
• Lean PDFs: fonts embedded as subsets, OTF as CFF, text stays searchable
• Bundled fonts with a free licence: nothing is loaded from outside servers
• Arabic and Hebrew right to left, mixed with Latin text; cursor and selection in the right order, searchable in the PDF
• Indic scripts such as Devanagari, Bengali and Tamil with correct conjuncts and vowel signs, searchable in the PDF
• Language detected automatically: hyphenation in 25 languages, spell checking in five (German with Swiss ss), hyphenation exceptions per language
• Language versions in the same document: each language on a layer of its own, each person switches to their version themselves. Running heads, indexes and hyphenation follow the language; changed source text marks a version “outdated”, only the changed paragraphs go out as XLIFF to the translation agency and come back with all character formatting
• Spell check across the whole document: replace, ignore or add to the document's shared dictionary
• Grammar and style with LanguageTool: paragraph by paragraph in its own language, suggestions on right-click, with your own account
• Punctuation spacing by language: a thin space before ; ! ? in French, separate rules for Switzerland and Canada; the text stays as typed
• Quotation marks to match the language as you type; clean up text by Swiss federal, Duden and French typographic rules, with colour highlighting

From annual report to book: Medusa keeps contents, notes and references up to date.

• A book from several documents: continuous page numbers, styles aligned across all parts, one PDF for the whole or one per part, one check over everything
• A manuscript in one go: several Word, Markdown or text files as chapters with autoflow; one style mapping for all, footnotes, images, chapters on a right-hand page
• Smart text reflow: whoever types past the end of the last frame gets new pages and frames; switched on and off in the “Layout” menu
• Contribution inbox: send members a link, they submit text (Word files too) and up to five images with caption and creator without an account. The contributions sit in a list and go into the document as a manuscript with one click
• Table of contents with TOC styles: levels, page number before or after, leaders, alphabetical sorting, clickable and bookmarked in the PDF, across the whole book too
• Footnotes and endnotes with numbering style, start number, restart per page or section and their own divider, typed in the note area, with italics, small caps, links and cross-references
• Cross-references, an index with several registers (for people and places, say, page ranges collapsed, sorting by document language), marginalia and captions that follow the image; anchored objects flow with the text
• Image credits: creator and rights come from the image files, appear as a field on the image and can be set and updated as a collected list in the document
• Parent pages nested (“based on”) and linked from other documents, several per page in stacking order; hide single master items per page, so there is no logo on the chapter opener
• Sections with their own numbering, Roman too, running heads; chapter openers without running heads, blank pages stay empty
• Text variables: your own as text or as a date with a pattern, plus file name, output date, chapter number and character and word counts; “Continued on page …” follows the text thread

Calculate as in a spreadsheet, typeset like a professional.

• Tables that calculate: cells starting with “=” know SUM, ROUND to 0.05, IF, ranges, references to other tables and document values such as VAT
• The total in the running text: a calculated field brings any result into the text and keeps it current
• Calculate the way you are used to: fill a formula down, name tables, sort by column; inserting columns updates references everywhere
• Numbers set cleanly: thousands separator as apostrophe, thin space, full stop or comma, percent format, “12.–” for round amounts, alignment on the decimal mark, a true minus sign; charts and data fields follow
• Tables over many pages: merged cells, header and footer rows, alternating fills, strokes per cell edge, cell text rotated 90°, 180° or 270°, breaking across frames and pages, even through a row that may split at the end of a frame
• Table and cell styles as named styles: design once, identical everywhere

Charts, codes and drawings are objects in the layout and vectors in the PDF, with no add-on.

• Charts from numbers: columns, bars, lines, area, pie, doughnut and pictogram, stacked and 100 %, as vectors in the document's colours
• Enter data as in Excel: Tab, Enter, insert rows and columns, paste ranges from Excel or Google Sheets, for charts, org charts and node diagrams
• Charts with pictures: an image per category above the bar, at its foot, on the axis or as a pictogram; it follows every change
• Charts in detail: values as number, percent or both, names on the segment, colours tied to the series name, resizing recalculates
• Org charts and flows: org charts from a list or table, flowcharts with “yes” and “no” on the arrows, node diagrams with named inputs and outputs
• Connectors that follow: straight, right-angled, rounded or curved, with labels; move the shapes and the lines come along
• Diagrams by hand: drag boxes with the mouse or arrow keys, connectors follow automatically; «+» on a box or connector adds a new point; connection points round or square, a box's shape can be changed; set line style, weight, colour, dash, arrows and fill for every box or connector in a diagram at once
• QR-bill: payment slip and receipt to the Swiss guidelines at the foot of the page, reference from a member number or verified, one invoice per member with data merge; IBAN, reference and names searchable in the PDF
• Barcodes as vectors: EAN-13, ISBN with price add-on, ISMN, ISSN, EAN-8, UPC-A, Code 128 and GS1-128 with OCR-B text and bar width reduction; Pharmacode and Braille for packaging
• 2D codes in any colour: QR with a logo in the middle, inverted or in a gradient, DataMatrix, GS1 DataMatrix and PDF417, per record too
• Calendars at the push of a button: a month per page or in a grid, week numbers, holidays from .ics or CSV, moon phases, and the same again for next year
• Drawing: pen and direct selection, pathfinder, polygons and stars, corner options per corner
• Strokes dashed, dotted or dash-dot, with caps, joins and arrowheads, placed inside, centred or outside the shape, the same on screen, in the PDF and in SVG
• Effects with their own window: drop and inner shadow, feathering per side, global light; groups carry opacity, blend mode and effects as a whole
• Convert type to outlines, matching the typesetting exactly, for logos, lettering and fonts without embedding rights

Spreadsheet in, catalogue out. Next year you check only what changed.

• The next edition by matching: the new price list is matched by key, hand edits are flagged as conflicts, plus a proof PDF with only the changed pages
• Product tiles from data: one template, one tile per record, product groups with a header tile and a new page, a template per field value; 500 items in under a second
• Catalogues in the text flow: a block of paragraphs per record with group headings, missing pages are added, item numbers go into their own index
• Prices set properly: field formats for number, currency and percent (“CHF 1’234.50”, “12.–”), show or hide objects per field value
• Bilingual catalogues: an output language picks “Name_fr” and sets numbers and amounts its own way
• Data merge from CSV, Excel or JSON with images, QR code and barcode per record, as a PDF, a ZIP per record or a new document
• Labels and envelopes: A4 label sheets to Zweckform and HERMA templates, design one label and data merge fills the sheet; envelopes C5, C5/6, DL and C6 with the address field at the window position and the post office's free coding zone
• Data under control: sort, filter and correct records, pick the sheet in Excel workbooks; “page 1 of 2” restarts for each record
• Linked sources: tables and texts from Excel, CSV, Word and Google Sheets stay connected, two-way if you like, with write-back
• All in one place: the Data menu with data merge, data sources, lists in the text flow, linked tables and document values

You check the file before the printer does.

• Prepress with a jump to the object: images, fonts, colours, transparency and bleed in the report, plus inspect mode for sign-off
• Your own preflight profiles: image resolution, thinnest stroke, smallest type, maximum ink, distance to edge and fold, custom text patterns as house rules, as a house preset for the whole team
• New checks: page count matching the binding, number of spot colours against your profile, leftover placeholder text, objects too close to the trim edge, broken links in the document, characters missing from the font, also markable on the page
• Accessibility in view: text-to-background contrast to WCAG, a view simulates colour vision deficiency, readability (LIX) is in the panel; in the tagged PDF, form fields are labelled and formulas are marked up
• Print preview plate by plate, computed from the print data: overprint, opacity and spot colours as printed, in Display P3 on suitable screens
• Spot colours in CMYK, Lab or RGB on their own plate, in gradients too; the ink manager merges spot colours or converts them to process for output only
• Colour management with ICC profiles: print profile per document, ECI profiles ISO Coated v2, PSO Uncoated and ISO Newspaper included, soft proof with paper white
• Images in the right colour: RGB through its own profile into the print profile, untagged through the working space; CMYK images stay unchanged
• Overprint for fill, stroke and black text: 100 % black overprints by itself everywhere (underlines, paragraph rules, table rules, path text and formulas too), white never does; 1-bit line art stays sharp on the black plate
• Transparency that prints: shadows and feathered edges keep their colour: black stays black, spot colours stay on their plates, the object stays vector
• Opacity and blend mode for object, fill, stroke and content, on screen as in the PDF; isolated and knockout groups
• Colour picker by colour space: CMYK with ink coverage, spot colours with tint, RGB, OKLCH and Display P3; load and save palettes as .ase, .aco and .gpl
• Spot channels from Photoshop print on their own plate, CMYK images keep their profile
• A prepress test document as an example: pages with spot colours, overprint, transparency, line art and 16-bit images; each says what the result must be

One document, many outputs: print PDF, flipbook, form or image.

• A print PDF that checks itself: built to PDF/X-4, the label is only set when the built-in check passes; otherwise the export says why. Not an independent certification
• Print and accessibility in one file: PDF/X-4 and PDF/UA at once, both labels only after the check passes
• Order print: create the PDF from a preset, check it and send it to the printer as a link, with run, size, paper and deadline; the link expires and can be withdrawn
• A flipbook online in one click: spreads, swiping on phones, search across the whole catalogue, a PDF to download, films, QR code and embed code, or as a ZIP
• Vector PDF with embedded fonts, bleed per edge, crop and registration marks and a slug line, optionally with switchable layers; export presets for the team, the PDF is made in the background and needs less memory for large documents
• In-depth PDF check: output intent, ICC and Lab colour spaces, fonts, layers, resolution and ink coverage, other people's PDFs too
• Interactive PDF: fillable forms with text fields, check boxes, lists, signature and required fields, buttons with actions, films and page transitions
• Printer spreads, gatefolds and imposition for saddle stitching; each page as its own PDF
• PNG, JPEG and SVG per page; EPUB and HTML with embedded fonts where the font file allows it; package as a ZIP with images and fonts
• Output automation: workflows with presets, variables in the file name (_print, _web), batch output across several documents; one run creates a file per language version or condition, the PDF also with all languages as switchable layers

The same design in motion, for social media, screens and Google Ads.

• HTML5 ads for Google Ads: standard sizes, clickTag, a live checklist, a backup image and a ZIP that Google Ads accepts
• Timeline with keyframes: ins and outs, loops and your own keyframes for offset, size, rotation and opacity
• Export as video (MP4, WebM) or animated HTML
• WebGL surfaces with your own GLSL shader and Lottie animations; they keep running in the export
• 49 formats for print, social media, web and video, screen formats with exact pixel sizes
• Colours for modern screens: OKLCH and Display P3 in the web export, with hex as a fallback

The AI suggests, you compare and decide.

• Translate whole documents: as a language layer or a duplicate, free without a key or with Gemini, Anthropic, OpenAI or DeepL
• Shorten with a trial setting: see live whether the text fits, cut to any length you choose; undo each cut on its own
• Suggest text: a new headline or copy in three variants, fine-tuned by hand before you accept
• Alt texts for all images in one pass; nothing is applied until you confirm
• Remove backgrounds in the browser with a free model: the image never leaves your computer, it costs nothing, the original stays
• All helpers in the AI menu, with your own provider key; it stays in the browser

Bring your existing work: IDML, PDF, Word and Photoshop.

• IDML in and out: pages, parent pages, threaded frames, styles, spot colours (Pantone as Lab), groups with effects, tables with widths and cell strokes, footnotes
• IDML without silent loss: not a single word is lost, not even in links, cross-references and text variables; layers, crops, images in shapes and anchored objects come along, a report names anything that could not be carried over
• Open and edit PDFs: fills, curves, text and images become objects, identically set text gets styles with meaningful names, tables across two pages become one
• Place PDFs at original size, linked, as vectors or inserted as editable objects
• Word with style mapping: map Word styles to the document's styles, the mapping is remembered; Markdown and plain text with autoflow; text goes to Word with paragraph styles, emphasis, links and lists and comes back the same when read in and refreshed, shared Google documents can be linked as text
• Open Word files from the start page: headings become paragraph styles, its own entry point for anyone coming from Microsoft Publisher
• Photoshop layers recomputed: masks, blend modes, 16 bit, levels, curves, drop shadows; layered TIFF, place AI, clipping paths from PSD and TIFF become the shape of the image frame; CMYK stays CMYK
• Batch import: many IDML, PDF and package files into documents at once, errors reported per file
• Place many images at once, click by click or as a contact sheet with captions over as many pages as needed; files over 32 MB upload in parts
• Links at a glance: all images and PDFs with page and status, replace a file in every frame at once
• Images from other systems: browse, preview and place from network folders over WebDAV or HTTP and from Adobe Experience Manager
• Load styles from another document: swatches, paragraph, character, object, table and cell styles, each marked “new”, “differs” or “same”, in one step

Familiar tools and fewer clicks, with nothing to install.

• One layout, many formats: a format variant recalculates it, adaptation rules per object; the logo stays top right, the background fills, text stretches
• A Properties panel that follows your selection: what matters for the selected object first, rarer settings folded away below
• Tidy-up assistant: identical overrides become styles, duplicates merge, unused items go, with a preview and a single undo
• Pages with their own size, gatefolds, double gatefolds, roll and zigzag folds with a fold preview
• Name and hide pages: hidden pages are left out of the output; top binding, for calendars say
• Smart guides for equal spacing and sizes, a gap tool, guides as grids with gutters and to a tenth of a millimetre
• Outline view (⌘Y): every object as a fine outline; find and grab hidden frames
• Split window: two views of the same document, each with its own zoom
• Rotate spread: turn a spread by 90°, 180° or 270° for editing; output and document stay unchanged
• Layers as a tree: expand and collapse groups, drag and hide objects inside, set layers and objects to “don't print”
• Maths in every number field: 10+5, 210/3, 2cm, 12pt
• Faster placing: duplicate with offset, Alt-drag duplicates, align and distribute with fixed spacing
• A menu bar as on macOS, with Data, AI and What's New menus; the command search finds every menu item and understands trade terms
• Tooltips everywhere, with shortcuts; switch them on or off and set the delay
• Your own keyboard shortcuts: record one per command and tool, conflicts show at once; export and import as a file, they belong to the person, not the document
• Command sequences: record recurring steps and play them back on the selection, a single undo step, as a file or in the document for the team
• Five interface styles (Figma, Spectrum, Studio, Mac and Windows), each light and dark
• Interface in German, English, French and Spanish, switch without reloading
• Fast even at 500 pages: a keystroke takes about 33 ms to reach the screen, even in a 1000-page text flow it stays at 34 ms; the Enter key sends only the change (0.3 KB instead of 1.8 MB at 300 pages), large images zoom without stutter, thousands of objects can be dragged
• On the phone: a slim view without panels or tools; page through and zoom, read and write comments, tap and change text, approve
• Find objects: search and replace by fill, stroke, style, kind or layer, one object as a model selects all similar ones, on a swatch “Where used?” says which objects carry it
• Right-click a style: edit, redefine, duplicate or delete it, no detour through the panel
• Workspaces you can swap as a file, panels in tab groups, history with a jump to any step
• Folders in the document overview: your own filing with subfolders, drag documents in
• Extensions: your own menu commands and panels from a manifest
• Preferences just for you, Document Setup for everyone: page, grid, colour, typography, interactive
• The “Features in detail” example: 30 pages in 15 chapters, every feature as an object to click

You assign the roles and manage your own account.

• Clear rights: everyone sees their own documents, everything else goes through links with exactly the role you give, or through a team
• Sign-up with email confirmation, reset your own password
• Delete your own account, with an overview of what goes and a confirmation you cannot give by accident
• Hand documents over to someone else, even when deleting an account, instead of deleting them along with it
• Report ideas and bugs in the program: categorise, filter, thumbs up with a counter
• Licences and third-party works included, not just linked, with the full licence texts