Community

Built in the open.
Together.

rustybara is a passion project born from real prepress frustration. Join us on Discord to share workflows, report bugs, and shape what comes next. Support development on Patreon to keep the lights on.

Real-time chat

Discord

Server live

The primary home for rustybara discussion. Get help with setup, share prepress workflows, report bugs early, and chat with the developer directly. Channels for general, prepress, releases, and off-topic.

# general
# prepress
# releases
# bugs
# showcase
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Support development

Patreon

Coming soon

rustybara is free, open-source, and always will be. Patreon support goes directly toward keeping the project alive — server costs, tooling, and development time. Patrons get early access to new features and a say in the roadmap.

$4 / mo Supporter — early release notes
$12 / mo Contributor — roadmap voting
$30 / mo Patron — direct feature input
Launching soon →
Open source
rustybara is on GitHub

Browse the source, file issues, and send pull requests. All work happens in public. The repo is the single source of truth.

View on GitHub
Roadmap

Where rustybara is headed

Built in the open, shipped in steps. Below is what's already in rustybara and what's planned next — ordered roughly by when we expect to tackle it. A filled dot means it's shipped today.

Shipped Available in rustybara today
  • Trim, resize & add trim box Remove content outside the TrimBox, add bleed, and set trim geometry.
    Shipped
  • Split, stitch & extract pages Divide spreads, recombine panels, and pull arbitrary page ranges.
    Shipped
  • Color remap & RGB → CMYK conversion Recolor content streams and convert vector + image color spaces.
    Shipped
  • Flatten & detect spot colors Flatten spot inks to process and surface the spot colors a file uses.
    Shipped
  • ICC color management 22 bundled profiles with rendering-intent control.
    Shipped
  • Outline text Vectorize embedded fonts to path outlines.
    Shipped
  • rbv prepress viewer GPU-accelerated viewer with wireframe mode, plate separation, color diagnostics, and tiled/LOD rendering.
    Shipped
  • Customizable box overlays Per-box color, thickness, and dash styling for trim / bleed / crop overlays.
    Shipped
  • XMP provenance metadata Embedded, readable history of every operation applied to a file.
    Shipped
  • rbara-gui desktop app Native prepress app for Windows, macOS, and Linux with bundled installers and automated releases.
    Shipped
Phase 1 · Near-term Quick wins, next up
  • JPEG quality config Choose export JPEG compression quality instead of a fixed default.
    Planned
  • Rotate PDF Rotate pages 90° / 180° / 270° for correct orientation.
    Planned
  • Redefine media box Override a page's MediaBox to re-set the working canvas.
    Planned
  • Fix: rbv dock icon on macOS Clear the lingering dock icon after an rbv window is closed.
    Fix
Phase 2 · Distribution & reach Getting rustybara into more hands
  • Code signing — macOS & Windows Signed, notarized installers so the apps open without security warnings.
    Planned
  • npm package for rustybara-wasm Publish the WebAssembly build as an npm package for browser and Node use.
    Planned
  • Video tutorials Workflow walkthroughs and guides hosted on the site.
    Planned
Phase 3 · Prepress depth More day-to-day production tools
  • Add trim marks Draw printer's crop and registration marks for press-ready output.
    Planned
  • Compress / optimize file size Reduce output size via structural cleanup and image recompression.
    Planned
  • Undo action Step back from an applied operation.
    Planned
  • Clipping-mask remover / override Detect and strip or override clipping paths in page content.
    Planned
  • System / network print Send a proof straight to a network printer from rustybara — fast proofs without switching to a separate print app.
    Planned
Phase 4 · Foundations Bigger lifts that unlock the rest
  • Lazy / large-file parsing Stream very large PDFs instead of loading them whole — lifting the current file-size limit.
    Planned
  • PDF/X writing Export press-standard PDF/X-1a / X-4 with embedded output intent.
    Planned
  • Preflight reporting & validation Automated checks for color, boxes, fonts, and resolution with a readable report.
    Planned
Phase 5 · Horizon Large initiatives, longer-term
  • Automation & scripting Record/replay plus a node-based pipeline editor with .jsx scripting, folder writes, and per-step output routing.
    Exploring
  • Print layout & imposer Impose pages into signatures and n-up layouts — likely a dedicated app or add-on.
    Exploring
  • Drawing, copy/paste & curve creation Interactive vector editing in the viewer.
    Exploring
  • RIP software Raster image processing for output devices — a long-term, separate initiative.
    Exploring
  • 3D fold viewer & web proof Preview a dieline folded into its finished 3D product — folders, cartons, brochures — and share an interactive proof online for client sign-off.
    Exploring