The Brochure Maker is 100% client-side. Each element is a plain typed object (text, a shape or an image reference) held in the page, and a pure engine draws them onto an in-browser HTML5 <canvas>. When you upload a photo it is read straight into an in-memory Image via an object URL and drawn on-device — it never leaves your computer and is never sent anywhere. Each side keeps its own background photo. Export renders the same scene to a canvas at full print resolution and saves it with canvas.toBlob, and the 2-page PDF is assembled locally with pdf-lib from your own rendered pages, so the file is produced on your device too. The only optional network use is loading a display font you pick from Google Fonts, and consent-gated ads; system fonts and everything else work offline once the page is cached. Close the tab and the design is gone unless you exported it.

A standard tri-fold is a letter fold: the right panel folds in first and the left panel folds over it. Laid flat, the OUTSIDE spread reads (left to right) the inside-flap (the panel that tucks in), the back cover, then the front cover on the far right; the INSIDE is a three-panel content spread. Because the tuck-in panel sits inside the fold, it must be roughly 1/16 in (2 mm) narrower than the other two so the brochure closes cleanly — on US Letter the panels are about 3.625, 3.688 and 3.688 inches, and on A4 about 97, 100 and 100 mm. The tool sizes the panels this way automatically, shows the fold lines and panel labels, and puts the narrower tuck panel on the left of the outside spread and the right of the inside spread (they are the same physical panel, mirrored when the sheet flips).

Unlike fill-in-the-blank makers, the Brochure Maker treats every element as an independent layer. Add heading, body and contact text (each with its own font, size, weight, colour, alignment, line height and letter spacing), plus rectangles, ellipses, lines and your own uploaded images, and colour a single panel by adding a rectangle sized to it. Select a layer to move it, grab any of the eight handles to resize (corner handles keep a photo’s aspect ratio, Shift locks the ratio on any layer), use the top grip to rotate (Shift snaps to 15°), and change stacking order, opacity, duplicate or delete it. A segmented control switches between the Outside side (cover + back) and the Inside side (three panels), each with its own background. Export a high-resolution PNG (or JPEG, full or half size) for the current side, copy it to the clipboard, or build a print-ready 2-page PDF of both sides — the same render routine draws the preview and the export, so what you see is what you download.

The Brochure Maker exports raster PNG or JPEG (and PNG pages inside the PDF) in the screen’s RGB colour space. Commercial printers convert to CMYK ink, which has a smaller gamut, so bright, saturated colours may look slightly duller or shift in print — request a printed proof for colour-critical jobs and design a touch more conservatively. The sheet presets are the true trim sizes at 300 DPI, so for professional printing you should add the standard 3 mm / 0.125 in bleed yourself (the guides draw the bleed and safe-margin lines) and keep important text inside the safe area, away from the fold lines. The fold lines and panel labels are editing guides that are only baked into your export if you tick the “print fold lines onto the export” option, so the default download is clean artwork a print shop can trim and fold.