Other Sites
Canon Creative Park:
http://canonprintplanet.com/index.shtml
HP Activity Center:
http://h10050.www1.hp.com/activitycenter/us/en/
However, you will probably find it a lot slicker, quicker, and easier to use one of the several third-party greeting card creation applications available. Here are nine greeting card creation tools for the Mac.
HappyHolidays! 2.8 Photo Card Creation Software
HappyHolidays! makes it easy to create personalized photo cards. Use your digital photos, add a personal message and you have the perfect photo card! Use HappyHolidays! to create your annual holiday card for family and friends. Create unique photo cards for any occasion: birth announcements, Mother's Day, Father's Day, graduation, birthdays, party invites, Valentines Day and they can be great thank you cards as well as get well cards. Be creative, have fun and make a HappyHolidays! photo card.
Save money using HappyHolidays! over ordering pre-designed photo cards from a photo center. You can print your HappyHolidays! photo card at any photo center that prints digital photos because HappyHolidays! allows you to save your photo card as a 4x6 jpeg photo file. Printing 4x6 prints is very inexpensive -- as low as $0.12 each with no minimum order. Pre-designed Holiday Cards can cost as much as $0.84 per card with a required minimum 50 copy order! You can save over $35 by printing your own HappyHoliday! designed 4x6 photo cards. In addition, you can create many variations of your holiday photo card -- personalize the photo or the message for each card!
You control the appearance and style of your photo card
With HappyHolidays! you are not limited to a set number of characters and lines for your personalized message, unlike most pre-designed photo cards that you order from photo centers. Stylize your message any way you want. HappyHolidays! works like a word processor allowing you to set text attributes (font, color, size, alignment) of your message. HappyHolidays! provides you more freedom than when you order pre-designed photo cards from photo centers. HappyHolidays! also offers image manipulation controls which allow you to crop and resize your image.
Personalize your message in different languages
With HappyHolidays! you are not limited to having your personalized text message in English only. You can write part or all of your text message in any language supported by Mac OS X.
New in version 2.8:
- Fixed Leopard iLife Media Browser drag and drop compatibility for easily browsing your iPhoto Library.
- New contextual menu for image areas to allow more convenient access to commands like 'Add Image...'.
- Four new card templates including two for Thanksgiving.
- Fixed various Leopard Help Viewer compatibility issues.
Requirements:
Mac OS X 10.4 or later.
$10.00 Shareware
For more information, visit:
http://www.24x7digital.com/happyholidays/
Requirements:
Mac OS X 10.4 or later.
$10.00 Shareware
For more information, visit:
http://www.24x7digital.com/happyholidays/
Sophie's Cards 5 Greeting Card Software
Sophie's Cards 5 is a powerful greeting card creation software application., incorporating an extensive database of photographs and greeting messages (including extensive libraries of 792 photographic images and 730 text greeting messages, many of them original), in eighteen categories (with some crossover), plus 20 informal fonts. Sophie's Cards also allows you to import your own photos or art images and compose your own text. Imported pictures should be about 8 x 10.5” and no more than 72 dpi.
However, you probably won't want to import photos at least, because one of Sophie's Cards' most impressive features is the incredible library of photographic images. They are uncredited, but the photographer or photographers are true artists, and the images are superb - more than a few of them arrestingly beautiful. The selection is eclectically varied in subject matter and mood, so you should have no problem finding just the right image for any occasion and recipient. The program's developers aren't kidding when they say you should never have to send the same card twice. The challenge is deciding among so many excellent alternatives.’
The beauty of a program like Sophie's Cards is that making your own greeting cards with a computer and color printer can save you money if you send a lot of cards, and perhaps more importantly, allows you to create personalized cards with just the right image and sentiments expressed.
Using Sophie's Cards is reasonably easy and intuitive. The basic steps are:
Select an Occasion (including holidays) and the program offers you a menu of appropriate images and verses. You can apply a particular color or style on just one or all words on a card or envelope. Text can be positioned with several options, superimposed over front cover photos, and on the inside faces and the back of the card in portrait or landscape format.
--OR--
Select a Sophie's Cards photo, and add your own text using My Words.
--OR--
You can import your own pictures to create a completely personalized card using My Words & Pictures.
The cards created by Sophie's Cards are very classy and professional-looking, complete with thumbnails and information about the front panel image on the back, along with attribution of the verse/text selections used, and a Sophie's Cards logo.
The program will print to standard 8 1/2 x 11 paper, but of course will work best with proper card stock paper such as available from Avery or Epson, for which size configuration options are provided in the menus. You can keep track of cards that you have sent with the Card History feature.
You can specify landscape or portrait oriented cards with full or small photos, and with or without cover text. There is also a custom envelope printing template with fields in which you can enter "to" and "from" addresses with your specified font, size, font color, and text alignment. You can also import addresses.
The built-in content library makes Sophie's Cards one of the biggest applications you're likely to have on your Mac. The online installer file download is 525 MB, which makes it impractical for bringing down on a dial up connection, which the developer explicitly does not recommend. The installer fits nicely on a CD, which is how my review copy was delivered. Demo CDs are available. Of course, if you have broadband, online downloads will be no problem.
System Requirements Mac:
Any Mac capable of running OS 10.3.9 or 10.4, including Intel Macs;
256 Mb of RAM;
Screen resolution of at least 1024 x 768 and millions of colors.
Approx. 1 Gigabyte of available hard disk space.
You must have Quicktime version 6, or higher, installed on your computer to view images in Sophie's Cards.
The font Helvetica must be in your computer's (i.e., root) font collection (i.e., not a user's font collection) for Sophie's Cards to function correctly. The program uses this font to render certain screens, but not to print cards. Helvetica is included in the MacOS, and was automatically installed on your machine when the MacOS was installed.
You must have Quicktime version 6, or higher, installed on your computer to view images in Sophie's Cards.
The downloadable version is a fully enabled demonstration copy that prints watermarks on the back of cards, and front and back of envelopes until it is registered. The program terminates after 14 days if it is not registered. Registration eliminates the watermarks. You can register at any time before or after the expiration to fully enable the Program.
Sophie's Cards 5.0 sells for US $39.95, a reduction from the previous price of $44.95.
For more information, visit:
http://sophiescards.com
For my full review of Sophie's Cards 5.4.4.4, visit here.
Easy Card 3.3.3 To Create & Email Or Print Personalized Greeting Cards
Easy Card is a greeting card creation tool. Create and send professional quality greeting cards for all occasions, right from your home computer. Send your greeting cards via regular surface mail or via e-mail. Use the built in envelope system to create envelopes for your cards, when sending via surface mail.
Making Greeting Cards is easy, with easy card. You don't have to be artistically minded to use easy card, as we offer the ability to download templates of pre-designed cards and pictures from our ever expanding online service. We also offer pre-written messages so you don't have to dream up messages for your cards. If you are using Mac OS X you can address the envelope utilizing the Apple Address Book Integration.
Within easy card you can chose use your digital photos and artwork to create truly original greetings cards. Use a variety of image and text effects (including anti-aliased drop shadows and outlines) to create that perfect professional greetings card. Once you have created your masterpiece you can even share it with the world, or you can share your artwork and digital photos.
Use all kinds of paper, you are no longer restricted to using the paper sizes that your printer offers. easy card has built into it Red River Paper Sizes so that you can use Red River Paper with easy card, and easy card has the provision for custom sized paper. Enabling you to print greetings cards at any size you wish. easy card features a patented envelope system that can use the same sized paper for creating a envelope for your card that requires no sticking (double fold cards only). If you are unsure which paper size and type to use with easy card we recommend that you purchase the "Card Shop Sample" pack from Red River Paper. This pack contains a selection of different sized card, along with different types of card, and of course they all work beautifully within easy card.
On Mac OS X, easy card integrates with the Apple Address Book to help you find mailing addresses, e-mail address and Birthdays, it integrates with Apple iPhoto in a way that no other card software does making it easy to use your own photos, it integrates with Apple Mail for sending e-mails. For both the Macintosh Version and the Windows version easy card integrates with the amazing Picture Patrol Officer from Brainchild software, allowing you to insert images directly from Picture Patrol downloads. On Windows easy card integrates with your "My Pictures" folder. easy card is also integrated into the web, allowing you to pick and chose which template or image you would like to use from our ever expanding collection.
Easy Card 3 Features
• Print Your Own Greetings Cards Create your own custom beautiful greetings cards and save money at the same time!
• Multiple object & multi-styled text support Now you can use many pictures, and or lots of text. Now you can have text in multiple styles!
• Send your greetings cards via e-mail Send your masterpieces over e-mail for those last minute situations.
• Browse our ever expanding template & image collection Direct within Easy Card you can have access to our collection of templates & images, just to make it simpler to create cards.
• Red River Paper support Print onto Red River Paper's high quality card, now including support for Red River Paper's post cards.
• Speech Caption & Thought Bubble Add funny captions to your photos using 3D Speech Captions or a thought bubble.
• Shapes Add stars, flowers and hearts to your cards, just the required spice.
• Prewritten messages Can't think what to put or need some inspiration, then use our prewritten messages in your cards.
Mac OS X advantages
• Apple Mail Support (Mac OS X Only) Mac OS X users can send their greetings cards from within Apple Mail.
• Send your greetings card to your cell phone (Mac OS X Only) Card your card to your bluetooth enabled cell phone and send it via MMS direct to someone's MMS capable cell phone.
• Address your envelopes without having to enter the address (Mac OS X Only) Easy Card works with the Apple Address Book to make it easier to enter addresses on your envelopes.
• Improved iPhoto Support (Mac OS X Only) Browse and choose from your iPhoto library with full support for albums
• iSight support (Mac OS X Only) Create your greetings card using photos taken direct within Easy Card, via Apple's iSight.
Download templates & images from Script Software.Now from your computer you have access to an ever growing library of templates & images. No need to go searching through CD's or DVD's again. A upload feature will be added which will allow us to expand the media library over time.
Use your digital photos, scanned images and artwork on greeting cards.
The easy card events system can notify you of upcoming events, you can add your own events to this system. On Mac OS X easy card can obtain peoples Birthdays if they have been entered.
Use pre-written messages or compose your own.
Take advantage of easy cards stunning text effects such as a 3D caption object, Photoshop quality drop shadow & outline, and engraved.
Print the cards & send them via surface mail using our patented envelope system.
Send your card through e-mail, they work in 90% of modern (not AOL) e-mail programs.
New in version 3.3.3:
• changes in documentation
• does not leave the log file on the desktop
New n verison 3.3:
• [Add] Can now send e-mails via regular e-mail clients
• [Add] New Help System
• [Bug] Fixed several small bugs including the long trial on first launch!
• [Mod] New Front Window
• [fr] Added Ability to set the vertical placement of text within a text area.
• [fr] Improved the Apple Address Book searching
System requirements:
Mac OS X 10.2.6 or later.
$30 Shareware
For more information, visit:
http://scriptsoftware.com/ecc/
For my full review of easy card creator, visit:
http://www.applelinks.com/pm/more.php?id=1857_0_1_12_M42
The Print Shop 2.0.5 Greeting Card Creation And Editing Tool
The Print Shop is a complete greeting card creation and editing tool. Import your own photographs directly into The Print Shop from Apple's iPhoto and then fix, edit and enhance them using The Print Shop's built-in Photo Workshop. Crop in shapes such as circles, hearts and stars. Adjust color, brightness, contrast, and sharpness. Fix flaws and get rid of red-eye and scratches. Apply custom effects such as pixelate, noise, emboss, antique, and more.
New in version 2.0.5:
• Enhanced iCal compatibility
• Improved networking and file saving
• Includes all previous The Print Shop updates
Now you can get the precision you need with rulers, grids and guidelines! It's all tied together in a handy Layout Palette that includes "snap to" functionality and the most common alignment tools.
Create a multipage project from 2 to 32 pages. Great for making annual reports, family newsletters, sales materials, menus and much more!
There are now more than twice as many Special Edges and Transparent Effects to turn your projects into masterpieces!
Thousands of photos and fine art images on a separate Art CD!
No more fussing with navigation: Just open iPhoto, select as many photos as you like, and drag them all at once into your project!
No more spoiled off-center label printing with the new Precision Print Alignment
"Nudge" feature which lets you get set it just right.
Now you can get the precision you need with rulers, grids and guidelines! It's all tied together in a handy Layout Palette that includes "snap to" functionality and the most common alignment tools.
Mac OS X 10.4 users can take advantage of Tiger's Spotlight search capabilities to search for documents made in The Print Shop by project type, text in text blocks and headlines, and even by Avery label
In addition to Avery you can now use CD Stomper, NEATO and Memorex CD and jewel case stock.
System requirements:
The Print Shop 2.0 - any version,
Mac OS X 10.2 or later.
System support
Intel
The Print Shop for Mac 2.0 sells for $59.95/$69.95
For more information, visit:
http://www.mackiev.com/print_shop.html
Greeting Card Factory 1.0.2 to Create Greeting Cards
Create beautiful, store-quality greeting cards for every occasion in minutes with Art Explosion Greeting Card Factory for Macintosh. Choose from millions of unique greeting card possibilities or create your own. With more than 3,000 exclusive greeting cards and customizable projects, 45,000+ beautiful graphics, 500+ color photographs and 300 fonts, you'll always find the best way to express yourself. Optimized to take advantage of Mac OS X’s superior graphical capabilities and ease of use, Greeting Card Factory for Macintosh is also fully compatible with Mac OS 9.
Art Explosion Greeting Card Factory goes far beyond some competing products with many unique possibilities. It also allows you to create dozens of other projects and crafts including announcements, invitations, photo cards, thank you notes, electronic greetings, envelopes, note cards, postcards, labels, and much more - all in one program.
With millions of unique card possibilities, you'll never be at a loss for words. Select from the very best store-quality greeting cards, personalize one of the existing styles, or create your very own. No greeting card software is more complete. Here's what you get:
3,000+ Exclusive Greeting Cards and Customizable Projects
Choose from greeting cards, invitations, announcements, and other projects in every style imaginable.
45,000+ Premium Graphics
Find the perfect image every time with over 45,000 premium-quality Art Explosion Graphics. Only Greeting Card Factory gives you the creative edge with Art Explosion graphics.
500+ Photographs
Over 500 24-bit high-quality color photographs allow you to add just the right picture to your project every time.
300+ Fonts
Get creative with over 300 font styles to choose from. Your card and text will work together to create a beautiful greeting card.
Sensational Text Effects
Apply a virtually unlimited number of special text effects to your projects. Select an effect from the style gallery, modify an existing effect or create your own.
Electronic Greetings
Create and send unique electronic greeting cards to friends and family.
Import Images from Any Source
Use other images from digital cameras, CD ROMs, or scanners.
Dozens of Additional Creative Projects
Create announcements, invitations, photo cards, thank you notes, electronic greetings, envelopes, note cards, postcards, labels, and more!
New in this version:
• Fixes problem sending of electronic greetings with Entourage.
• Fixes problem where two help menus were sometimes displayed in OS X 10.3.
• Fixes some text problems in project wizard text.
This update is only for the OS X version of Greeting Card Factory.
System requirements:
• Mac OS X (System 10.1 or later) or Mac OS 9 (System 9.1 or later)
• CD-ROM Drive
• Beautiful results with all popular printers - inkjet and laser - including Epson, HP, Canon, Lexmark and more.
Greeting Card Factory sells for $49.95
For more information, visit:
http://www.novadevelopment.com/products/productinfo.aspx?productcode=gcm
FontMarketplace.com Debuts New Holiday Card Font Packs
FontMarketplace.com is introducing specially-priced sets of fonts with matching Microsoft Word templates for Hanukkah Cards, Christmas Cards and other holiday projects.
Available exclusively from its fontmarketplace.com website, the Hanukkah Card Kit and the Christmas Card Kit each contain five selected holiday-themed fonts matched with five expertly-designed Microsoft Word greeting card templates.
"We developed each kit to appeal to home & office computer users who want to create and print their own cards, newsletters, party invitations, gift tags or other craft projects this holiday season" said Steve Kuhlman, Vice President of Ascender Corp. "Both the Hanukkah Card Kit and Christmas Card Kit lets users make their own personalized cards using pre-designed Microsoft Word templates formatted with fonts that best reflects their own personality."
The packages are specially priced at $9.99 with a single user license and are available for immediate download from the fontmarketplace.com website. The price represents a savings of almost $20 compared to buying all these fonts individually. Each kit is available with an automated installer for Microsoft Windows XP or Vista, or as a compressed .zip file for Mac OS or other systems.
The Ascender Christmas Card Kit contains a wonderful set of Certified TrueType fonts that are well-suited for Christmas and all year-round matched with five Christmas Card templates ready for customizing in Microsoft Word. The five fonts are: Artcraft, Centaur Swash, Colonna, French Script and Thor.
The Ascender Hanukkah Card Kit contains five distinctive fonts matched with a distinctive set of Hanukkah card Microsoft Word templates. The fonts in the package are Atrax, Caslon Titling, Colmcille Italic, Dorchester Script and Lydian.
FontMarketplace.com features affordably-priced, professional quality fonts packaged individually and in sets, organized by occasion, personality, project and type style. The website offers a wide variety of popular type styles from text and display to script fonts, and an assortment of multilingual fonts, all displayed in creative ways to showcase the fonts in use. The FontMarketplace.com website was designed to make it easy for first time font buyers and creative enthusiasts to browse, download and install fonts. All of the fonts are Certified TrueType fonts, developed and tested by the font experts at Ascender Corp.
Ascender also provides fonts for download to graphic designers through the http://www.AscenderFonts.com website and to creative enthusiasts through the http://www.FontMarketplace.com website.
For more information, visit:
http://www.ascendercorp.com
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DrawIt 3.1 Vector Drawing Application
Templates quickly create calendars, greeting cards and more.
DrawIt is an entirely new drawing-application in style of the iWork-applications.
DrawIt uses the concept of templates, which take a lot of work out of your hands and allow you to make beautiful drawings in a few seconds. There are a large number of templates online, and we'll constantly be adding more. All templates are, of course, free to download and free to use.
If you don't want to use a template, you can always start with a blank paper and create anything you wish. Use your own images, easily apply masks, add Vector-based shapes, text, brushes and more to create virtually anything.
Take a look at the available templates to get an idea about what is possible.
Shapes
Using the Bezier-tool, one can virtually create every possible shape. However, no matter how easy it is, a complicated shape will take some time to construct. Luckily, DrawIt come shipped with some predefined shapes. These shapes can be edited like any other Bezier-shape and they can be used as a mask. However, the beta has some simple shapes includend but if you think there's one missing, be sure to so that we can add it.
Masks
Often, just displaying the image isn't enough; some partx of the images have to be invisible, or the image should have a nice frame. With masks, you can: choose a predefined mask or make your own (Bezier or Brush), and you're done. The result will be beautiful.
Core Image
DrawIt has build more than forty image filters in DrawIt, including Sepia, Halftone, Motion Blur, Pinch Distortion, Color Invert and a lot more. Apply one or more of these filters with a single click, and surprise yourself and others.
A lot more...
We haven't mentioned the other tools and options as the brush, fill, stroke, shadow, gradients, alpha filters and more. The best way to find out is to download it and try it.
Beta
DrawIt is still a beta, and we love to hear from you with comments, suggestions and requests to make DrawIt even better.
There are a number of screencasts online to explain the basic functionality, be sure to check it out if something is not quite clear.
Before releasing the final 1.0 version, Mammoet Software has decided to ship a beta version of DrawIt for a reduced price. Anyone who bought a beta version will get a free update to version 1.0 once it is released.
New in version New in 3.1
- DrawIt 3.1 has full support for layer blending.
- Support for QuickLook in Leopard.
- Hundreds of small improvements and bug fixes.
- 3.1 is a free update.
System requirements:
Mac OS X 10.4 or higher
System support:
PPC or Intel
$39.00 :Shareware
For more information, visit:
http://www.mammoetsoftware.com/drawit/
Print Explosion Deluxe 3.0 Makes Greeting Cards
Print Explosion Deluxe is an easy, fast way to create one-of-a-kind custom greeting cards, signs, banners and more. It's easy to use, so you don't need to be a computer whiz. And with more than 8,800 ready-made professional designs for virtually every occasion under the sun, you don't need to be an artist either. Print Explosion Deluxe was designed exclusively with the Macintosh in mind. So you know it works like a Mac program should. And that puts Print Explosion Deluxe in a class of its own.
Print Explosion Deluxe's easy-to-use interface will guide you through the process from concept to finished product in a matter of just minutes! It is ideal for first-time publishers and professional designers alike because it contains rich graphics, layout features, and text effects not found in many other programs at ten times the cost.
Optimized for both PowerPC and Intel-based Macs, Print Explosion Deluxe 3.0 features an enhanced user interface, thousands of new projects and complete integration with iTunes and iPhoto. You can even use the new mail merge feature to automatically personalize and send greeting cards to people in your Mac OS X Address Book.
Create one-of-a-kind custom greeting cards, signs, banners and more. With more than 8,800 ready-made professional designs for virtually every occasion under the sun, you don't need to be an artist either. Print Explosion Deluxe was designed exclusively with the Macintosh in mind. So you know it works like a Mac program should. And that puts Print Explosion Deluxe in a class of its own. Print Explosion Deluxe's easy-to-use interface will guide you through the process from concept to finished product in a matter of just minutes! It is ideal for first-time publishers and professional designers alike because it contains rich graphics, layout features, and text effects not found in many other programs at ten times the cost.
Print Explosion will pay for itself in no time. You’ll save a bundle on greeting cards, labels, and other projects, not to mention the hours spent trying to find that perfect card.
• 3 Easy Steps
• 13,000+ Readymade Designs
• 100,000+ Premium-Quality Graphics
• 900+ Fonts
• 30 Day Money Back Guarantee
• System Requirements
• iLife® Support
• Spectacular Scrapbooks
• Thousands of New Greeting Cards
• Brand New Look
• Universal Binary
• 8,500 Quotations
• 750-Page Printed Catalog
• More than 3,000 Greeting Card Designs – Now with Electronic Greetings!
• Templates for Avery, PaperDirect, and Idea Art Paper Products
• Hundreds of Dazzling Text Effect Combinations
• Dozens of Special Effects for Graphics
• Works with All Macintosh-Compatible Printers
New Features:
• Personalize Cards and Flyers with Mail Merge
• Create real-time previews and save JPEGs from your project completely controlling the quality versus compression
• Built in Quotation Library where you can search for any word or by Author.
• Increased document handling speed making the program faster and easier to use
• Redesigned user interface to improve your work flow. Now you can customize the text in a project while in the application assistant!
• Publish many of your projects to HTML
• Send Email Greetings to your friends using your email client
• Content has been re-organized to allow easier and much faster browsing with the new project preview pane.
Variety:
• Easy-to-use Software to Create Greeting Cards, Signs, Banners and More
• Matching Letterheads, Envelopes and Business Cards
• Create Your Own Custom T-shirts and Mousepads!
• Includes CD Labeling
• Hundreds of Invitations, and Electronic Greetings.
• Hundreds of Label Designs, All Compatible with Avery Products
• Unique Crafts and Party Sets
• Plus Signs, Posters, Banners, Certificates, Postcards, Invitations, Announcements, Flyers, Cover Sheets and More!
Fast, Easy and Convenient:
• Import Virtually Any Graphics File, Including EPS, PICT, TIFF, JPEG and GIF
• Scan in Family Photos and Other Artwork Using Print Explosion's TWAIN-Compliant Scanning Technology
• Print Your Own Custom Font Catalog
• Print Your Own Graphics Catalog
Print Explosion was designed exclusively with the Macintosh in mind:
• Full Support for EPS Graphics - Even on Non-PostScript Inkjet Printers
• Apple Navigation Services Makes Opening and Saving Projects a Snap
• Drag and Drop Graphics from Other Applications into Print Explosion Documents
• Complete Help System, Including AppleGuide, AppleHelp and Balloon Help
System requirements:
• Mac OS X 10.2 or Later
• PowerPC G3 (or faster) or Intel Core processor
• 512 MB of RAM
• DVD or CD-ROM Drive
System support:
PPC/Intel
Print Explosion Deluxe sells for $49.95
For more information, visit:
http://www.novadevelopment.com/products/productinfo.aspx?productcode=pdm
Winter Holiday Templates Available for Portraits & Prints 2.2.1 from Econ Technologies
Portraits & Prints from Econ Technologies is an interesting little application for basic editing, correcting, and particularly printing digital images, especially targeted at users who want an easy-to-use, easy-to-learn tool that doesn't overwhelm them with overkill and featuritis. Portraits & Prints allows you to enhance, export and print your digital photographs yielding high quality photos rivaling those from a film lab. In addition to all that the Portraits & Prints Standard Edition has to offer, Portraits & Prints Pro Edition allows you to create, edit, and save custom templates. You can design your own templates so that you may have any printing layout you would like.
A Photoshop challenger Portraits & Prints is not; nor does it purport to be. Neither is it really an alternative to Apple's iPhoto. There is some feature crossover with both of these much more expensive programs, but Portraits & Prints is really complimentary to rather than competitive with them.
Portraits & Prints allows you to enhance each photo by:
- sharpening image quality
- rotating
- cropping
- reducing red eye
- using captions
- adding masks
- boosting saturation
- adjusting brightness
- adjusting contrast
Make this holiday season a little less hectic using your Mac to bring your digital photos to life. Choose from a wide variety of Winter Holiday themes featuring 4X6, 4X5, and even photo mask cards. Just add these holiday templates to Portraits & Prints and they are ready to go. Change text by just clicking on the text button and typing in your own custom message.
Portraits & Prints, the personal photo studio for Mac OS X, lets you easily enhance and print photos from templates. Portraits & Prints Template Maker creates custom templates for use in Portraits & Prints. Download the demos along with several free templates to give them a try. Go to http://www.econtechnologies.com for all the information .
Portraits & Prints is a complete Mac OS X solution for modifying and printing digital images. Choose from the variety of templates that comes with Portraits & Prints or create your own using Template Maker. Even customize the holiday templates and give them your own personal touch.
Portraits & Prints can even be integrated with iPhoto. Try out the demos, check out the holiday templates and see how easy it can be to turn your Mac into a photo studio.
A template is a pre-formatted basic design layout used in a Portraits & Prints catalog. Templates define how photos in your catalog will appear after they are printed. They allow you to print photos at various sizes and arrangements.
Templates can also place text, geometric shapes and graphics on or around your photos. You can add that personal touch for greeting cards, postcards, or anything your imagination can create.
There are two versions of Portraits & Prints: Standard and Pro. The same download contains both versions.
The Standard Edition ($30.00) gives you access to every feature of Portraits & Prints, including the ability to download unlimited free templates, with one restriction: you can not edit or create custom templates.
The Pro version includes all the features of the Standard Edition plus the ability to create and edit templates. All the tools you need to create any template you can imagine or edit any of the free templates included with the program or available from the Template Manager.
In addition to the templates that come with Portraits & Prints, you can download hundreds of free templates directly using the Template Manager. Click "Check for updates" and you can preview over 200 templates. When you find a template you want, just click “Install” to automatically add it to the program. With the Template Manager you can organize, create, preview and download Portraits & Prints templates - it’s like iTunes for templates.
2.2.0 - Current Release
Features:
Universal Binary. Runs native on Intel based Macs.
The Template Manager now designates the 'active' template in the main catalog window with a check mark.
The Template Selector Sheet now designates the currently active template with a check mark.
The Template Selector Sheet now responds to a double-click by accepting the selected template.
Implemented a contextual menu that is invoked by right-clicking on a placed photo in the Layout view.
Implemented a feature whereby crop constraints & presets applied to a photo are stored with that photo in the catalog.
If the user moves the Crop info panel, it will re-open where the user last placed it.
Added a key equivalent for the "Preferences" dialog.
Added a key equivalent for the "Template Manager" floating panel.
Added the GyazMail mail bridge.
Re-implemented object handles to be drawn using bezier paths.
Object handles are now always drawn at the same size, regardless of the current zoom level.
Implemented an implied grid of 72 dpi whenever the user has NOT specified "snap to grid".
When objects are copied to the pasteboard, a PDF representation is generated and added to the pasteboard.
You can now initiate a drag operation by holding the OPTION key down prior to clicking & dragging selected objects.
Brand new online help.
Tweaked the code that calculates masks for Photo Cell objects to inset the masks by 1%.
Bug Fixes:
Fixed a problem where certain types of Finder/Spotlight comments could not be retrieved and/or stored.
Fixed a bug where invoking a crop constrain could, result in a crop rectangle that violates the constrain.
Fixed a bug where balloon captions could render in a slightly "shifted" position for the non-autocrop photo scaling modes.
Fixed a bug where some grouped objects didn't handle inversions correctly.
Fixed a bug where the current zoom level was being applied to the focus ring drawn around the the template view when receiving a drag.
Fixed a bug where dragging an image file into a zoomed template view would result in the incorrect placement of the image.
Fixed a problem where the vertical stagger of multiple imported images would progress upwards rather than downwards.
Fixed a problem where the zoom selection rectangle's stroke was affected by the current zoom level.
Fixed a bug which would cause a crash when retrieving/setting Finder/Spotlight comments for photos that don't locally exist, e.g. URL referenced photos.
System requirements Portraits & Prints:
Portraits & Prints is exclusively for Mac OS 10.3 or later, and requires a minimum 400 MHz G3, and a color printer. All Econ Technology applications are written in Cocoa and will only run on Mac OS X.
As a happy note of reassurance for those of us still anticipating use of Power PC Macs for several years yet, Econ Technologies states that it has no immediate plans for dropping support of PowerPC based Macs. "Now that the initial engineering is behind us, maintaining Portraits & Prints as a Universal Binary will be relatively easy. In fact, maintaining compatibility with older versions of Mac OS X is far more difficult than maintaining a Universal Binary. So, as long as the minimum OS version that Portraits & Prints requires (currently 10.3) runs on a PowerPC, Portraits & Prints will continue to be compatible with your computer."
Portraits & Prints recognizes all digital image file formats supported by QuickTime, including PICT, JPEG, GIF, TIFF, PDF and PSD files, just to name a few.
Portraits & Prints works with any printer supported by Mac OS X.
Portraits & Prints is $30.00 demoware (P&P Pro - $50.00).
Portraits & Prints 2.0 Pro Edition includes all the features of the Standard Edition plus the ability to create and edit templates for any paper size, add any size photo frames, add any number of photo frames, and automatically add shadows or masks to your photo frames. In addition to adding photos, you can also draw graphics, import images, and add text to any part of the template. You can have any image file information and EXIF data automatically added to your templates, rotate and place your photos, text, and graphics anywhere you want, and layer them on top of other objects. Portraits & Prints 2.0 Pro is $50 demoware.
For more information, visit:
http://www.econtechnologies.com/
For my full review of Portraits & Prints, click here.
Charles W. Moore
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