For those who enjoy expressing themselves with greeting cards, this 4-CD-ROM set will delight. While standard family print programs often include greeting cards in their home publishing offerings, most contain some rather generic, uninspired designs and sentiments. With high-quality Hallmark-brand cards for almost every occasion conceivable, Hallmark Card Studio 2 Deluxe might just make card shopping a thing of the past.
This program offers a vast variety of styles, designs, and sentiments, all of which can be used "as is", or mixed and matched to create unique customized cards. A huge selection of pre-made cards is available for all kinds of occasions – you’ll find birthday, holiday, or simply "any day" cards. Designs range from cute to traditional to contemporary. Besides greeting cards, users can also create and personalize envelopes, stickers, labels, invitations, postcards, announcements, calendars, and stationery with this software package.
People looking to quickly create a greeting card need only browse the card selections, find a card that suits their needs, adjust the text, and print or email the card. When an occasion comes up that requires extra special effort, this program’s Art Studio allows users to mix and match designs, clip art, and photos, as well as create original text and artwork from scratch. Imported graphics and photos can easily be added to card creations, and users can change the font (including 20+ exclusive Hallmark fonts), size, and color of their text. Photo Greetings cards are specifically designed with adding photos in mind. Use a photo you already have on your hard drive or import one directly from your digital camera or scanner. Once imported, a photo can be resized, moved, cropped, and rotated, then inserted into the photo card templates. The program Snap Shot Express is included in this package, which allows users to correct and enhance their photos and covers most basic photo editing needs, including getting rid of red eye, adding new backgrounds to photos, and adjusting brightness and color.
Users will appreciate the huge selection of professionally-written text that can be mixed and matched as well as tweaked to suit their needs. Text messages can be as sweet, funny, simple or sentimental as they please -- or they can be totally unique.
The program’s Event Planner leaves no excuse for forgetting important dates. It’s an electronic calendar and address book that helps users keep track of significant dates and events. This planner can be tied in with the program’s calendars and label-making options, making it easy to produce personalized products. Reminders can be activated that not only help users remember dates, but also allow for enough time to create personalized cards and items for all the occasions and milestones in their lives.
This package contains templates for printing with Hallmark Papers such as cards, newsletters, labels, postcards, and invitations. Included is a free package of Hallmark Deluxe Card Stock and Envelopes to get you started.
You can email cards you’ve created in Hallmark Card Studio or use the program to send e-cards complete with animation and music.
Though many cards are suitable for people of all ages, and some are specifically designed for kids, there are a number of cards that were designed with adults in mind. As such, Sierra has thoughtfully added a Kid Lock feature that allows parents to control what their children see in the program.
A straightforward tutorial is available for learning the basics of working with the program. Hints and help topics are also readily available.
The benefits of this program are plenty – users can browse through cards in the comfort of their own home instead of at the card shop, and creative sorts can use their own imaginations and craft unique cards with an extra special personal touch. They can celebrate, encourage, condole, and announce to their heart’s content – everything is here to make expressing yourself through cards easy and fun. The included clip art images, while adequate, are not as high-quality as the designs in the pre-made cards, but most people will find the program's card offerings quite sufficient. Bear in mind that every card created, even those that were made from scratch, are defaulted to bear the Hallmark Card Studio logo. The program also contains a teaser category with some sneak previews of other card packages, such as Shoebox Greetings, that can be purchased at prices ranging from $15.95 to $16.95 per set.
The printed products are gorgeous, and a color printer is an important prerequisite, but do factor in the cost of printer cartridges and specialty papers that are necessary for using this program to its fullest when determining the value of this program to your family.
