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In the black and yellow box, weighing in at two CD-ROMS, 26,000+ Graphics and Photos, 1,125 Quickstart Layouts, 2,000 Quotes and Verses and 180+ Fonts is The
Print Shop. Publishing Suite 5.0 from Broderbund.. In the blue and purple box, weighing in at 4 CD-ROMS, 39,000 Graphics and Photos, 2,500 Layouts, over 1,000 Quotes and Verses and 300 Fonts is Print Artist. 4.0
Platinum from Sierra Online..Although I use Photoshop., CorelDRAW!. and other professional programs, when I want to get something done that is fast and simple, sometimes the easiest and best way is to turn to one of
the less expensive, but certainly power packed programs like Print Shop and Print Artist. First lets establish what these two programs have in common. You can create greeting cards, calendars, banners, certificates,
stationary, labels and signs with either program. You can also send electronic greeting cards with both and both have web sites so you can download more graphics. The differences lie in what you're most interested in
doing. The Publishing Suite comes with an additional program called Press Writer which makes it easy to create newsletters, brochures, risumi's and other publications. Print Artist 4.0, however, is more geared towards
the craft end with over 30 crafts you can make and it comes packaged with the full version of Ulead Photo Express. for making color and other corrections to photographs and a special edition of Kai's Power Goo. that
lets you have fun with photographs. I found both programs to be very easy to use without reading the instructions. Both programs contain my pet peeve, however, of using a proprietary graphics format which means you
can use the graphics in other programs, but it's a hassle. (NOTE: If you plan on importing graphics from other programs be aware that Print Artist will accept fewer formats than Print Shop and the way it handles
graphics keeps it from using certain .wmf files.) If I were to give the programs a letter grade for the content of their clipart and photography collections I would give Print Shop a B+ and Print Artist a B-. While
Print Artist contains some graphics and especially photographs that are better than Print Shop, the overall selection in Print Shop that the average person will use is better. I also don't understand why the Print
Artist graphics catalog is all black and white. It makes it a lot tougher to check out the colors in a graphic or photograph and how it will match in a project. Another complaint about both products comes in their
fonts. I like the fonts from Print Shop better because I think the selection is better in both quality and selection, but both companies use fonts that are copies of the real ones from Adobe., Bitstream. and other font
companies. That may be fine for most people, but I hate having 3 fonts that are nearly the same with different names just because it costs extra money to license the real fonts rather than look-a-likes. For overall
features, I think Press Writer. falls short of the mark and it would be better to use something like Microsoft Publisher. instead and stick with the things Print Shop is known for super easy cards, signs, etc. On the
Print Artist side, while most programs allow text to be either be large headline text with special effects or regular paragraph style like a word processor, all text is the variable headline style. I do think Print
Artist scores well with Photo Express and Power Goo. Both programs work very well and are nice additions to the program. Another extra with Print Artist is the update feature. While both let you log onto the Web and
download new graphics, Print Artist will check to see if the software has any updates and then will download as well. |
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