Description:
Sometimes it's hard to find the right words to comfort, commend, or congratulate the people you care about. Art Explosion's Greeting Card Factory Deluxe puts the words in your mouth, whether your friends and family are celebrating birthdays, bar mitzvahs, or baby announcements. And for those of you who have a knack for turning a catchy phrase, you can edit the cards, announcements, postcards, labels, and gift tags to your heart's content. You can even create your own designs with the blank templates and photo-editing features. Installing Greeting Card Deluxe is as easy as inserting the disk into your CD-ROM drive and waiting 10 minutes for the program to install. Along with the initial disk, you also get a CD-ROM containing graphics, photographs, and fonts to add more choices to your greeting-card repertoire. Once everything has been installed, you can get started on any of the many projects available. With an easy-to-use interface and a host of ready-to-use templates, this program is intuitive enough for kids who have some computer experience. Greeting Card Factory allows you to complete 12 projects including greeting cards, photo cards, announcements, invitations, envelopes, labels, and various crafts. Some of the templates are a bit clichéd (i.e., "I'll love you for any reason. I'll love you for all the time. I'll love you for your money even if you didn't have a dime."). However, you always have the option to change the text and keep the graphics. The software also comes with a searchable sentiment database for everything from birthdays to Boss's Day. While Greeting Card Factory is not a sophisticated photo- and image-editing application like Photoshop, you can take advantage of the included basic editing tools. Trimming graphics, adding shapes, applying gradients and textures, and importing photos are some of the options available to ambitious users. The photo editor lets you adjust colors, fix flaws such as dust and scratches or red-eyes, crop images, and add special effects to your pictures. If you're a serious designer or photographer, Greeting Card Deluxe will probably not meet your expectations. However, if you are looking to save money on store-bought greeting cards, or you have some projects you'd like to complete with your family, Greeting Card Deluxe is an enjoyable and easy-to-use application. Gisele Toueg
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