HOLD ONTO YOUR CAPS LOCK IT'S TIME TO PRINT WITH POWER!
A Review of Print Artist 4.0
by Ron Enderland
Who needs a program like Print Artist 4.0? Well, not everyone. But the fact is that a large percentage of computer users, from business people to those who like making their own greeting cards, have a need for an easy-to-use graphics presentation program. And, the fact further is, this particular offering should prove to be just what the doctor ordered for most of us.
Print Artist, it seems, has been around forever. It's one of those products that just seems to spawn camaraderie among its users, sort of like GeoWorks or WordPerfect. Like the aforementioned programs, there are forums on Prodigy and AOL for Print Artist users. In fact, there is a full-blown fan club, "PALs" (Print Artist Lovers).
You can learn a lot about a product's reputation by browsing those forums. Having spent quite a bit of time perusing AOL's Print Artist area, I learned that it is well loved, indeed.
Justifiably so, I might add. PA 4.0 is like a dear relative. That relative
may have a few quirks, but you overlook, or even learn to love, the
imperfections.
What the program excels at is making anyone into a graphics manipulating and designing genius.
The CD contains some 10,000 graphic images, most of which are already integrated into 1500 ready-designed layouts. There are 600 photos which you can also use. You can install up to 300 fonts, as well. I went ahead and installed them all into my Pentium 90 with 20 megs of RAM, and I didn't notice any system slowdown. Finally, there are 1000 phrases and quotes that you can use to set just the right tone in your creations.
When you first fire it up, you are greeted with a new document screen.
Document types are organized into eight different major categories, from
Labels to Crafts. It's pretty simple to figure out which category contains
what you want to create. Business cards, for instance, are in "Stationery,"
not "Cards," which makes sense to me.
Selecting a new document takes you to a screen where you're prompted to further pare down your choice, being shown a listing of specific templates in each category. When you finally select a template, you are taken to the editing screen.
Let's use the "Moon" label as an example. The label comes up with "Your name, Street address, City, State, Zip code" in artistic text. You simply double-click on each item to insert your own information, and voila! You have a slick looking label that looks as if you slaved for hours to make it.
You can save your creations for easy retrieval, if you like.
The template process works equally well on all other document types, too. It appears that virtually any object that you would want to create is represented with excellent preloaded designs. You can produce an entire town of paper buildings, or make flash cards, or generate bookmarks, or create certificates, or . . .sorry, I just ran out of synonyms.
You are also free to create your own documents from scratch. And, if the special graphic that you need is missing, you can go to "Directory setup" and specify any directory on your hard disk as the place for PA 4.0 to search for bitmaps, for example. It will then list them in its options menu and even give you the same previews that it gives its own internal graphics.
It will, of course, access the graphics of its main competitor, too. Print
Shop Deluxe as well as New Print Shop graphics import in quickly and easily.
Remember, though, there are a few quirks present.
The printing process is a little strange. If you're printing something that is of an unusual size or layout (read: something other than what PA 4.0 defaults to), then you're in for a major challenge in fine tuning your settings. I had a devil of a time getting it to print my address properly on envelopes that I custom designed. I finally gave up and did it through a word processor program.
The printer layout control panel is simply goofy. However, if you work with it enough, you'll get the hang of most customizing procedures.
This 16-bit program is crying out for a 32-bit rewrite. My guess is that it is probably in the works. This would no doubt clear up the printing interface and give it the more familiar look that Win 95ers and NTers have grown used to.
The entire program is designed for the newbie. It has a very "let me hold your hand" look about it. You are quite limited on what customizations you can make in the interface. So, you learn to live with (and even like, eventually) PA 4.0's simple appearance.
Don't get me wrong, though. You can perform some amazing graphics
manipulations with this baby. You can stretch, spin, reverse, flip . . .just
about any shape change or effect that you want to make is easily possible.
The program also supports TWAIN compliant scanners. So, if you don't see the
graphic you want in the thousands of images (which are also printed in the
manual which comes with the program), then you can make your own!
To sum up, if you're a professional illustrator, you may find the interface a bit elementary. But if you're the average computer user, you'll be amazed at the sophisticated graphical presentations that you can create with Print Artist 4.0.
Multimedia Cafe Scorecard
| Product: |
Print Artist 4.0 |
| Company: |
Sierra On-Line Inc.
|
| Cost: |
$59.95 |
System Requirements:
Windows 3.1 or higher
486SX/33 MHz or faster processor
Double-speed or faster CD-ROM drive
8 MB RAM
32 MB hard disk space
SVGA video
Mouse
Printer
Breakdown:
Entertainment Value 4
Educational Value NA
Concept 5
Depth 5
Interface 3
Overall Score:
Copyright © 1997 InfoMedia, Inc. All rights reserved worldwide.