Straight from CES 2010, we have Printshop 2.0 Professional; its software that helps you with any printing project big or small and home or business use. Broderbund redesigned it from the previous version with the intent of making it more user friendly by giving it more options and a Wizard to help you bump up the quality of your work. I've never come across Printshop so I was new to the whole craft and printing experience. Let's see how I fair against the Printshop PRO.
The Printshop PRO has many templates these are just a few things you can design and print with this software: Business Cards, Brochures, Greeting Cards, Invitations, Photo Projects, Mailing Labels, Newsletters, CD/DVD Labels, Posters & Flyers, Stationery Sets, Resumes Calendars, Stickers & Labels, Photo Albums, Postcards.
The Printshop 2.0 has an almost scary amount of designs and options. Nice thing is it's not complicated to navigate through their catalog. When I tell you these guys thought of everything, they did! There is a template for everything I could come up with, from Certificates to random party banners - even an additional application for greeting cards called Smilebox. There is a variety of simple and complex image tools that allow you to Image tag, vector Images, and do shading/gradients, among other things. They have designed this program so a business can use its large catalog but easy enough that someone who isn't computer friendly can navigate.
Once you open up the launcher, it gives a promotion on the bottom and then front and center you have list of options from:
Create from Scratch or Project Wizard - open that and you have hundreds of projects that you can customize to your liking words, colors, fonts, etc. I would spend 3-pages in just exploring all the possibilities.
Create from Ready-Made Template - opens up a ready to print template for almost any occasion from banners, calendars, CD/DVD covers to crafts. You can add images to your liking and even shapes and colors.
Open my Projects - will let you easily bring up a list of current projects you have saved.
Launch Ideas.Printshop.com - sends you to an online-tutorial for Printshop which is very easy to navigate and has many video tutorials.
Launch Smilebox - is an application that comes partnered with Printshop. It allows you to add pictures, customize, and create your own Greeting cards. They already have close to 1000, if not more ready to use cards from a variety of different card makers.
Each one of these categories has a tool banner that can bring you home, share, print, and quite a few other things.
The Bang:
The Printshop 2.0 has a wizard to help you navigate through all the design, templates, and the how to's on personalizing your project. The design tools are very simple to use and come in a variety of levels. If there is a design you can't find, you can import a picture or make your own personal work. If you have no clue what you're doing (me) they have online video tutorials to show you the basics of printing and some designing tricks. This is information you can apply to other programs too.
The Slack:
The SmileyBox program snuck itself in there, I thought I caught a virus for a second and was trying to figure out where it came from. I think it was me not paying attention. The software does require quite a bit of Ram/Processor speed. It still worked but it does hang up for a few seconds here and there. Just a suggestion, add a Search Bar!
The new Print Shop 2.0 makes it so easy to design, print and share designer-quality works, yourself! I made a few CD labels minutes after I installed it and I didn't have to search hard through the templates; everything was readily available. Its real simple software and I recommend it for those who want to make your next commercial promotion pop or even for those who like to make their birthday parties/events a little more personal. If the price tag for the PRO $89.99 is too high for you they have 2 other versions with great quality but a few less features. The Deluxe will cost $49.99 and the Basic will cost 29.99. You can Purchase & download any of these very easily online, the people at Broderbund have made every effort to make a user-friendly UI and have succeeded. I give this a TOV 4 out of 5 for letting me print cool stuff with out reading the directions.