Business Card Creator – A Review and Guide

This review of The Print Shop Business Card Creator is meant to assist anyone thinking of investing in a business card program. It points out both the good and the bad aspects of the program in order to assist you to make an informed choice.

Look and feel
Business Card creator has a cohesive look and feel that is gentle on the eyes, but still attractive and easy to use.

All the elements are in places where you would expect to find them and the neatly arranged and attractive buttons on the left for all its great features are hard to miss.

Templates
There are plenty of background templates to choose from, all neatly categorized. The backdrop feature also enables you to add your own watermark to the background.

With more than 500 professionally-designed projects, over 1,000 high-quality images, and more than 280 fonts to choose from, you really have a lot of choice.

Level of technical know how required
This business card software is quite versatile and allows those with little design know how to do a good job and produce professional quality cards whilst at the same time having enough functionality to enable the more adventurous and talented to have some fun too.

Overall it has a good range of functionality not found in other programs, particularly its graphic design capabilities discussed below. .

Formats
Default saving format of the business card files is .biz.

Cgm, dpp, jpeg, bmp, photocd, pcx, photoshop, png, tiff and wmf importing of graphics is possible. You can acquire scans directly from the scanner or other installed image source.

Resolution is up to 1200 dpi.

Trial version functionality and restrictions
I was unable to find a trial version of Business Card Creator so I not sure that one exists.

The registration process, even for a copy bought on CD was quite annoying in that some fields are marked as required and others as optional, but on actual filling it doesn’t allow you to proceed until all fields are filled in. There are just too many details required too.

Print sheet stock and layout options
Business Card creator does offers specific print sheet stock support for Avery and Invent it! only. This may be the biggest drawback on an otherwise great piece of business card software.

Graphic design capability
A brilliant art gallery with clipart and photos offers a wide variety of artistic artwork to choose from in various categories. The text options come with a headline feature that allows you to add artistic style text with shadows, bevels and depth features. This text’s textures are also customizable.

A large variety of custom graphics can be made in a variety of shapes and colours within the program, including custom time-pieces, initial caps, numbers, seals and even signatures. I found this to be a unique and very welcome feature. The signature tool was particularly impressive, allowing you to create your signature using handwriting styles of some famous personalities.

Further capability includes the ability to add frames to the card design, a free hand drawing function and even adding of tables.

System Requirements
The following are the minimum system requirements needed to successfully run Business Card Creator.
• Platform: Windows® 95/98/2000/ME or Windows® NT 4
• CPU: Pentium® 200MHz or faster
• RAM: 64MB
• CD-ROM: 4X CD-ROM drive or faster
• Display: 800x600 Display, 16-bit High Color
• Multimedia: Video and sound cards and speakers
• Browser: Internet Explorer 5.0 or higher
• Internet Access: 33.6 KBPS modem or faster
Windows® XP
• CPU: Pentium® II 300 MHz processor or faster
• RAM: 128MB

Value for money
Business Card Creator is good value for money at only US$19.99. It is by far the most affordable business card software I have come across and with all its unique and varied features is worth much more that it sells for.

Even with limited print stock support and that annoying registration reminder it is still worth buying.

Overall Score out of five