Business Card Printing Software – “Print Designer Gold”

This review of the business card printing software “Print Designer Gold” 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.

Print Designer Gold is not just a business card design program, but can also be used to create Business Cards, Mailing Labels, Envelopes, Post Cards, CD Labels, DVD Labels, Signs and more.

Look and feel
The interface is very friendly and easy to use. The property editor on the right hand side is particularly useful as it gives you tips and directions on how to use each tool that you select. This is very good for learning the program but also saves you having to go to the help files.

Templates
Good selection of templates in various categories. So many they can’t be counted without a lot of trouble.

Level of technical know how required
The program requires very little technical knowledge if your interest is simply in designing and printing business cards. But if you want to get into its other capabilities, such as labels and bar codes, you may need to take a little more time to learn more about how to use it.

However, with the help available, the property editor and the tips that come up every now and then this should be easy too.

Formats
Print Designer Gold Project (pdg) is the saving formt. You can also save graphics as png, jpg, bmp and emf.
Resolution is up to 1200 dpi.

Trial version functionality and restrictions
15 day limitation on trial version plus watermark on printing, otherwise it is fully functional.

Print sheet stock and layout options
Paper stock that can be designed for include: APLI, Avery, NEATO, Formtec, Herma, MAACO, CompuLabel, Epson, STOMPER, online Lables, Eze Dome. This is a good range of stock options and should be more than enough choice for most needs.

The layout and printing options are fully customizable to suit your requirements. A preview window in the printing section is very useful for this purpose.

Graphic design capability
You can draw basic shapes with the program. One very unique feature is its picture importing button. This allows you to preview thumbnails of the photos in a selected folder so you have no trouble choosing. You can also acquire the photo directly from your scanner.

In addition to this there is a “linked picture” option which should allow you to edit the photo in another program and not have to keep importing it into Print Designer Gold after every edit. The changes reflect automatically.

The “personal data base” is great for handling different sets of data for different business cards and a good time saving feature. This can be linked to any Text, CSV, Excel, Access, DBase, Paradox database or any external database through ADO or ODBC. This is really unique for business card printing software.

System Requirements
Works on Windows Vista/XP/2003/2000/ME/98SE or later.

Value for money
At US$49.95 it is more costly than your average business card printing software. But when you consider its other applications aside from business cards and its unique features it is a bargain.

It is worth the money, particularly if you run your own business as sooner or later you will need to do other things such as make labels, signs and so on.

However, if business card design and printing is all you are interested in then get the stripped won version of the program, called Business Card Designer Plus. It is essentially the same program, but with use and templates restricted to business cards only so it is strictly business card printing software. That will save you a good 20 dollars.

Overall Score out of five