Projects:  

With the 15,000 professionally-designed project templates included in Print Artist Platinum, you can create polished projects in three simple steps. Print Artist Platinum includes projects that very few of the comparable desktop publishing software programs have. For instance, you can create a calendar for the office softball team games, develop email game announcements, print the company’s logo on the team’s shirts, design a banner to cheer on the team and then assemble all of the action photos into a slide show for the next company party. All of that in addition to creating the customary letterhead, fax cover sheets, business cards, brochures and stationery.

Ease of Use:  

Print Artist Platinum has a clean, intuitive interface that is fairly easy to use and includes an extensive tutorial to guide you through its more involved features.

We encountered a few drawbacks as we used the software including being frustrated by the lack of ability to delete the extra pages in predesigned projects. It’s a good idea to spend some time with the in-program tutorials as well as watching the brief video tour offered on the developer’s website to familiarize yourself with the different features.

Photo/Graphic Tools:  

The extensive image library contained in Print Artist Platinum is full of a wide variety of project styles. The quality ranges from very polished and contemporary to rather dated and cheesy. The image editor included in the program is adequate for basic corrections but is rather limited overall.

Text Tools:  

The text tools included with Print Artist Platinum are decent. Most of the text effects are pre-formatted shortcuts to achieve a particular look with a single mouse click. The most exasperating text tool hang-up is the all-or-nothing approach within the text box. This inability to include two or more text styles and/or sizes in one text box is particularly frustrating if you want to bold a word or increase its point size within a greeting.

Printing/Sharing:  

Print Artist Platinum offers numerous ways to print and/or share your creations, from email and IM to print. You can save projects as PDFs to send to a print service bureau or print your creations out on special iron-on transfer paper to create T-shirts or tote bags. You can even burn slide shows to CD.

Overall, Print Artist Platinum is an excellent option in Desktop Publishing. It offers an enormous amount of features and guidance in a single program. It’s suitable for most skill-levels from grass-green novice to the fairly accomplished user. Check out our “TopTenREVIEWS Gold Award” winner PagePlus for a program with exceptional photo and text tools.