Hallmark Card Studio Deluxe (PC)

I feel like a cheapskate because I'll never need to buy another greetings card again!

This package is ideal for anyone who ever sends a greetings card.

There are thousands of graphics to choose from including a few of the popular Country Companions and Forever Friends ranges. In addition to cards for all occasions, Card Studio 2009 also includes templates for calendars, gift boxes and tags, stationery, photo cubes, notelets and photo cards (insert your own pic) and just about everything else, and these can all be co-ordinated into matching designs, all in one easy to use, highly-intuitive package. There's also a handy Event Planner and Address Book to remind you of those important dates.

It's a large package but loads smoothly. On start-up there is a 'kid-lock' function which may be of use to parents wanting to restrict their child's access

The graphics provided are quality and tasteful rather than cheap and tacky looking images or the typical clip art and nondescript photos as found in too many similar packages.

It's simple to create your own personalised card (or other project) by selecting from the many templates then simply personalising or replacing the existing greetings, add in your own photo (can be enhanced using the in-built 'photo power' editor adding soft edges, a pencil effect, cropping, cloning or use any combination of the available editing tools); add, replace or edit additional greetings or create your own. The package offers the scope to create whatever card you like to then either print it, email it as a PDF file or add music or record your own message to create a video file in AVI format.

My only gripe is that the 'pet' section is limited to cats and dogs. What about rabbits (the third most popular pet in the UK) other small furries, birds and fish?? I was also rather baffled by the inclusion of the 'Spanish Language' collection within the UK edition of the software...???!!

It performs perfectly, does what it says and shouldn't disappoint. I'd recommend it to anyone wanting to produce their own greetings cards and stationery with a personal touch.

The cover of Hallmark's Card Studio is correct in it's claim that this is the world's number 1 greeting card production software [for home users]. It's written by Avanquest for Hallmark. We have used the original Hallmark Card Studio Deluxe for the last 8 years now, so we decided to invest in the latest 2009 version. In the box there's basically just one DVD [compared to 4 CDs on our old version]. This new software runs on anything from a 0.8GHz Pentium II, with 512Mb RAM and a DVD drive, although naturally for image editing programs the more memory and faster the processor the better. It only works with Windows XP or Vista though. Installation was painless, taking about 10 minutes to install 3.8Gb of software and Microsoft NET-Framework v3.5 from the DVD and the internet. Running the software initially gives a kid-lock option [to cover the odd naughty card] - and the pretty user interface changes with the seasons, giving you four animated ones in all. Then you just select from the '9000+' cards and projects, edit the card the way you want it and print it out. Or you can export it to pdf or send via email as an e-Card.

Printing the card can be a bit complex. There's help for manual duplex with printers, where the printing wizard takes you though the double sided printing setup to ensure you put the paper back in the right orientation [as you have to print on both sides]. Getting the automatic duplex of our printer working took a bit of a while [as the printer wizard didn't offer anything for this option], but this was eventually done in Start, Printers, right-click Properties under Windows XP, and switch on auto-duplex there. Once set up, the automatic duplex printing works perfectly. The Windows 'Printer Properties' can be accessed for full control when printing cards though, via a Card Studio menu button. However controlling the printer is Card Studios weakest area, and it can take a frustrating while to get unusual output printed correctly [when using autoduplex or for say a single A4 portrait poster]. We use cheap 160 gsm A4 card [white + various pastel colours] for our printer and just fold down the middle, although other [smaller card] printing/folding options are also supported, that work OK with standard paper. Printer ink is expensive though and there's a lot of it used, so I expect it costs 30p or so per card. If your printer supports it, reducing the printer ink volume used to the minimum still produced good results, giving the card a pleasant sheen finnish.

The card templates include obvious things like birthdays, weddings and Bah Mitzvahs, as well as ones for things like 'Todays stepfamilies', 'Spanish language cards' and 'Preschool graduation' - so clearly Card Studio retains it's US roots. There aren't many cards, if any, for Muslim, Buddhist or Hindu special days, most seem to be Christian or Jewish. But there's one for every family/friend occasion. And of course you can just modify any card template to add your own text and photos/artwork, using the software's 'Art Studio' editing tools. Plus you can search themes, 'rabbits' came up with 102 bunny cards. Most of the cards are naturally basic two sided affairs, but they look good and you can add home-made touches to emphasise the 'I made this card with love' look. You can also do other creative projects, like 3D cards, scrapbook papers, year planners, calendars, gift tags, invitations and photo-cubes & photoframes. The only downer is that it can be a real struggle to produce something that isn't a 'card' e.g. say a simple A4 sheet with 4 'invites' printed on one side [to be cut up later].

There is another 'special edition' of Card Studio 2009 for scrapbook fun [not included], although we use the excellent Serif 'Digital Scrapbook Artist' for this. This UK edition of Hallmark Card Studio 2009 has 200 `extra' cards including 'Forever Friends', and it makes an attempt to be Brit friendly with words like 'Primary' school rather than Elementary. In addition there's 16,000+ 'premium' clip art images and a simple digital photo editor to get your photos onto cards. Plus there's the crucial 'Art Studio' menu for adding [or moving/removing] text, greetings, photos, clip-art and shapes to the card. In fact there's a suprising amount of editing power hidden behind the few main menu buttons. Art Studio offers loads of decent quality clip art, wallpaper and pre-written text to save you having to produce your own [hence the massive program footprint on your hard drive]. Lastly there's the event planner/diary that used to be very annoying on the original 2001 software [you just couldn't seem to get rid of it on PC start-up], but this version has an easy to find 'never' button - although if you dont have Office Outlook you might like it.

The card output is 'for personal non-commercial use only'. Overall it's a lot of fun for the money, and easy for older kids and teenagers to use as well. Plus it's results are more than adaquate for many occassions, particularly if it's being given to a close family member with the money saved going towards the present. It's output is also ideal for stuff like kids personal thankyous and party invites. So it's a hit and we'll give it 5.

This latest version of Hallmark Card Studio isn't worth the expense or effort. The majority of cards are found in previous editions and most annoying of all, when you use the art studio to create your own card, it dumps your work when saving whilst showing it as being saved in the projects menu!!! Having just spent the best part of an hour on a card that's not been saved (despite it being shown as saved), I'm uninstalling 2009 and going back to 2007 - at least I know that works!