Customer Reviews

American Greetings Creatacard Gold 6.0

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I have not used American Greetings Creatacard 6.0, so like you, I'm reading reviews to see if I should buy it.

I loved Creatacard 3.0, so I went out and bought Creatacard 5.0.
However, I had the shock of my life when the wonderful workable interface of Creatacard 3.0 was modified, to one that was a cross between it and the inferior Printmaster programs.
Come to find out these companies merged at this point in time.

Another shock upon buying the Creatacard Gold 5.0 versus the Creatacard Gold 3.0, was that most of the cards (over 75% that I checked) were duplicates and I mean exact duplicates of the 3.0 version. Buying a new program didn't get me more new cards. Gold 3.0 adverizes 6000+ greeting cards and 14,000 projects and designs.
Gold 5.0 cleverly does not list the number of cards, but has 600,000+ project possibilities. If you want it for that I suppose you are okay.

However, and back to the Gold 6.0 version advertized here. The number of cards is listed as 3900, quite a bit less than the 6000+ than the Gold 3.0 had. Who knows what the 5.0 had.

So I guess what I'm saying is if you are in it for the cards and own a previous American Greeting Cards program, don't bother, until they get their act together again. If you just want crafts etc. You might be okay.

If I am wrong, I would love to know about it. I'm looking for a good card program and I found one once in the 3.0 version, so I'm open to suggestions.

I also had the 3.0 version of creatacard. I used it weekly and loved it. Then I got the Platinum 4 version. I can honestly say that about half of the cards I went to select, I couldn't. I had to buy the super upgrade pack .... They gave me a code to enter and then I could use all of the cards. But, when our computer went down and we had to reload, I had to call back and get another code to unlock those cards again. I also hated having to insert a different disk everytime I looked at a card. Now, the 6.0 Platinum doesn't do that. All of the cards are loaded onto the hard drive and I've never had to insert a disk again. All of the cards shown are available. I've learned to deal with the different setup and menu and find them very easy. The bad things: the program takes about one minute after I click on it before it actually comes up on the screen. (I have tons of memory, so it's not a memory problem). It does not allow you to select whether you want to print a quarter-fold or half page. I have had lots of problems with the colors being wrong and or lines through the colors. I've looked it up on on the technical support and it seems that some printers are not compatible with the creatacard program. It suggested changing the 16bit high color to a lower, such as 256, but when I did that, a pop up screen said that the creatacard had to run in 16 bit color and thus would not even open up when any other color was selected. I've also had problems with importing pictures into the program. If I've gotten too much on a card, it will shut down (you have performed an illegal operation). When I've imported pictures into the menu, it also puts to wrong picture name under the picture, so that when I click on it, I get whatever picture the name says, not shows. Overall, I would not purchase this program again, that's why I'm reading reviews trying to find something else. I hope this helps.

I actually own American Greetings Gold 5.0 and I love the product...however, I have been getting all kinds of "illegal operations" errors in recent months. The program worked great as long as I was using their templates, but after a while I started to get creative and design from scratch, using my own digital images. That was when the trouble started. I have contacted Broderbund a couple of times and all they had to suggest was that I had insufficient memory. As I have a Pentium III computer, this seemed an unlikely explanation. They have refused to answer my question of whether the 6.0 version would be an improvement. Does anyone out there know? A computer guy I spoke to thinks the problems come from the C++ language used to design the program. Broderbund wouldn't comment on that either.

I too have experienced all the problems previously mentioned. I bought Creata Card Gold 3 many years ago. I love it and load it on every new computer I get. It is so simple to use. It's Calendar reminder is one of the best of all the card programs. I would like to see it upgraded with more graphics and verses. Sadly that didn't happen. I have purchased all the newer versions and found Creata Card Gold 6 to be the best. It has the simplicity of Creata Card Gold 3 but many more graphics and verses.
It is not as versatile as I would like but it does allow me to be creative, moving graphics and verse to different cards and even card programs by coping and pasting, most of the card programs won't allow you to take their graphic or verse out of their program and into another card program.

CreatACard is one of my favorite programs but not my very favorite. I love making home made cards, printing address labels, etc. For cards and envelopes, signs, invitations, labels, etc. it has such a great variety of templates but you can also make them from scratch. You can import your own photos and/or graphics if you like. It does great address labels too but the entire page is made up of the same exact label. I have another program that allows me to make just one label if I want and come back later on the same page of labels and make just one (or more) on that page. It's nice if you use a lot of labels like I do. But CreatACard has a great address book that you can even print and refer to it on paper. It comes with a reminder feature that you can set for someone's b/day or anniversary or any day that you need to be reminded of something you have to do. The reminder comes up on your screen when you turn your computer on. Great feature if you need it. Great program and I've used and enjoyed it for years now.