Customer Reviews

The Print Shop 2 for Mac

5 star:		(16)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

I bought this for my son to use on his Intel iMac (2007). Very easy installation. First launch went seemlessly with no bugs and very compatible with iPhoto and standard Mac commands/interface. Easy to grab photos from multiple sources like chip reader, CD, iPhoto, even cut and paste from internet. Many good features from design templates and editing to special effects and photo retouch. Let's face it, this is not a professional tool or full graphics suite, but for the money it offers a good array of features for the student and home user who wants a little creativity in their collages, albums, or photo editing & printing. This is a hard to find product (low production runs or very popular??)

Wow! I'm really disappointed with this program. I worked with various versions of Print Shop when I had a PC and was excited to buy the same product for my Mac, but I am VERY unhappy with my purchase. I bought this program because I needed clip art and was tired of searching around on the Internet for pictures--but this program SUCKS in the clip art department. The photographs are all VERY dated, and look like they were taken in 1990--I'm talking big overly teased hair, high wasted tapered jeans with baggy sweaters and ridiculously large glasses. For an $80 dollar purchase, the quality of the photos are completely UNACCEPTABLE! Even the pictures not involving people look dated. If you want this product simply for layouts and labels (iWork does not have label making capabilities) then sure buy this, but I would honestly just say go buy Microsoft Office for Mac with Publisher--you'll be happier with the fact that you can download thousands of clip art and images from their site for free.
Take home message: DON'T BUY THIS!

I used this program at least 15 years ago when I was a teacher and one would think they would have improved it over the years. Sure it's better than that first version, that my students loved, however the library of graphics is stale, and there are quirks that make it difficult to use. It would not take a lot to make "The Printshop" a great program however the company has not chosen to upgrade to my satisfaction. It's usable but could be improved.

If you want to make greeting cards FAST and effortlessly this is the perfect product. What's really neat is that you can drag and drop your iPhotos right on to the card. Printmaster is nowhere near as easy. Photoshop Elements is a nightmare when it comes to producing a greeting card. However, i don't think Photoshop Elements is really meant for that. So if you are a regular person that likes to make personally made greeting cards for friends and family look no further. Another Amazon reviewer recommended this product to me as a comment and they were right!

I've been using Print Shop for a long time. Broderbund gave me a freebie 1.0 when I switched from PC to Mac several years ago and I still use Version 1.0. It's true that there's no comparison in the amount of art available as in the PC version, but there's so much clip art on the web! I finally learned to make clip art backgrounds transparent with Gimp so that I can use web clip art more easily. I recently completed a little book project for my granddaughters using Gimp, Corel, Adobe Elements AND Print Shop. I don't know the other programs as well as I know Print Shop so there were many things I just could not do with them that were so easy on Print Shop. It definitely has advantages with it's drag and drop features. You can save clip art right to iPhoto and then drag to Print Shop from there. Many things you can simply drag from a website to Print Shop. You can do some cropping on PS, but it is generally easier with Gimp. Still, there are some photos that are easier to crop on PS and I use it frequently. You can create any color of background with any opacity level. You can layer without using multiple windows so you can see your entire project as you go along. It isn't for the professional, but it works great for home projects and I wouldn't want to be without it--yet. Naturally, being a fairly simple program, the learning curve is not so great as with more complicated software, but if you are going to do a project only now and then, that is a true advantage. It's a snap to make business cards and greeting cards if you have just the right size stationery, but Leopard and Print Shop 1 don't communicate well. I gave this ranking because it is good within its class.

I read many reviews before purchasing this product. I have had no problems using this package and the installation on my Macbook Pro and Quicksilver was flawless. The user interface is easy to use and a project can be quickly executed without having to sort through a lot of confusing menus. I am not a professional graphics artist but I use Photoshop, Elements, and CorelDraw for various projects. I was able to make contact with Mackiev's technical support in a timely manner using email.

There were some "over the top" negative comments posted on Amazon and other sites that are not accurate. There may be some confusion between PrintShop from Mackiev and Printshop from Broderbund. I purchased the Mackiev product and have no direct knowledge of the Broderbund version. I think "PrintShop 2 For Mac" is a great value for it's price range.

I have used MacKiev Print Shop for years, and it is my opinion that Apple should buy this graphics engine and incorporate it into the Mac Operating System!!! I usually don't access the clip art or photos that come with it. I just drag in my photos, backgrounds and clip art that I want and then mess around with them.

As a publisher who has used Pagemaker and Indesign, this program has been the "little engine that could", helping me to easily create graphics as needed which I can then copy and paste into the other programs. You can "export" to a variety of graphic formats also.

You can "stretch" the background to fit the size you have chosen, you can "layer" things and "group" things however you want and send them forward or back with the click of a button. You can apply "effects" that include edges, masks, glows, shadows with a click of a button also. There's a great "Headline" text feature that gives you pre-mades and lets you customize them anyway you want. The regular text feature lets you change the leading in your lines & apply glows to make the text stand out from photos.

This program makes Scrapbooking so very easy, nothing esoteric to learn, just start dragging things in and clicking buttons. I make title pages for slide shows/movies with this program, DVD covers, just finished my Christmas letters & envelopes. It has all the usual templates to use, calendars, business cards, labels, etc.

If you want a gazillion pieces of clip art this probably isn't for you, but if you want to create and publish and play with graphics/photos, this is a great, easy to use program.

I just ordered it to give to my sister for Christmas, I think she will have just as much fun with it as I have!

This is without a doubt the best money I've spent on software. Now up to version 2.0.7.2, I use The PrintShop for everything that Word won't do. Labels, CD covers, flyers, business cards, postcards, birthday cards, you name it. I don't think there is an Avery label the PrintShop can't handle. I even use it to create professional looking ad copy for my work. I export to a 600dpi PNG file and email it to the publisher, simple as that. I've done projects that rival output from Adobe products at 10 times the price.

I some cases, PrintShop's layout features are even better than Apple's Pages. Newsletters and flyers are a breeze to produce. PrintShop even has built-in photo editing and cropping tools that while simple, get the job done without having to export to Photo Shop.

Of course, for $60, you're not getting the best clip-art. Most of the images are cartoonish but there are some good stuff in there. The fonts included will allow you to do some fun and inventive stuff too.

If you do any kind of printing that's not just letters and spreadsheets, I highly recommend The PrintShop for Mac.

I have used Print Shop for many, many years on a PC. I just recently switched to a Mac and so had to switch to Print Shop for Mac. It is taking some getting used to but it is still the same user friendly program. I can't imagine an easier way to make posters, address labels, post cards and calendars. It seems like there are less graphics to choose from but that is probably due to the ability to download from the internet. All in all I do like this program.

I purchased this software to replace PrintMaster after having moved from PC to Mac to make school flyers and kids bday cards. I can do this on just about any program but what I most wanted was a nice, big, clip art collection. The clip art is just plain sad.