Customer Reviews

Serif PagePlus Essentials [Download]

5 star:		(20)
4 star:		(34)
3 star:		(24)
2 star:		(8)
1 star:		(9)

 

 

I'd give this about 3.5 stars normally, however i gave it an additional .5 due to an illiterate reviewer that gave it a one star review. Instructions for a free program?...gee gosh, what a rip.

My reasoning for 3.5 stars is that the program has a large selection of graphics available, however, it seems to be the less than sterling "office clipart" grade. For a free program, of course it's worth it, and don't get me wrong, you could make a great looking product with this, it's just easier with something a bit higher grade. Perfect for casual invitations, fun flyers, giving something a little more edge that a 20 point black and white page.

The learning zone is a great asset for beginners!

Product key is listed on product report page after download. There's a little yellow button that is labeled "product key." Its too bad that first guy couldn't find it. If you can find it, try hitting ctrl+F to use the find function, then type in "product key" and it will highlight the spot on the webpage where you can go to find it.

This is a good free product. Easy to download and install. Product key is prompted after download. First reviewer was not awake when he gave it an unfairly low mark. This is a typical stripped down publishing program. It's decent and it's free.

Length:: 1:53 Mins

Serif PagePlus Essentials
This program has oodles of possibilities.
With the templates provided you can create greeting cards, invitations, resumes, banners, flyers, calendars, homework projects, signs, notices, thank you cards, postcards and more.
On the website there are additional downloads for more templates of the various content above.
In terms of interface, the program reminds me of MS Word, so I found it easy to maneuver. I am using Windows Vista and installation was a snap and just took a few minutes.
As far as completing a project, it's as simple as dragging and dropping graphics and photos and typing in your titles and any wording.
My 12 year old daughter and I have completed a calendar, birthday card, flyer, door hanger and newsletter. I think this software is great for beginners as it is simple to navigate and complete projects quickly.
If this turns out to be too basic but you like the format then you can upgrade for a fee on Serif's website.
I have included a quick video so you can see how this works.
It's a simple program for beginning designers. I highly recommend it.

I wasn't going to leave a comment, but I didn't want anyone to think the software was bad because one person couldn't figure out how to install it. The software is easy to use and a great value!

The 80/20 rule is an old adage among software designers - 80% of users use 20% of a software's functionality. Couple this with the astronomically increasing cost of document- and photo-processing software, and you have the basis for a new market niche - a simple, usable, and cheap program that offers entry-level users what they need to get work done, without overwhelming them with creeping feature-itis and mind-blowing cost.

This package offers the most-needed functions of Word and Photoshop, with bits of Illustrator and Framemaker thrown in for good measure. Unfortunately, it misses the bullseye.

I decided to do my first test of the software by making a personalized photo calendar (one of the things specifically mentioned in the Amazon description). First step - open the File>New menu and opt to use an existing template (much easier to swap out components of an existing item than to create your own, and that's what most people do). It was easy to find calendars in the templates, and easy to find yearly ledger-sized versions. Why was the portrait-oriented ledger-sized calendar called "Evocative Shrub" and not portrait-ledger? Oh, because it has a picture of a shrub on it....

Slogging on, I opened the template, deleted the above-mentioned shrubbery, and inserted my own photo. Now to crop. Simple - just click on crop and draw a crop square on the photo like in every other picture processing software I've ever used... Nope. You've got to push the edges in as if you were resizing. No big deal, really. Just a small divergence in gesture that required an extra click or three. Ok. And double clicking on the photo opened my Windows pictures directory. Just a little frustrating.

Once I finally got the picture into editing mode I was impressed - the software offers all the familiar basics, from Gaussian Blur to RGB balance to some of the more common drawing effects. All good, though again some gesture divergence.

Customizing the calendar graphic itself was tortuous. There were lots of calendar graphic templates to choose from, conveniently named things like "Agata 4" and "Raine 2". Which one of these meant "white outline and san-serif numbers"? I have no idea. Decided to create my own template. Editing the number format and font and the heading format and font was certainly easy, and would have been pleasant if the damn program had let me do a global edit instead of having to individually specify Weekday number/Weekday heading/Sunday number/Sunday heading/Saturday number/Saturday heading. The month name was nowhere to be found in that interaction, but I did come across it in another tab, under the name "Blank". You've got to be kidding.

Applying my new calendar graphic template to the existing graphic in my photo calendar was more of the same. Using the menu button only opened a "New Calendar Wizard" - to apply a new format to an existing month I had to right-click on the month and select from that pop-up menu, and I had to do this 12 times - there was no way to do a global change. I will admit the calendar looks lovely.

The second test was of a basic school-type paper, complete with footnotes and a table of contents and headers and footers, created from scratch. All this basic functionality is in fact supported nicely. But to start a new document from scratch I had to choose my paper size from an array of PICTURES (nicely named "letter", "tabloid", "A", etc. With no MEASUREMENTS). And before I started inputting text at all I had to create a text frame - something that will certainly be familiar to Framemaker users, but might be a bit bewildering to someone used to Word (or someone used to email, or paper, for that matter)

I'm very torn about this package. On the one hand, MS Word has utterly lousy picture-editing support, and never did get that frames thing right. Photoshop, on the other hand, has no real word processing. And yes, this will do both, with an impressive range of functionality if you have the experience and perseverance to find it. But the usability of this package is horrific, and the online tutorials and wizards, while helpful, don't make up the difference. If you're already familiar with Photoshop, you will wind up beating your fists against the screen.

So, as I said in the title, this is for people with more patience than cash.

I knew when I started working with PagePlus Essentials that users were relatively split in their opinion of the product. There was one camp that found the product difficult to use and lacking in support literature. Another camp found the product good--especially considering the price point was more reasonable than some of the alternatives on the market. So to be fair, I tried to spend some real time on various tasks within the software. And ultimately, I've landed somewhere in the middle.

Truth be told, even if PagePlus had come with a big user's manual--I wouldn't have looked at it. I'm just not wired that way. For the most part, I expect software to be intuitive. I do not think that this product is as easy to manipulate as effectively as I would have wished. I was able to construct just about anything my heart desired. I put together some awesome presentations intermingling text and pictures--but it was sometimes difficult to gauge how they would look once printed out. I ended up wasting quite a bit of ink printing out things that just didn't lay out right. I'm not saying that there wasn't a way to judge this more effectively via the program, I'm just saying that it wasn't an intuitive option. I think there are several major drawbacks to new users or to those with less design experience.

However, especially at a sale price, PagePlus Essentials is setting itself up as a cheaper alternative. So, if you have the ambition to save a few bucks, you can definitely master the program with a little more time. Just play around and experiment. At about 3 1/2 stars overall--I probably wouldn't go out of my way to recommend this to friends, but it's an absolutely serviceable piece of design software.

Length:: 0:25 Mins

This is not a one or two star product, this is a 5+ Star product for the ludicrous price of less than $30.

PagePlus Essentials has pretty much everything you need out of a desktop publishing software that is meant to design a page and print it. A more sophisticated package such as QuarkXPress, which is another desktop publishing software I'm familiar with because I worked at Quark, maybe more expensive because it handles color separations for offset lithography, and other professional purposes, but when it comes to designing a page--or pages--and printing it with your desktop printer, PagePlus is a rock solid, feature rich, amazing piece of software.

PagePlus has a page organization box, like the layers of images in Photoshop. It gives tremendous artistic control of objects, such as images or text, and provides very good help. But there is one feature I found that blew my mind: Instant 3D. I've attached a video of how I created a 3D looking image of the Constitution of the United States from a 2D stock image I found in Google. Need I say any more?

I've been struggling with this product for several MONTHS. I boot it up, start using it, and then say "NO. I'm NOT going to recommend Serif, no matter how good the product might be."

Here's why:

Serif has a unique marketing / product registration process. Once you've purchased a Serif product, you MUST call a toll-free number to register it and receive your product key code - you need it in order for the product to run. You're actually connected to an - ahem - "Customer Support Specialist" in Nottingham, England (Serif's home base.)

Before you get the product code, you are subjected to THE, and folks, I do mean THE hardest high-pressure-close, hold-a-gun-to-your head sales pitch you've heard since the insurance industry came up with the Whole Life Policy. IT IS UTTERLY DESPICABLE - they don't take "NO" for an answer; they are RELENTLESS.

You say "But wait a minute Mark... I'm confused... I ALREADY bought the product... what are they trying to sell?" EXACTLY! Can you say UPGRADE? There's nothing inherently wrong with their extending you the offer. But when you say "no, thanks", they should simply leave it alone. But they don't.

And it becomes INSULTING both to you as a Customer, and frankly to Amazon. Here's why: They begin by offering you an upgrade that's priced identically to what the "deluxe" version product sells for at Amazon. In other words, you bought the entry-level version. The price you paid for it + the price of the upgrade = Amazon's price for the "deluxe" version.

But the longer they keep you on the phone, the sweeter the deal gets. These guys just plain wore........ me......... out........! I finally said ENOUGH!!!, and bought the upgrade at a ridiculously low price.

The entire process left such a "bad taste in my mouth" that I simply have to say "NO." I CANNOT possibly recommend this product, so I'd be a HYPOCRITE to use it. First nice day this Spring, it's going the way of the yard sale.

And by the way, the little I did used of this program wasn't very impressive. I'm in agreement with the folks who gave it just one or two stars.

OK, I'm the computer person in our extended family....the one that sits patiently (well, most of the time) and tries to teach various family members how to use the computer, use new software, navigate the Internet, etc. So the more user-friendly software is, the more I appreciate it, because that means less time and energy (and stress) for me, and a better experience for the one I'm trying to teach.

I was delighted with the results of the Serif PagePlus program, and although there are many reasons why, one huge reason overshadows the rest: the amount of as-you-go help that just pops up and walks you through everything, especially the video tutorials. These videos are fantastic, as are the "How-To" guides that operate seamlessly while you are working on your project.

I loved this program, and in my case, because it was uncomplicated and didn't involve a lot of in-depth publishing options. I wanted something simple and easy to use, for me and my family. I road-tested it with my half-way computer-capable mother and my zero-computer-capable grandpa. I was surprised to find that it was so user-friendly that both of them were able to produce some pretty awesome-looking results, and they had fun doing it!

Graduation invitations, a family newsletter that included clip-art and pictures, personalized calendars, birthday cards, the list goes on and on....they were able to produce nice-looking results with minimal effort and time. The learning curve on this software was minuscule, and we were all very pleased with the results!