Print Explosion Deluxe 3.0

Written by Don Kern | 30 August 2006
Posted in Graphics

Nova Development (USA) has provided everyday Mac users with an easy to use design tool in Print Explosion Deluxe 3.0, an application that helps you create a variety of personalised projects, such as greeting cards, scrapbooks and flyers.

The program is simple to use, sporting hundreds of text effect combinations and Avery-compatible label designs. It also nicely integrates with iTunes, iPhoto and Mac OSX Address Book.

Review
Installation & Documentation
Ease of use
Value for money
Price approx.	$49.95 USD
Software/Hardware Requirements	Mac OS X 10.2+ PowerPC G3+ or Intel Core processor 512 MB of RAM DVD Drive (CD-ROMs available via mail exchange)
Available from	Nova Development

On launch, a window gives you the option of opening a template, creating a new document, or cruising the tutorials on how to use one of the program's templates. It also works like most other layout and design programs such as Pages, allowing you to insert text and images with ease.

Print Explosion ships with over 13,000 professionally designed templates, more than 100,000 pieces of clip art, 900+ fonts and an array of blank templates for greeting cards, envelopes, stationary and more. And the templates are all designed to print properly, whether a reverse for a t-shirt iron-on or an odd sized envelope. The installation dialog box even allows you to select A4 as your standard paper size, with other options available.

An innovative program, it uses a media browser that organizes elements and graphics into libraries, allowing you to view previews of the available templates and artwork. The program also allows you to use photos you've stored in iPhoto. You can also insert track information from play lists you've created in iTunes and it conveniently merge contact information from the Address Book into any document your documents. Another convenient feature is the ability to send greetings card directly via email and turn your projects in html-compliant web pages.

Unfortunately, if you own a Mac that doesn't have a DVD player, you've got a wee bit of a problem. The application only ships on DVD, and to get the disks on CD, you must buy the application, call or write to Nova, and have the CDs spricent to you. If you have a newer Mac with a superdrive, this is not a problem, but if you're running an older Mac with the CD-only drive, the extra expense and wait can be a bit daunting.

Similarly, if you run an older Mac, the installation process can be problematic. A "standard" installation with all of the templates, fonts and artwork takes a massive 3.7 GB of space, which can push smaller hard drives to the limit. You can bypass the installation of the artwork and graphics and search for them from the original DVD, but the process is considerably slower than if they are resident on your hard drive.

Clip Art

Although this software is "Universal" I ran it on both a Powerbook G4 1.5GHz and an iMac Intel 1.83GHz dual processor machine and found little difference in speed performance.

Print Explosion Deluxe 3.0 carries a list price of US$49.95. Nova Development lists their only regional resellers in Victoria and NSW, Australia and a quick search of PriceMe brought up no quick purchase options, so although I recommend the program, purchasing it in New Zealand may be much harder than actually using it. [Note from Phil – I bought my mum a copy straight from the Nova Development site in the States]

Old pros who are used to high design programs such as Illustrator and InDesign will be disappointed, but for the casual user who needs to crank out quick projects for school and the home office, this is a much more cost-effective solution.

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