Art Explosion Greeting Card Deluxe Factory :: Education by Design Store

Editorial Review
Sometimes it's hard to find the right words to comfort, commend, or congratulate the people you care about. Art Explosion's Greeting Card Factory Deluxe puts the words in your mouth, whether your friends and family are celebrating birthdays, bar mitzvahs, or baby announcements. And for those of you who have a knack for turning a catchy phrase, you can edit the cards, announcements, postcards, labels, and gift tags to your heart's content. You can even create your own designs with the blank templates and photo-editing features.

Installing Greeting Card Deluxe is as easy as inserting the disk into your CD-ROM drive and waiting 10 minutes for the program to install. Along with the initial disk, you also get a CD-ROM containing graphics, photographs, and fonts to add more choices to your greeting-card repertoire. Once everything has been installed, you can get started on any of the many projects available. With an easy-to-use interface and a host of ready-to-use templates, this program is intuitive enough for kids who have some computer experience.

Greeting Card Factory allows you to complete 12 projects including greeting cards, photo cards, announcements, invitations, envelopes, labels, and various crafts. Some of the templates are a bit clichéd (i.e., "I'll love you for any reason. I'll love you for all the time. I'll love you for your money even if you didn't have a dime."). However, you always have the option to change the text and keep the graphics. The software also comes with a searchable sentiment database for everything from birthdays to Boss's Day.

While Greeting Card Factory is not a sophisticated photo- and image-editing application like Photoshop, you can take advantage of the included basic editing tools. Trimming graphics, adding shapes, applying gradients and textures, and importing photos are some of the options available to ambitious users. The photo editor lets you adjust colors, fix flaws such as dust and scratches or red-eyes, crop images, and add special effects to your pictures.

Customer Reviews

Photosuite is better

2003-08-07
I have used Roxio's Photosuite for a couple of years and while Art Explosion offers greater variety, it crashes more often (WinXP) and is very time consuming to insert photos. The program default directory is embedded deep in the Progam Folder, while my pictures are all in "My Pictures" folder. I couldn't find a way to change the default and the program doesn't recognize shortcuts.

Tried to get customer support, but the rep. was not very knowledgeable - kept telling me they were following Microsoft's recommendation and there was no way to change the location of "My Pictures" folder.

Great Program 2003-06-26
I just bought three greeting card programs. Creatacard, printmaster, and art explosion. The art explosion was the best. Very easy to use. I didnt have to read the instructions. Wonderful variety, great graphics and text. They had craft ideas that the other programs didnt. Much more cards to choose from and easier to use formats. I would recommend this program for all the people that want greeting card programs.

good but not great 2003-05-28
This program was easy to use and had nice graphics, but I can believe it had no calendar section! You could make a party hat, but not a calendar! Go figure. It was a waste of my money.

I love this software! 2003-05-16
I've had four different software packages to make greeting cards, and this is the best I've encountered. It offers a wide selection of graphics and sentiments, and it is easy to navigate. I should qualify that remark by saying that I have a fair amount of experience working with graphics, but if you can read directions, you shouldn't have any problems. I find the Greeting Card Factory to be comparable to Microsoft Publisher as far as ease of use. You can easily switch to other windows and paste in objects from your clipboard. I mention that because I have had other programs that didn't allow that. Another consideration is that there are two options for installation. One loads all of the graphics, and the other offers minimal installation, which takes up less memory on your hard drive. Then you pull the graphics from the CD-Roms. I can't comment on how that works because I opted for the full installation. All in all, this is a great package that offers a wide selection for creativity and your own personal touch.

Awesome 2002-11-15
I have several greeting card programs. I will have to say that the Greeting Card Factory is the best by far of any that I have. Would recommend it to everyone.

Excellent greeting card software 2002-05-12
Sometimes it's hard to find the right words to comfort, commend, or congratulate the people you care about. Art Explosion's Greeting Card Factory Deluxe puts the words in your mouth, whether your friends and family are celebrating birthdays, bar mitzvahs, or baby announcements. And for those of you who have a knack for turning a catchy phrase, you can edit the cards, announcements, postcards, labels, and gift tags to your heart's content. You can even create your own designs with the blank templates and photo-editing features.

If you're a serious designer or photographer, Greeting Card Deluxe will probably not meet your expectations. However, if you are looking to save money on store-bought greeting cards, or you have some projects you'd like to complete with your family, Greeting Card Deluxe is an enjoyable and easy-to-use application. Gisele Toueg

Resource hog 2002-01-25
Never have I had any type of greeting card program force you to load ALL the graphics and fonts when installing the program. Most allow you to run the program from the CDs in order to save space and resources. This program, on the other hand, forces you to load all 600MB of the program, including all the fonts, in order to see the cards that you can choose from. Your other choice is a scant 95MB minimal install, but then all you get are blank cards and there is no way to access the card designs that are supposed to come with the program. What a waste of a perfectly good program.

Just a good software 2001-09-07
I honestly thought this would be a great software based on the only review that appears and the rate this product has, however I was disappointed, I believe that this is a good product but does not deserve 5 stars.
It has beautiful graphics but there are not a lot of them, many graphics are from Microsoft Clip Art Gallery.
The fonts are almost the same we can found in Office, except for a few of them (10 at the most).
On the other hand I find it easy to use and not a lot of computer skills or knowledge is needed. Besides the craft section I found it really good, you can do party hats, baskets, boxes for gifts, envelopes, doorhangs, etc.
It is a good but not outstanding product.

A Blast to the Stars 2001-03-30
I have been using graphic programs for many years and have enjoyed many different type of graphic programs (I have 40 graphic and click art programs). However, this particular program has many more features than most, one is that you are able to change the card size into what is needed, and there are fonts that I have come across that I have not seen any where else. In addition the graphics are beautiful. For people as experienced as I am in graphic programs I recommend it,however,for people just starting out,unless they are proficient in computers I do not recommend it.