Art Explosion Scrapbook

Microsoft Word might come with great document-creation features for business types, but it is less helpful for the general PC punter. Art Explosion Scrapbook Factory Deluxe, on the other hand, is aimed squarely at home users and comes with more than 2,500 project templates.

Installation is very easy and a reasonable manual is included. There is also plenty of interactive help within the program. The project-selection wizard helps you choose the right template for what you want to do.

The Clip Art collection is very good, with 20,000 images comprising both graphic and image files. A basic photo editor contains most of the tools you will need for tweaking your own pictures. There are 500 fonts installed as standard, but you can add more later if you wish. This is a good system, as too many fonts can cause older PCs to slow down.

As well as templates for the usual calendar, invitation and poster formats, there are also guides for publishing web pages with your own photos on them. The tricky programming is done automatically, and all you have to do is select the style and images you want to use. Once uploaded to the web, the results look very impressive and allow you to share photos with friends and family online. However, the bundled sound files are pretty naff and will also make your web pages too big for dial-up internet users.

If you're the creative type or have young children, this is a nice little software package. The vast number of templates should provide inspiration for any project.

Contact: Nova Development 01752 202507
www.novadevelopment.co.uk

See also:

Serif Pageplus 9

Excellent layout and artistic features make this a good alternative to Publisher.  08 Apr 2004

CorelDraw Essentials 2

Desktop publishing and image manipulation software from Corel.  24 Feb 2004

Greenstreet Publisher 4

A cheap desktop publishing package.  08 Jan 2004

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