14 DAY TRIAL // Thanksgiving, Christmas, Easter, Valentine's Day, New Year, birthdays, why buy cards for all these when you can build them yourself? Indeed, there are online service offering customization options and the costs are quite low. But in case of some really special events it would be a shame to use the same templates as everybody else and creating a card from scratch would be the best idea.
Some may consider that creating an e-card from a square one involves quite some effort, but if you are simply looking for that funny edge and a spit of originality to set you well apart as well as a drop of your own personality, every other option would be a blind alley.
Just like its name suggests, Greeting Card Builder is designed for the sole purpose of creating your own e-cards for various events. The price for the unrestricted version of the application is $29.90 and you benefit from 15 days of evaluation with the restriction of a watermark planted on the output card that is composed of four parts (front, inside 1 and 2 and back).
The looks are slick and polished and the interface elements are well ordered for easy access of the different options it provides. It is divided into four different sections: menu bar, card pages side panel to the left, work area and the right panel giving you access to various elements to add to the card.
Regardless of your skill level, working with the software is a walk in the park. The moment you launch the application it will offer two ways of getting the e-card done: either start the creation process from an included template or begin from scratch with a blank project. Either way, the same ease of use is available as Greeting Card Builder offers great flexibility in customizing the card, as well as a bunch of effects to yield originality and good taste.
Despite the fact that they cover almost any kind of event, the list of templates is a bit limited and you can choose only between 31 of them. But add to this the fact that you can make changes to the text, add your own images, add clipart elements, frame and mask the pictures or customize them with one of the 15 effects available; and that you can create and save your own templates for later use.
Users can choose the size of the card right from the beginning of the project either by going with one of the five standards available (Letter, A4, Greeting Card, Envelope and A6 Card) or by customizing the width, height and margins. Also, there are four different fold types to select from (Half Fold Tall, Half Fold Wide, Quarter Fold Tall and Quarter Fold Wide).
All options included are menu-sensitive, meaning that they change according to the selected menu. Project provides general choices for opening templates, saving your work as a template, set up the page, save the active document under Greeting Card Builder's own format (GCB) and work on it later or make the settings for the background (color fill and image).
Frilling up the card with additional elements is achievable under Add Pieces module, which offers the possibility of including both photos on your computer as well as clipart items or text in the card. The procedure can be done at a right click in the work area, regardless of the top menu you are under. The same works for editing, as the options are not at all overwhelming, including only minimal editing alternatives, such as setting an element under another one (all items are seen as distinct layers and can be handled as such), clearing all added "ornaments", making the element cast a shadow (you get to define it as well) or rotating it to the right or to the left.
The side panel should host all the elements that can help you give the card a dash of personality and originality, in neatly arranged tabs assigned for templates, backgrounds, loading a photo from disk, preset greetings for different situations (birthday, holiday, sympathy, thank you, thinking of you, baby, wedding/anniversary). With cliparts the list of options is wider as they are organized in categories like April's Fool, Birthday, Easter, Halloween, Mother's Day, New Year, Thanksgiving, Valentine's day, wedding, Graduation, etc., all containing at least seven of them (the richest area containing 52 images).
A set of 35 frames is at your disposal, ready to be filled by any image stored on your computer. There are different examples of different shapes and sizes, going from simple ones to the more complicated, heart shaped ones. If these are not to your taste, take a peek at the masks available. These are also as diverse as a woman's wardrobe and many as 67 of them.
Effects can make the images look a tad different, offering choices from grayscale, vertical flip, mirror, color inversion, brightness, auto-levels and blurring to scratch removal, edge sharpening, hue/saturation, auto color or auto contrast.
The best thing about all the elements that can be appended to the card is that you can see them beforehand and you will have an idea on how the result will look like.
Text options allow changing font type, color, size, style, background color, alignment and round radius, but unfortunately there is no preview available and you have to apply the changes to get a glimpse of how all the settings look. With the picture, the options permit cropping it to fit the frame or letting the software automatically choose the best fit.
There is absolutely nothing complicated about Greeting Card Builder, as everything is laid out in front of you and accessible with a click or two. All options are neatly arranged in a well-groomed interface offering easy access, regardless of the selected menu. Right clicking the elements in the interface opens the list of choices and you can move the layer behind or on top of other items.
Sending the cards can be done both by printing, in which case you benefit from a preview of the entire masterpiece, or send it electronically via e-mail directly from the application as it accesses the default mail client on your system. Additional alternatives are saving the image into a supported standard (BMP, GIF, JPG, PNG, TIF or TGA) or set it as desktop wallpaper (tile, center and stretch options included).
Closing the program will ask for confirmation of saving the current project, so there is no way to lose your work, all because of a slip of the hand.
Overall, Greeting Card Builder does a wonderful job with helping the user carry out the greetings easily and with the least effort. However, it would be extraordinary if there were more templates to choose from (although the fact that you can save your own templates needs not be overlooked) and more image editing options would greatly improve the software.
The Good
The looks are extraordinary, just as the ease of use. Users can enrich the list of already included templates with custom ones. Each element can be moved, rotated and resized in the card with the slightest effort from the user.
Working at a project can be interrupted and continued later with absolutely no problem, or you can send the results via email directly from the software, or save it in a standard image format.
The Bad
Enriching the list of elements available for integrating in the card would be a great step forward, just like the expansion of image editing options and effects.
The price may seem a bit high to some users, considering that there are no additional packages at the disposal of a registered user.
The Truth
You can customize the size and fill all four parts composing a card with well-designed elements, be they clipart, backgrounds, frames, masks or entire templates to build around.
Greeting Card Builder seems to have almost all it takes to become a great tool to work with around holidays or when a special event requires a card. It is flexible enough and started with the right foot. However, there is plenty of room for improvement in order to fit the price, but, all in all, it is a great tool.
Here are some snapshots of the application in action:
