14 DAY TRIAL // Happy Holidays
Let's face it, the Christmas and Holiday Card Frame Pack can be a lifesaver when it comes to putting together a decent frame for those holiday pictures you're getting ready to send out to friends and family.
Frame My Photos have come out with their latest holiday release pack for 2005 and I thought I'd try it out to see if it can save me some shopping time and money.
What's Inside
The install was fairly simple and as soon as I opened up the program I was on my way toward putting together a cozy little frame to send out to anyone and everyone I felt like. The interface wasn't hard to work with at all and it was pretty intuitive at the same time.
You go to frame the photo of your choice and click it out of a directory and onto the screen it shows. You have a few useful options that let you scale the size of your photo, edit text, flip your photo and/or rotate it if you so choose. You also select the size of your total project (8 X 10, 10 X 8, 4 X 6, or 6 X 4).
You then load your holiday frame pack and choose the frame you want to work with. If you don't feel like you have enough to choose from, there's a link that takes you directly to their site which lets you purchase a bunch of other packs, plus the full Holiday pack. All you need to do from there on is adjust and tweak your picture to fit nicely within the desired frame.
A benefit that this application includes is the ability to specify the .jpeg compression ratio. So if you want to save some space, there's nothing stopping you (but remember that lower compression means lower quality).
When it comes to features, it has most of the necessary tools for tweaking a picture, but you might get a little frustrated at times. If you resize your picture to fit within the frame you've allocated it you might notice that you start leaving some unused space within the frame itself. Thus making you load it onto an image editor to resize/reshape or crop out what you don't need.
The program on the whole was easy enough to use without too much fuss. I was able to take any picture and turn it into something I can send to friends and family later on. This pack is free, but you have to remember that this is just a sample of their holiday pack, the real thing costs a little more, since you can't create/add any of your own packs.
The Good
This program is quite easy to use and intuitive enough for any user to play around with and create some quality greeting cards or just quick and easy scrapbooking. They also have good support that leads directly to their site.
The Bad
I feel as though they should have added a few more features. Yes, adding text and resizing are important, but I would love to have a little more power when editing an image, it lacks some essential tools that would make this program great.
The Truth
For a quick and easy scrapbook maker of holiday cards, this is your product. It's definitely easy to use and simple enough to get the job done quickly if you're in a rush. It lacks some tools that you'd like to see added. Don't get confused, the freeware is this just for this sample pack, the full Holiday pack costs around $40.00. Remember... I'm only reviewing the sample and not the final product.
Check out some screenshots below.
