The Printshop For Mac
Review

The Printshop For Mac Version 2
The Software MacKiev Company

Price: $59.95 Single User; $89.95 Family Pack
www.mackiev.com

If you use iDVD and its themes for home or professional use, you can’t afford not to have The Printshop For Mac Version 2 software. I’ve been using this latest version since it was introduced at the Mac World conference last January for all my DVD labels and cover designs. While I could also do DVD cover layouts in InDesign or Apple’s Pages, The Printshop offers a less time consuming integration with iPhoto, iDVD, and iTunes that you simply won’t find in the larger, more expensive design programs.

The Printshop offers a vast array of layout templates and tools for all types of design projects—letterheads, brochures, mailing labels, business and greeting cards, signs, certificates, and even post-it notes. Of course, there are pre-designed templates with stock graphics for all these type of projects, but you’re free to start from scratch and make custom designs.

Though I often find stock graphics and predesigned themes a little cheesy or unprofessional, I use iDVD themes for most of my DVD wedding and photography projects. Most of these themes are elegant and customizable, and on top of that they help make my wedding and photography packages affordable to my clients, saving me time and resources in doing design work.

If you’ve used iDVD before, you know it offers a couple of dozen themes for pretty much all occasions. Well, The Printshop includes DVD templates to match all the iDVD themes, providing a professional edge to your DVD inserts and label designs.

Because The Printshop is integrated with most of Apple’s iLife programs, you can import image files directly from iPhoto or from the Finder. The Printshop basically uses the layered approach that you find in Photoshop or Pages. Though it doesn’t offer a separate visual oriented layer’s palette like in Photoshop, it does offer menus, tool palettes and keyword shortcuts that help you layout your designs.

There’s of course, ways to manipulate fonts, add color and texture to backgrounds, and insert images and shapes. Typically, for iDVD themes I simply delete whatever photos that are used in the templates and replace them with my own. I also use the opacity and soft edge features to create a nice blend with the background and between one or more photos I’m using for a DVD cover design. I also like how Apple’s Color’s palette and color sampler can be used within The Printshop which provides more control over your color selections and creations.

While the font manipulation doesn’t have the total control that I will find in Photoshop (such kerning or type on a path), it provides enough controls to get the job done. It even offers a scrapbook palette that holds many of the graphics (DVD icon, my business logo, etc.) that I use on nearly all my projects.

And just recently I discovered that The Printshop also has a Photo Workshop feature that enables you to crop, enhance, and adjust the color of imported photos. Again, we’re not talking about heavy duty Photoshop manipulation, but just enough features to get the job done and still look relatively professional.

After designing the DVD cover layout, I use another template for the DVD insert case layout. Matching iDVD themes of course are also provided in The Printshop. (These same themes apply to to jewel case formats as well.)

I print both layouts using the Epson Stylus Photo R200 which is set up for printing directly on printable DVD stock. I find using quality matt paper sufficient for printing out the inserts, but thin glossy paper probably would give the prints a more professional edge.

In the end, I can offer my clients a clean, classy, and design-coordinated project that looks as if it took days instead of a few hours to complete.

While there are not printed books or manuals for how to use The Printshop, it does comes with a 103 page PDF formatted guide that will get you up and running if you need it. But honestly, I have found the program to be very intuitive, and the more I work with it the more I discover its simple and useful features.