Showing posts with label business cards printing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label business cards printing. Show all posts

Tuesday, November 1, 2011

Business Card Composer


If you are searching for the profession editor, specifically designed to allow its users to make versatile, professionally looking, and visually appealing business cards, take a look on Business Card Composer, and you may find that it is exactly what you need. The software offers the complete solution for creating and printing excellent business cards, calling cards and badges.

While many people are reluctant to use self-printed business cards, since they may look less professional and acceptable due to the paper and printing quality, there are some considerations, when you may find that for some particular occasions and purposes, printed cards are acceptable perfectly well.

When Business Card Composer helps you:
  • For a trade show you can create custom business cards to reflect special events and promotions, or simply indicate your booth number.
  • Your phone or e-mail has changed, and you can't wait until your company makes new cards for you.
  • You need to create small runs of cards for temporary staff.
  • You have several jobs and want to have separate cards for each.
  • You want to create a nice card with your contact information to give to the people you meet day to day.

Great flexibility, customization, and convenience of making this cards at home anytime with no associated costs (except for the software itself, paper, and printer ink) makes a strong point in favor of the software use.

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Main Features

Graphics
  • More than 1,000+ clipart images (40,000+ clipart images with Extras Pack).
  • More than 740 ready-made designs, organized in categories.
  • More than 100 unique image masks.
  • Apply Mac OS X Core Image filters to your images.

Design Business Cards
  • Create regular, folded and CD-R cards.
  • Horizontal and vertical layouts supported.
  • Full support for double-sided cards. Both sides are saved in the same document, allowing you to switch between sides on a fly and print them with ease.
  • Smart guides help to arrange design elements neatly.
  • Option to manually set object position and size.
  • Adjust vertical spacing or distribute objects vertically and horizontally.
  • Horizontal and vertical object alignment.
  • Make use of adjustable shadows with color settings.
  • 3 alignment modes, including text alignment within text boxes.
  • The application supports object editing on Background and Foreground layers, which helps to create advanced card designs.
  • Special text labels for marking phone number, e-mail, etc.
  • Google maps integration lets you import map image onto the card.
  • Generate Code 128 barcode, as well as 2-dimensional barcodes, Data Matrix and QR (Quick Response).
  • Integration with Apple iPhoto and Aperture lets preview and use pictures from the iPhoto libraries.

Working with Graphics
  • Tint images with colors, tile and rotate them, as well as change their transparency.
  • Fill different objects with Linear or Radial gradients.
  • Insert images in many supported formats — TIFF, JPEG, GIF, PDF, EPS and more.
  • 7,000 photo objects with transparent background can be applied to any picture to create mixed designs.
  • Search images by keywords.
  • Image cropping allows you to crop images directly in Composer.
  • A custom image can be used as a mask in addition to the predesigned masks.
  • Select multiple objects with the ability to resize and rotate them as a single item.
  • Converting a text object into an image allows you to apply image effects to it.
  • Adjustable export to EPS.
  • Art Text integration helps to create high quality textual graphics, headings, logos, icons and buttons.

Technologies
  • Universal Binary version that allows running natively on both PowerPC and Intel-based Macintosh computers.
  • Integration with Apple Address Book — drags and drop contacts right onto your cards.
  • Integration with iPhoto lets preview and use pictures from the iPhoto libraries.
  • Search images in Google right from Business Card Composer.
  • Images from a custom folder can be used along with the built-in clipart.
  • Generate fancy random backgrounds with a click of the button.
  • Order your cards to be printed and mailed to you from an online print shop.
  • The counter feature allows you to numerate cards and assign each card a unique number.
  • Text File Data support allows reading data from text files. This can be helpful when creating badges for a conference, etc.
  • Merge Image functionality allows to import and auto-replace images from Address Book, iPhoto and Finder. This can be used for creating badges and printing iPhoto thumbnails.
  • Spotlight support allows the system to search a text within Business Card Composer documents.
  • Quick Look technology support allows you to view the content of a file without even opening it.

Usability
  • 3-step Assistant to get started quickly.
  • About 700 supported business card paper for ink jet and laser printers, from Avery, APLI, Decadry, Sigel, A-One and other manufacturers.
  • Use custom layouts for unsupported card stock, greeting cards, badges and other kinds of labels.
  • Customizable export to PDF and TIFF allows saving your design in a format appropriate for sending to a professional print shop.
  • Use export to JPEG format for sending business cards via e-mail.
  • Address set-up option in Preferences allows you to set specific address fields order for different countries.
  • “Set address field in a line” allows to modify two-lined address from Address Book into one line automatically.
  • Ruler and measurement units save you time on editing data.

Print Cards
  • Printer calibration allows fine-tuning the printer for accurate results.
  • Cut marks can be printed — helpful for printing on non-perforated paper.
  • Control the number of cards you want to print and the position on the sheet from where to start printing.
  • Duplex printers support for printing double-sided cards.
  • New printing technology allows for choosing among 3 printing methods. You can either print cards for yourself, or print one design for several people, or print multiple designs on one sheet.
  • In the printing process, the preview window with the additional settings displays your modifications on the fly.
  • The Text to Curve feature (using export options) lets you transform the document into vector image. This will help to avoid problems with font absence when you send a document to a printshop.

Business Card Composer Pricing (includes 1,000 images):
  • single license - $34.95
  • family pack (up to 5 seats) - $59.95




Thursday, October 6, 2011

Printable Basic Business Cards from Printfree.com


Online services PrintFree offers the site visitors to add their own text and print their own basic business cards directly from the website for free with the ink jet printer, connected to the computer.

Directions for making your own basic business cards

You don't have to register, log in, or pay us to use PrintFree site. No strings or hidden conditions are attached to this offer. Here, you can play with your text, appearance, and content.  Best of all you can make them right now and start giving them away right away.

Just add your text and print away. These are very conservative on ink usage to keep printing costs down. You get forms to make variations of cards using two basic types of paper:
  • First is the perforated 2" X 3Ѕ" style commonly found in office supply stores. These sheets have a half inch border on the top and bottom, and a three quarter inch border on each side, 10 per sheet. Due to inherent borders added by your web browser, these will be centered slightly different from card to card. The perforations and high quality paper do make it easy to make very professional cards.
  • Second, you can format with lines for regular, non-perforated paper. These will be just a hair smaller in height than the other cards, and the lines will be guides, since you will have to cut out the cards yourself. With care these can have a very professional look as well. Use a good quality heavyweight card or photo style paper for best results. Set your printer settings to high quality.
    You will only be printing text here, so ink usage is minimal.

Chose the one of two forms, which you are going to use and select from 5 available color templates:
·         Black.  All the print on this card is black.
·         Red.  The title on this card is red. All the other print on this card is black.
·         Blue. The title on this card is Blue. All the other print on this card is black.
·         Green. The title on this card is Green.  All the other print on this card is black.
·         Mixed. These are full colored cards in five different colors. 

I chose the Mixed color scheme with Lines to create a sample. After entering the data, you can almost instantly generate 10 cards conveniently placed and ready for printing.

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The drawback of the service is low customization ability and no option to add images and graphic. But, if you need to create them fast, on the go, and for free, that might be an acceptable solution.