 The magazine of the Melbourne PC User Group Corel Print House Magic - The Wizard of Oz Edition Bernadette Houghton bernieh@iaccess.com.au |
 |
In celebration of the 60th anniversary of The Wizard of Oz, Corel has joined
forces with Warner Brothers to offer the latest edition of Print House Magic complete with a range of
graphics from the movie. You'll find photos, clipart, objects, borders and backdrops of Dorothy, Toto, the
Yellow Brick Road, the Scarecrow, the Tin Man and all the other beloved Oz characters and places. There are
templates galore, including a range of party projects such as invitations, hats, loot bags, masks and games,
so you can design your own Oz theme party.
The Print House Magic suite includes three separate programs:
- Print House 4 is the drawing/graphics arm, for producing graphic projects, such as cards, stationery, banners and so on.
- Photo House 3 is the image-editor, for re-touching and dressing up photos and other bitmap images.
- Family & Friends 1.2 is a composite calendar/address book/database.
The Oz edition comes on four CD-ROMs and contains an extensive range of editable graphics (not all Oz images), including 25,000 pieces of clipart, 10,000 photos, 300+ True Type fonts, 1200+ greeting cards and 1300+ samples and templates.
New features
If you've been reading PC Update as diligently as I hope, you'll be aware that Corel has produced several incarnations of Print House Magic, with each edition building upon the last.
This was true, too, for Print Office (PC Update, November 1998) which contained what was in effect Print House 3.1. Print House 4, however, bypasses Print House 3.1, building instead upon Print House 3.0. As a consequence, it lacks some of Print House 3.1's features, including multipage support.
Most of the new features in this release are usability enhancements focusing on the Notebook. Corel has also thrown in a few stray new features, of which Photo House's object-editing capability is the most significant. Family & Friends remains pretty much unchanged (right down to some obvious bugs) from v1.0. In brief, Magic's new features include:
- Refinements to the Notebook include the ability to float it or switch it off, extra navigation buttons, image flyouts so you can preview multiple graphics simultaneously, a new toolbar which places frequently used features closer to hand and a search facility which you can use to look for graphics based upon keyword, category or image type
- Within Photo House, you can manipulate several objects at once and control how they blend with other objects (object transparency)
- Internet refinements include the ability to publish projects in HTML format, view image size and quality information, and support for image maps (i.e. clickable areas that link to other URL pages viewed in a Web browser)
- A new background layer in Print House, so you can protect objects from inadvertent changes by sending them to the background (or foreground as the case may be)
- A snap-to-grid facility within Print House makes it easier to position objects, and paragraph frames turn grey when empty, making them easier to find
- Photo House has a new Warp special effect, enabling you to "pinch" and "punch" images in various directions.
In previous reviews, I've rated Print House well, with Photo House lagging a bit behind. This time, Print House still gets a hearty thumbs-up, but Photo House rates almost as well (its selection features could still do with some improvement). If you already have the previous version of Print House Magic, the main incentive for upgrading is the Wizard of Oz graphics and Photo House's new object capabilities; the ability to switch the Notebook off is nice too. The other enhancements are certainly useful and definitely attractive, but probably aren't worth the cost of upgrading for themselves alone. If you're a home user needing an entry-level graphics program, Corel Print House Magic is a good choice.
Reprinted from the April 1999 issue of PC Update, the magazine of Melbourne PC User Group, Australia
