What is Professor Franklin’s Print Platinum?
Streetwise Software’s Professor Franklin's Print Platinum version 1.3 is a greeting card program. Like other greeting card programs, you can create and print other items such as calendars, photo prints, scrapbooks, invitations, trading cards, and stickers.

Streetwise Software's web site promises that Professor Franklin’s Print Platinum "does it all" and "makes it so easy to sit down at your computer and create dazzling printed pages that will leave a lasting impression." They also say "Print Platinum is absolutely the highest quality print software available anywhere on the market ... and that's guaranteed or we'll give you your money back!"

This is the second Professor Franklin program I have reviewed. I've used several other greeting card programs over the years, including Broderbund's The Print Shop, American Greetings CreataCard, Print Artist, and Corel Print & Photo House.

What Does the Box Hold?
The software bundle I received included a User Guide and a CD-ROM (no box).

The 36-page User Guide has thirteen sections and a Table of Contents but no index. It’s digest sized and printed in black and white with legible text. While it has a copyright date of 2002, the same as the program CD, its contents refer to the previous version of the program, Photo Print Gold. For the most part this isn't a problem; however, the section on Using Kodak Photonet Online no longer applies.

Unfortunately, the Help File hasn't been updated either (CD file date: 08/11/1999). It contains the text of the User Guide but not the screen shots.

What’s Included in the Program?
The program includes a stationary gallery (cards, calendars, scrapbook pages, etc), photo-editing software, photo printing capabilities, and Professor Franklin’s Instant Photo Album.

Learning the Program
First, quickly read through the User Guide; ignore the section on Kodak Photonet and any references to it. Pay attention to the commands available in the Menu Bar and the icons used in the tool bars.

Second, start the program and explore it. Work on some useful projects such as a birthday, anniversary, or holiday card. Check out all the options and special effects.

Third, learn how to print multiple images on a sheet of paper. This is similar to school photo sheets; some programs and photographers refer to these as contact sheets. Many programs don't have this feature.

Running the Program
When you start Print Platinum you have to chose among Create a New Project, Open an Existing Project, Get Info on Other Products or Cancel.

If you choose Get Info on Other Products, you are connected to the Internet; MS Internet Explorer will open and bring up swsoftware. If you choose Open an Existing Project, the program will open a Windows Open File dialog box so you can continue working on a saved project.

If you choose Create a New Project then you must choose between Layouts and Designs.

If you choose Designs, the drop down boxes permit you to chose the type of item you want such as a greeting card or a scrapbook, a sub-category such as ocean animals or fine art, and finally individual layouts. [See image one.] Once you have made your selection, the template opens, and you can change the text, add more graphics, and apply effects to them. You can't apply effects to the images that are part of the design. However, you can export the page in many different graphics formats such as BMP, TIFF, and WMF.

You can only work on the front and inside of some greeting cards. Other programs I've used allow you to work on the backside of all cards.

If you open an image in a placeholder that needs to be rotated, make all your changes before you rotate the image. When I rotated images first and then applied special effects and edges, the program said it was making the changes but they never appeared on the screen. [See image two for a scrapbook page.]

If you choose Layouts, the drop down boxes permit you to choose the category, sub-category, and template you want. Sub-category and template selections change with the category you select. If you wish to have different sized pictures on a page, then choose Arrangements and Random Layouts. Then you have a choice of nine different Templates. [See image three for an example with special effects applied]

Printing Multiple Images
Streetwise Software's Web Site says, " You can automatically size and position up to 80 images on any single page with a single mouse click!" This statement is misleading. Once you have clicked on a frame in a Layout, opened Get Image, chosen a source, navigated to a single image, and opened it, then one click will do it. When you click to tell the program to place that image in all empty placeholders, it will place a copy of the image in each one. In addition, there are no 80-image Layouts although there is a 79-image Layout.

Their web site also said, "Select your photos from disk, the included photo album, scanner, or digital camera. The images will automatically be inserted into your page." It's a little more complicated than that. Before you select multiple photos to place in a Layout, you must individually select each placeholder that you want to place an image in. Then you have to select the images. Finally, you must tell the program to place the photos in the selected placeholders.

I found that when I placed photos from my digital camera (ranging from about 1MB to 2.5MB each) in the 79-image Layout, I could only add up to 7 images at one time. When I tried to add more than 7 images, the program told me it had insufficient memory. The program crashed several times while I was trying to add all the pictures I had taken at the LBJ Ranch to the 79- image Layout. I eventually gave up since it was taking too long. When I added only one photo to all the placeholders in the 79-image Layout, it went smoothly and quickly with no crashes.

While I was working on this review, my computer's boot files became corrupted, and I had to reformat the hard drive and reinstall Windows XP. I made a permanent large virtual memory file and I reinstalled Print Platinum before I updated Windows XP and reinstalled many of my other programs. It made a big difference in the behavior of Print Platinum. I was able to add 58 of the LBJ Ranch files to the 79-image Layout before the program crashed. I was able to add them 20 at a time as well. I saved the project frequently although it took 4 to 6 minutes each time. As a further test, I added images (ranging from 302 to 412 KB each) I had created in Flying Colors to the 79-image Layout. This time I was able to fill all 79 placeholders without a crash. Actually, since the final pictures are so small, the only uses I can think of for this layout is to make wrapping paper or pictures for lockets.

You can also add and print comments on the back of each photo.

Professor Franklin’s Instant Photo Album
Professor Franklin’s Instant Photo Album is a separate application that allows you to store and organize all your graphic images. You can run it on its own or from within Instant Photo Artist. It provides the Gallery photos and Clip Art images when you’re looking for images for your Instant Photo Artis t project. I found it harder to add my own images than in other catalog programs I’ve used.

Many graphics programs include a photo album component and you can get stand-alone as well. When you find one you like stick with it. Don't add your image files to every photo album in every program. If you do, you will use huge amounts of space on your hard drive for thumbnails.

Since I had previously installed Instant Photo Album on my computer, the install program for Print Platinum linked to the existing program.

PictureBuzz Print Center
The pictureBUZZ Print Center takes the place of Kodak Photone t. The pictureBUZZ software allows you to create greeting cards, T-shirt transfers, catalogs, etc. online. The content and projects appear to duplicate that in Print Platinum. When I visited the site in early October 2004, they were offering one month free. "The 12 month fee of $12.95 ($1.08 a month) is billed annually at the end of your trial period." If you have a high-speed Internet connection, this may be a viable option to buying Professor Franklin's Print Platinum and installing it on your hard drive.

Other Comments
Print Platinum has many special effects divided between Trim, FX, Edges, Touch-up, and Extras. [See image four.] You can only add special effects to one image at a time. You can only apply most of them to the whole image. Trim contains the Cookie Cutter and Eraser. FX contains Accents, Artistic, and Darkroom effects. Edges contains Edges, Borders, and Frames. Touch-up contains Retouch, the Dust & Scratch Brush and Red-eye Remover. I used the Dust & Scratch Brush to remove some of the pixilation in one of my Flying Colors images. It was only useful for large areas. The smallest brush is too large for the small areas. Retouch has the brightness, contrast, color correction, and focus tools. Extras contains the Transparency, Shadow, Rotation, and Flip tools. [See image five.]

The program comes with 73 stock photos, over 1,000 Layouts, and 75 True Type fonts including many unusual ones. [See image five.]

By the way, image five is an example of bad design. In real life, you would never use so many effects and fonts on one page. I only did it in order to show you as many of them as possible.

I had no problems printing my projects.

Bottom Line
While there's a lot to like about Professor Franklin's Print Platinum, I don't think that it lives up to Streetwise Software's boast that it's "absolutely the highest quality print software available anywhere on the market." High quality programs have up-to-date documents, illustrated Help Files, and Tutorials. I found the content skimpy -- it just doesn't have the range of other programs I've used. The CD only has 343 MB of data on it so there's plenty of room for tutorials, PDF files, and more graphic content.

Although I have a relatively powerful system, the program crashed much too often.

This is a good beginner's program. I found it easy to learn and use. It has a nice variety of special effects that are easy to apply. However, if you have been using recent versions of Broderbund's The Print Shop and American Greetings CreataCard, you may find this program too limited.

System Requirements
CPU: Pentium processor or higher RAM: 16 MB or more Operating system: Windows 95, 98, 2000, NT 4.0, ME, XP or higher Free disk space: 50 MB hard disk space for minimum install, 300 MB for a Complete Install CD-ROM Drive: 4X or faster with Windows drivers Monitor: SVGA with 16-bit color palette (the program can run using 256 colors but images will not display well) Display properties: 800 x 600 resolution recommended (running the program at 640 x 480, may require Auto Hiding the Windows taskbar in order to see the full menus and button bars.) Interface: Mouse or pointing device Inkjet Printer

Optional: Scanner or other TWAIN device and an Internet Browser

My System
I installed Print Platinum on an AllGen Computer Warehouse AMD XP 1600+ computer system with integrated S3 Graphics Pro Savage DDR 8MB display adapter, 1 GB RAM, and 3 Hard Drives totaling 240 GB. Its operating system is Windows XP Home Edition.

Vital Statistics
Streetwise Software Inc.
Mailing Address: 2801 Ocean Park Blvd. PMB 290, Santa Monica, CA 90405
Tel: 310-829-7827
Fax: 310-828-8258
Sales: 800-743-6765 (outside US call 310-829-7827)
Customer Service Hours: M-F 8am-3pm PST
Home Page
View some designs
T-shirts and specialty paper
E-mail

I’ve never noticed Professor Franklin's Print Platinum in local retail stores. Streetwise Software currently sells the program on their web site for $29.99 plus $7.95 for ground shipping. They say it's a limited time special offer, although it was in effect in June 2004.

When I visited their web site on 29 September 2004, they were offering several software bundles with discounts. In addition, when I added Print Platinum to my shopping cart, I was offered Professor Franklin's Instant Photo Artist for $19.99 (50% discount).