While consumer publishing suites continue to flourish in the PC market, Macintosh offerings of such popular applications have been reduced to only a small handful that can go years without being updated. Print Explosion, from Nova Development, is a Macintosh-only application that aims to bolster that segment of the Macintosh software market.
Print Explosion's features are dazzling. The product includes 4,000 ready-made designs and 50,000 of the company's well-known graphics, including 1,200 photographs and 1,000 fine art images. For typographic freedom, Print Explosion boasts 500 fonts, although multiple type styles reduces the actual number of font families down to around 100.
An incredibly useful addition to Print Explosion is the large, 500 page user manual that accompanies the CD. Apart from offering detailed and easy-to-follow instructions for an application that's already easy to use, the manual features over 400 pages of thumbnailed graphics for all the artwork included on the CD. No more viewing indistinguishable thumbnails on screen or having to wait for an image to load based solely on its title; simply find the image you want in the well categorized user manual and then load it from the hard drive or CD (only 7,000 graphics are installed onto the hard drive).
Print Explosion carries some reasonable but hefty system requirements: a PowerPC processor is required as well as almost 200 MB of hard disk space is needed for installation, along with 16 MB of RAM.
When Print Explosion is loaded it presents you with a choice of twelve different kinds of projects. Once a project is selected numerous templates, divided into categories, are available; or you can choose a blank page and create your own original design. The templates for the most part are well designed and allow you to create a visually impressive document in minutes.
Print Explosion's interface consists of a toolbar and two floating tools palettes. The entire interface is very intuitive and easy to use, and virtually all of the application's functionality can be accessed through the menus which are easy to understand and well explained in the user manual.
Print Explosion also offers some impressive features for a consumer application, including full suppport for PostScript (EPS) graphics files, even on printers that don't support PostScript. Complex text manipulations are also a breeze to accomplish with Print Explosion.
If you've been looking for a solid and flexible publishing suite for your Mac look no further than Print Explosion. It offers more features than competing products on any platform, an easy to use interface, and a very practical user manual at a great price.
