5 Steps To Create Great Posters On Your Mac.

Mac users are no strangers to graphics software. Can you say Photoshop? Can you afford Photoshop?

What if you just want to create a nifty family poster, or some post cards, or a classy looking photo montage? Photoshop or Posterino?

These days great Mac software is popping up more frequently, and thanks to OS X’s built-in graphics capabilities, higher quality.

Posterino is to posters, post cards, and photo montages what iPhoto is to storing photos, or iTunes is to keeping music. Posterino is what you use.

Mac360 specializes in reviews of Mac software that we use ourselves. If we don’t review it, it’s because of one of two things. It’s not good enough, or we haven’t seen it yet.

Through the years I’ve worked with every Mac graphic and image application you can buy. All the big names from Photoshop to Illustrator to GraphicConverter to the utilities that create business cards and more.

Posters are not easily created in some of the more expensive Mac applications, but they’re an absolute snap in Posterino. Choose a template, grab an iPhoto album, and click. Presto Posterino. A poster.

Seriously, it’s that simple. The real trick is taking decent photos in the first place. The second trick is to choose from the selection of templates in Posterino. After those two steps, there are no other tricks.

Unless, of course, clicking on your mouse has been patented by someone and you don’t have permission to click. Hmmm. Can you say Microsoft?

I digress. Posterino’s tricks are where you don’t see them.

Open Posterino, select a template from the few dozen available (posters, postcards, etc.), select the size, then select portrait or landscape. Not hard so far, right?

A small version of the template shows up on the left side of Posterino’s window, with the iPhoto media browser on the right.

Find a photo, drag and drop to the template locations. Modify the template color scheme and orientation to fit your tastes.

Add or change borders, modify the text message, add drop shadows, even tilt the photos or images to various angles. Click, click, click. No more than five clicks makes great posters.

The last click to to create the poster (or postcard), which renders the image and gets it ready to send back to iPhoto for storage, save to you disk so you can upload to the internet or print, or send via email.

Preferences include image handling, panel positioning, sorting, grid color, and modifying the “postmark” with your own message (very clever). For custom work, you can even specify exact page sizes for the template and printing.

Postcards work the same way. Select the template, drop in photos, adjust, print or send. If you want more of what iPhoto does, and in a more professional layout tool, Posterino succeeds.

Think posters and postcards. They’re perfect for the holidays or to send because you want to. Do you create postcards or photo montage posters on your Mac? What’s your tool of choice?