Your Mac Puts Your Own Photos On Stamps.

What was I thinking? I missed the perfect gift for the holidays. PictureItPerfect is a Mac application that lets you make legal stamps using your own pictures from iPhoto.

No more Elvis or dead Presidents. Send mail with your or your kids on the stamps. It’s simple, fun, works like you’d expect it to work if it was not legal, except that it is.

The latest version of PictureItPerfect from Endicia takes your photos and turns them into stamps.

This is one of those nifty applications that just makes so much sense that you’re sure it’s illegal. I can’t believe I missed this application and didn’t try it out before the holidays.

What a great gift idea. Postage stamps with your own photo where there used to be some famous figure, a dead president, or a rock singer (now working at Burger King in Memphis).

PictureItPostage seamlessly integrates with iPhoto or your iSight camera, giving you a very easy way to create postage from any photo on your Mac.

For photos you’ve stored in iPhoto, it’s just ‘click’ and you’re on your way to stamp collecting. Uh, stamp making.

The newest version has tools which let you zoom, rotate, crop and apply filters to make your photo postage particularly pleasant and perfect.

Since I blew it and didn’t get this review in time for the holidays, think of the other ways to make a gift that can be remembered, saved, and used.

It’s very simple. Select a photo. Drop it into the design window. Add effects as needed. Send away for printing. Click. Click. Click.

What else? Photos have to be acceptable, so no nude photos, please. Your recipients postal carrier has a union, you know.

You’ll also need Mac OS X Tiger as there are special graphics built in to Tiger which make the cool effects possible in PictureItPerfect.

You don’t have to use iPhoto. Any standard digital image can be used. The actual stamp ends up being 1.17-inches by 2.35 inches and takes a little less than two weeks to get printed (special paper with sticky stuff on the back).

The postage comes in a variety of flavors (prices, not the sticky stuff on the back). There’s Postcard Stamps, 20 per sheet.

Same with First Class Stamps. There’s also an oversize First Class Stamp at 52-cents per stamp, 20 to a sheet.

So, you’re paying a premium to use them as plain old stamps. The value is the photo, so the stamps make great gifts (whether they’re ever used or not), and make excellent gifts as regular stamps on wedding invitations, social invitations, and so on.

I apologize for not digging this one up back in early December as PictureItPerfect would make a great addition to the holiday gift list (though $20 worth of “stamps” could look cheap to some giftees).

Click Here for the details page and the download link. The application that creates the stamps is free. Only the stamps cost money.

Tera Patricks
You’re right. This would have been an excellent gift idea in early December. Still, there are plenty of opportunities coming up. Valentines, Mother’s Day, Graduations.

Jack D. Miller
This is not a guy thing, right? How many guys are going to buy stamps with photos of their kids or dogs? This is a solution looking for a problem.

Alexis Kayhill
Pretty slick, in a practical yet pretentious way. I wouldn’t use these stamps to pay bills, but I would put them on wedding invitations or special occasion announcements.