Without a doubt this holiday season you’ll be taking plenty of photographs. And, mostly likely you’ll store those photos in your Mac’s iPhoto. Chances are good you’ll select a few good photos, email them to friends and family, and maybe even print out a few.
iPhoto is good for that. And iPhoto is free (assuming you’ve paid the admission charge of iLife ‘09 or a new Mac). Wouldn’t it be cool to print your photos a gazillion ways in your own photo studio on your Mac? For free?
A Free Photoshop-like Mac App
Don’t get me wrong. I don’t want to compare the popular Portraits and Prints application to Photoshop. That’s just not fair.
Photoshop costs hundreds of dollars and requires a two year course to master. Portraits and Prints is point and click simple. Oh, and it’s free.
For the rest of us, that’s about all we need. iPhoto is fine. Portraits and Prints does more but doesn’t cost more. In fact, even if you don’t use iPhoto you can use this handy Mac photo printing utility.
What does Portraits and Prints do that iPhoto doesn’t? And why is it free? Patience, Grasshopper. All knowledge comes to him who is patient. And a Mac user.
The terminology is a little different. P & P creates Catalogs which stores your photos. It’s not iPhoto. But it lets you organize iPhoto photos to create better printing through Templates.
Templates are page layouts. iPhoto has some, so you can print multiple photos on a single page in an atrsy-craftsy way. P & P does even more. It comes with all kinds of templates and more can be downloaded.
The Template Manager lets you fine tune a layout, for example, make up a Christmas card that’s personalized for your family. Over 200 templates are available. Choosing which photos to print is also easy. P & P gets you into iPhoto without using iPhoto, so your photos are a click away.
You can add text to any image, print images, even multiple images on a single sheet of photo paper. Like iPhoto, P & P comes with a number on single click tools to enhance the images, and all your settings are stored in the Catalog.
Why Is P & P Really Free?
That’s a fair question. Portraits and Prints is free because so many other Mac applications are free.
Free is good, right? Not so fast, my young Grasshopper. Apple’s iPhoto is free. Portraits and Prints does a little more than iPhoto and it’s been around since 2001.
The folks who make P & P also make ChronoSync, one of my favorite back up tools. They make money on that but not so much on P & P.
Since it’s tough to compete against free, they’ve decided to give away Portraits and Prints. It’s just math. And a holiday spirit. And maybe some kind of tax write off. Regardless, you’ll like the enhancements that P & P has that improve your photos, make lovely photos you can print or email, and it’s just plain old difficult to beat the price.
