Disney's Print Studio -- Pooh and Friends

Reviewed by Sara Hartman
Published by Disney Interactive

Age Group: Age 4 to 8, Age 8 and Up
Type: Art/Creativity
Price: $20

Description:

Disney's Print Studio -- Pooh and Friends offers a wide range of personalized printing projects. This lends itself to hours of fun, and makes easy work of printing everything necessary for a Pooh-themed party from beginning to end, from invitations to name tags, place mats and place cards to banners to thank-you notes. You can also make calendars and bookmarks for gifts, accompanied by personalized greeting cards. There are even fax page and calling card projects for junior executives!

Features:

  • May be run from CD or hard disk
  • Easy point-and-click interface led by Pooh and Piglet
  • 19 print projects including greeting cards, bookmarks, calendar pages and more
  • More than 175 images including characters, patterns, and borders
  • Printable in color or black and white
  • Project ideas and print media suggestions

Technical Aspects:

Although this program is in PC format only, this was a must-have program for our three-year-old Pooh fanatic. So I dutifully loaded the copy of Virtual PC that was languishing in my software drawer onto my Power Macintosh (603e/240MHz processor), then installed Windows 95 and Disney's Print Studio -- Pooh and Friends. I opted for the full installation onto my hard drive because (a) I have plenty of disk space and (b) I am one of those people who become annoyed at having to load CDs. The software installed and ran beautifully on the Virtual PC emulator, so I am positive that it would run just fine on an actual PC.

Printed system requirements note that 15 MB of hard drive space are necessary for a minimum install. According to the install program, 30.5 MB of free hard drive space are necessary for the full install; on my hard drive the program takes 28.3 MB.

Graphics are plentiful, varied, sharp and beautiful. I recommend printing a sample from the envelope project onto a sheet of draft paper before feeding an envelope -- the orientation was different than usual for my printer. (Macintosh users note: print quality through the emulation is not as sharp as printing directly from a PC, but is acceptable so long as graphics resolution is set as high as possible in the printer preferences.)

The program handbook contains easy-to-follow instructions for both installing AND uninstalling the program. It also contains directions on using the program, tips for designing and printing projects, and troubleshooting advise.

Report and Conclusions:

According to the program handbook, "You'll be amazed how easy it is to design your own great-looking masterpieces featuring all your favorite characters from the Hundred Acre Wood", but the characters are actually limited to Pooh, Piglet, Tigger and Eeyore. That's too bad for Rabbit, Owl and Kanga & Roo fans, but on the bright side, there are lots and lots of graphics featuring the fabulous foursome, individually and together and including scenes for various seasons and holidays. The optional background patterns and borders are equally plentiful and varied and quite pleasing.

I WAS amazed at how easy this program is to use. Pooh and Piglet are engaging as they lead the user through the program. While project ideas are presented as each different project type is opened, it is very easy to customize the projects to the user's fancy. My 11-year-old used the program to create personalized bookmarks to distribute to her classmates on Valentine's Day. They were lovely, unique, and inexpensive. Our 3-year-old (the Pooh fanatic) is really too young to run the program, as reading and writing skills are necessary, but she loves the coloring sheets.

Highly recommended for Pooh fans everywhere.




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