5 comments about Datapilot Pix'N Tunes.

1. Program was a little tricky, but after about 5 minutes of messing around it was very easy to use. Comes in very handy and worth every penny i spent.



2. The Pix n' Tunes can deliver neither! The phone-end connector is poorly designed and looses connection easily if moved slightly.
   The software goes through endless installations of drivers and still does not "find" the phone (Verizon LG-VX5300), or rather it will at times identify the phone but then refuse to communicate with it.
   I would expect better from a piece of shareware.
   You would think that with so many camera phones out there that somebody would have a workable transfer solution?



3. I suppose if your phone is supported by this product it would be fine. I can't really say because my phone didn't work with it. Although I was under the impression that it was supposed to. After it didn't work, I went directly to their website and downloaded the version that was supposed to work with my phone and so far it hasn't worked either. I can't even get the program to launch. I've tried to email them about the problem and haven't recieved anything helpful. The one message they sent to me didn't help. I haven't had a chance to call the service phone number yet due to lack of time, but that is my next step.
   
   If you buy it make double sure that your phone is supported first. Otherwise it is a waste of time and money.



4. What I sucky product. Installed the software, did an update and my phone was not listed in the software even though it was on the website. I emailed techsupport and it took the, 5 days to get back to me. They said to do another update so I did. This time my phone was on the list, selected it, it was detected and said it was ready to go and that my phone supported both features of the software. Then when I tried to transfer an image or whatever or a song to the phone and it says that my phone is not supported. I decided to to look into a refund and find out that they charge a $9.95 processing fee to refund the download-able version!! I only payed 16 for it, what an awful company and an awful product. Stay Away!!!



5. I bought the data cable, and then downloaded the software from their site. First of all, the photo downloading software doesn't work. It starts to download, then fails and tells me to reboot my phone. It does this over and over. The only reason I bought the product was to download photos, which it will not do. Second of all, AFTER you buy the software they tell you that they will charge you $9.99 to return it - even the downloaded version. I am going to return the cable and dispute the charge on the software, because it's a defective product that doesn't work.

5 comments about Art Explosion Greeting Card Factory Deluxe 5.0.

1. This is the third Art Explosion product I've owned. I agree with the user who said the "canned" cards could be better, but if you're a user like me who likes to design your own projects, this is a fantastic program. It doesn't make me feel like I'm locked into presets with my hands tied, banging against a program that's not as imaginative as I am.
   
   It's got lots of art, finally searchable in this version! The best of it loads to your hard drive, the rest is available on the disks. The art is divided into vector and raster images, one being "fine art" and the other clip art. Also, there are photographs and the ability to import your own graphics and photos. You can tint, fade, control transparency, crop, draw, even freehand...just great versitility. There's even a sentiment library to provide you with words for your occasion.
   
   I've NEVER seen a program that has better text editing. There are preset galleries to automatically affect your text, or you can make your own using drop shadow, line and character spacing, fill with texture, three different controlable gradients, two shaping option dropdowns...it's just about limitless.
   
   And it's so much more than cards! There are 15 major menu choices that proceed to the subfolders of choices for projects, both preset and blanks. I used the preformatted web slide shows to put together our family photo greeting for the holidays, again, easy and versitile and not a glitch in the web experience.
   
   If there's one drawback I'd like to see Art Explosion improve on, it's the font selection process. It comes with a lot of fonts, but with no viewer or way to make a selection of which ones you want to install except to tediously wade through folder after folder of alphabetized font files, opening them to the famous "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog." Other than that, this software's nearly perfect and only as limited as you are.



2. I have used Greeting Card Factory Deluxe for quite awhile and just upgraded to 5.0. I frequently like to send electronic greetings and have done so with no problems in the previous version. In 5.0 I went to a lot of trouble to design my own electronic greeting but when I went to send it there was no option to do so. The instructions say that the option to send such a greeting is under the file menu as it was in previous versions. However, it isn't there. It isn't just greyed out. It isn't there at all. This is a disappointment to me.



3. Very pleased with the program. It was quick and easy to install, and after just a few minutes I was able to print out my first card. Although I have not gotten past using the basics, I am looking forward to trying out more of the options. The selections are really nice and have a great variety of NICE cards and is not overpowered with SILLY ones. I also used the the t-shirt selection and was delighted with the results.
   Thanks for a great product.



4. This product is amazing! I have been using it steadily since the day it arrived and my friends and co-workers can't believe it when I show them the finished products. Using my own digital photos, I've been able to make greeting cards, photo cards and even electronic greetings. I'd recommend this product for anyone interested in creating their own cards using the graphics that come with the program or photographic images of your own.



5. I love making my own cards & personalizing them. I was disappointed when my American Greeting card program quit working and found they no longer made it. So, I gave this a try and it is just as good, if not better.

4 comments about ClickArt 950K v2 (2008).

1. This product is awesome. It comes with all images inside the box with an easy search tool for finding the right image. I use it for everything. And I can just drag and drop the image into the program I am working in. I highly recommend it.



2. I purchased this product and I was very disappointed! In fact, I returned it. All the images are low resolution and cannot be used anywhere except on websites. They are not print quality and; therefore, cannot be used for any print media such as books, brochures, advertising projects, newspapers, magazines, etc. I think vendors who sell clipart and stock photography should be REQUIRED to list the resolution of all the images they are selling. Plus, alot of the images are repeated, just in different sizes and file types. It's not 950,000 images and they are not print quality resolution; therefore, useless to most of us.



3. I've been using ClickArt for a few weeks now and it's pretty good. I used it's previous incarnation of The Big Box of Art which was good, this now has a nicer looking search screen and retains it's excellent search facility. I'm not convinced that there are many more decent images than in the BBA 350,000, but it's enough for what I want (making teaching materials and soon to be making a website). I am finding though that half of my images I'm now pulling off the internet via a Google Image search. My main gripe is that having a few DVDs instead of lots of CDs is great, but it can take quite a while to bring up the image you want extract (so I may try loading the DVDs onto my hard drive).
   In summary useful to me and worth the price.



4. Just what I was looking for, have much to choose from now when I do posters and scheduled event updates

5 comments about Photo Objects 50,000 Vol 2.

1. I've bought Photo-Objects Vol I and waited to buy Vol II. When you install the search engine of Vol I, you have the option of displaying Vol II photos or not. Just turn it on and discover what you're missing...



2. As I went to look for photo objects for my firm, I saw two people standing there holding a box of Hemera's Photo Objects. I couldn't help but tell these two people that the product is worth buying. They have their own design studio and Hemera Photo Objects Volume II is definitely worth owning!

   For my business, Hemera's products have saved me a lot of time and money. With Volume 2 of the series, it featured an OS X version which I have been looking for and the search for photo objects in different categories is a blessing.

   This review is for the updated version for OS X for my MAC G4.

   The new search engine works beautifully and the program will first install the thumbnails (I recommend having quite a bit of drive space... If you are a graphic designer, I'm assuming that you do already). Thus when you type a word, you will see the thumbnails correspond to that word. Those that are bright and colored are for the version you own, if it's faded - those photos are from the other version (in this case VERSION I) that you may want to purchase.

   I have had the chance to read the reviews on this product and here's the nitty gritty. For those who are professionals and non-professionals who are looking for photo objects that are non hi-res (600x600) with the option to save as 300DPI, you will love this program.

   For designers - To get the best use for these images for bigger print sizes, I save the files as a transparent PNG, instead of TIF when I need to get the image for a project utilizing a larger dimension. Work with your desktop publishing program and export to EPS and then use your Distiller to make the PDF.

   If you want a very hi-res version of the photo object, then you will need to purchase it from the company. There are many awesome photos in this collection. With 50,000 images...that is a lot. Sure, there are multiple ones of the same photo but my gosh...for the price. You can't beat that - for many stock photos, it cost $[money]+ for 100 photos. In this case, 50,000 for less than a $[money].

   I can't comment on the PC version of this software but for those using the new operating system for the MAC, make sure that you find out that it is the OS X compatible version (the OS X logo on the front of the box).

   Do I have a gripe? Not really. If anything, after seeing the photos that are faded out in the search box (the photos for Version I, which I definitely want to buy it now), I wish I picked up Version I as well. And that's definitely what I'm going to do next.




3. As stated on the other reviews, I agree that this package has way too much repeated images. Expect to see over 232 balloons(some in same colors too!), and countless pictures of eggs.
   This package needs heavy image editing. I have a feeling the package will end up half the size if all the repeated images were taken out.
   Good side to this is that it is very affordable. Though it has a lot of repeats it is worth having. There are still lot of selections to choose from. Just dig dig and dig.

   The search engine works very well. It¡¯s pretty easy to locate images with it.
   If you have about extra 4.27GB of space in your computer, I strongly recommend copying all the images from 8 CDs to your hard drive for ease of use. Or else, it will constantly ask you to put in different CD each time you are looking for a different image. I don¡¯t know how it's organized but let¡¯s say you are looking for a rose(just an example), 3 out of 5 rose will be on one CD and the rest will be in the other CD. It¡¯s a pain to keep changing CD¡¯s.
   For window XP users, you do have to download the latest upgrade from Hemera website.
   Personally I think Hemera Photo-Objects 50K Vol I has more interesting selection of images than Vol II.
   Either way, if you are a designer this will be pretty nice package to own.




4. Maybe I am naive but I had assumed these images were in a usable format. Instead, you have to export them, one by one, via a cumbersome 5-step process which is quite pointless and only serves to slow you down. This is not particularly useful to a designer. I just wanted some clip art. Now I see why they charge so little -- they cripple you!
   
   Also I concur that the images are not nearly as good a quality as Hemera would have you believe. All in all, though I love the quantity of images, the quality (and usability) is deeply lacking. Oh, and little would you guess, but if you want more than one computer to be able to use this library (i.e. over a network) you have to call them for a bulk license. Come on! That's what we designers use software like Portfolio for. Not the freeware-quality Hemera Clip Art Thing (tm).
   
   I had high hopes. Now I feel generous in offering two stars for any such products.



5. The Hemera "Photo Clip Art 150,000" contains almost all the images in this collection, but this is nearly 4x the price for 1/3 the images. What is the difference? The images here have about a 20% higher resolution and transparency masks (i.e. Photo Clip Art forces you to have a colored background, but you can have no background with photo objects).
   
   Neither is really suitable for print unless you don't want to print any of the photos beyond 2 inches high/wide. If you're designing for the web, you're usually going to throw a background in behind photos anyway, or if you need the transparency, you can easily select some obscure color for the background and "magic wand" it out in 30 seconds.
   
   So, if you bought the whole photo objects collection, you'd spend nearly ten times as much to get mostly the same photos (i.e. Photo Clip Art has 26 photos of an Asian woman as a nurse while Photo Objects has the same 26 photos plus 3 more) a little larger and with transparency.
   
   If you're a professional designer who would use this extensively, the extra cost might be worth it. But if you're dabbling in web design, get the "Photo Clip Art 150,000" instead and save yourself a LOT of money.

1 comments about Steinberg Cubase 4 Education Edition Production Software.

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No comments about The Print Shop 15 (Jewel Case).

1 comments about RECORDING & MIXING VOL. 1.

1. There is just no way I can state enough how helpfull this DVD is at understanding every aspect of what it takes to be skilled at recording music.

3 comments about Photo & Video Expressions Premium Suite.

1. This product is just what I have been looking for to present photos and video in an easy-to-use presentation format. I have spent hours and even days putting together slide presentations for Boy Scouts, athletic team awards ceremonies, and other important events. On Christmas day I was able to take all of the photos of my family making cookies, unwrapping presents and having dinner together and, in a half an hour, put together a great looking DVD presentation to give them before everyone left for the evening. It also includes a really easy to use CD label maker which I use to make labels and DVD covers for. Overall, I would say that this is a great value and a real timesaver.



2. I was looking for software that was simple to use, integrate video and slideshows, insert captions for pictures and make DVDs. This is what this software does. I have only made slideshows and have not used the video portion of the software as I am still learning. There seems to be no editing function for music selection for slideshows and there is a standard pause between different selections that cannot be changed. This is a good program for someone just starting out and easier to use than ROXIO which came with the computer.



3. I LOVE this program for slideshows and still images. And if you are doing slideshows, you will adore this program and make your friends jealous that you have all these computer editing skills.
   
   This program is ...almost perfect...but I CANNOT recommend it for video and I only have two complaints:
   
   1. As a previous reviewer mentioned, the audio features could have some added features to help you fade your music in and out when you clip a song short of the natural beginning or ending, instead of abrupt starts and stops, but I suppose you could create a file in a different program to clip your music fades and import, but who would bother with all that when everything else is offered here.
   
   2. The resulting formatting of my digital videos in this program makes them jerky in some places and have what I would call little "artifact" blips in others. This doesn't occur when you preview, it is happening when you are in the "creating a disc" and "transcoding" How I know this is that everytime you go through the transcoding process, it will put the little blips in different spots, but if you just make copies of one transcoded, it will put the blips in the same place on each disc. This means, it is not my blank DVD discs, it is not my DVD writer either. It is some problem with the transcoding of the video during the formatting process within the program, right before it actually burns to the DVD. This has got to be a bug within the program and I have contacted the software maker and will update if a solution or patch becomes available.
   
   If you are making slideshows from still images, by all means snatch this up, you will love it!
   
   If you are using digital videos, prepare to have them somewhat butchered by periodic blips on your TV screen and some videos will just seem jerky and hard to watch.

No comments about Adobe Creative Suite 4 Production Premium Upsell.

No comments about M-Audio iDrum.