The second maintenance release for Portraits & Prints, the personal photo studio for Mac OS X, is now available from Econ Technologies. This version adds enhancements to better support the features offered in Portraits & Prints Template Maker as well as fixing a few bugs, according to Joseph Japes of Econ.
Portraits & Prints is a photo printing solution that stores image enhancements for use at any time without ever touching the original image. It works with Mac OS X’s Image Capture to automatically download pictures from digital cameras and open them in Portraits and Prints. It’s a native Cocoa Mac OS X application designed to take advantage of Mac OS X system features, Japes said. The only requirements for Portraits & Prints is Mac OS X or later and a color printer.
The 1.0.2 update adds support for extended text object attributes such as color, opacity and typestyle. It also adds support for user editable text on templates that offer this feature. The new version also provides more accurate on-screen, scaled display of template objects and complete rendering of template thumbnails in the template selector sheet, Japes said. Plus, empty photo cells are now drawn with a gray fill and there is an improved online help system.
Portraits & Prints 1.0.2 is required to fully take advantage of templates created by Portraits & Prints Template Maker, which is being released in conjunction with this update. What’s more, Econ Technologies is extending their introductory offer through Jan. 4. Buy Portraits & Prints anytime until then and you’ll get the Portraits & Prints Template Maker, which will cost $9.95 when it’s released at the end of the month, for free. With the Portraits & Prints Template Maker, you can create an unlimited number of templates by placing photos, adding graphics and typing text, Japes said. You can print out themed photos, greeting cards, scrapbook pages and more.
With the Portraits & Prints Template Maker, templates can be made for just about any size of paper. You can create any size photo and any number of photos per template, and make use of drawing tools for lines, rectangles and ovals. Graphics can be imported or drag-and-dropped onto templates. You can type text anywhere on the template — even on top of graphics and photos. The template maker lets you layer objects to obtain special visual effects, as well as align objects for precision.