Avanquest Greeting Card Factory Deluxe review

This edition of Greeting Card Factory Deluxe - version 7, despite what it says on the box - is a year old, but comes with a fresh pack of 15,000 pieces of clip art relating to seasons, events and holidays.

This brings the total number of supplied graphics to more than 88,000. It's hard to find an occasion they haven't thought of. Well, all right, if you want to send your second cousin a card congratulating her on the successful completion of the Gumball Rally in a wheelchair you might have to improvise a bit, but you get the point.

The easiest way to put a card together is to use an existing template, although you can start from scratch if you prefer. The templates are as exhaustive as the graphics, and you sort through them on the left side, with graphical previews on the right. If you're interested in making a particular type of card, just click on the little plus sign next to it and a series of further options will appear.

Within each subcategory you're quite spoiled for choice, and the standard of the templated cards, invitations and other projects isn't too bad. Some show a heavy US bias, and some are just plain bizarre: we weren't sure whether to laugh or cry at the collection of 'on your divorce' cards.

Once you've picked your template, it's easy to edit it and drop in your own pictures and text. As with any graphics project, you'll need to be aware of image resolution (a tiny camera phone shot won't look good at A5 size) and pick images of at least roughly the right shape. That aside, it's just the click of a button to add backgrounds, introduce effects and tinker with your layout. Output is just as thoughtfully catered for. The program handles printing, and you can also export to CD, email, the web or a PDF file. Whichever way you send your card, you can't beat the feeling that the recipient knows you've put your own time and effort into it.

The rival Hallmark Card Studio offers a better standard of templates, but Greeting Card Factory is good enough to justify its reasonable price.