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Best Greeting Card Software for Mac 2019 - Make Printable Cards

We've tested Mac greeting card software for over seven years and have spent another five years researching greeting card software for PCs. Recently, we spent close to 40 hours testing these programs, and based on our results, we think Canva is the best option. Canva updates its online platform regularly and gives you access to a large library of stylish, customizable templates. It’s also easy to use and navigate.

Canva

Canva’s online graphic design platform includes hundreds of thousands of stylish images, over 50,000+ templates and easy drag-and-drop design tools. The full service costs $12.95 per month, or you can use the limited free version.

Top 6 Best Free Graphic Design Software For Beginners Jun 10, 2016 0 Comment read Design, Development, Fresh Off The Presses, Resources Not all designers have the money to kit themselves out with the most expensive design software, particularly when embarking on a new career in graphic design or starting a new business. Browse and download Graphics & Design apps on your Mac from the Mac App Store. The Mac App Store has a wide selection of Graphics & Design apps for your Mac.

Greeting Box for Mac

While it isn’t as good as the free version of Canva, you can access Greeting Box for Mac’s full program for about one-fourth the cost of other greeting card software.

Hallmark Card Studio

Hallmark Card Studio may have fewer graphics than Canva, but unlike our top pick, you can use it to create traditional single- and multi-fold cards. Also, Hallmark’s graphics and templates are high quality and stylish.

Best Overall

Canva

Canva is a simple, online graphic design program. Instead of using intimidating, overwhelming tools, you create your cards mostly by dragging and dropping design elements onto your project. You can choose from hundreds of thousands of images and more than 50,000 templates.

Canva is the best place to design greeting cards if you have a Mac, but you can also use it to create hundreds of other projects, including business cards, flyers, book covers and infographics.
In addition to being stylish, Canva’s images are high quality – you can move them around and resize them to fit your design without causing pixilation or creating jagged edges. And if you can’t find the right graphic in its huge library or you want to share a personal photo, you can upload your own.
However, Canva is missing some basic photo editing tools, including a cropping tool and a red-eye remover, so you need to edit your images before you upload them. Also, it doesn’t have templates for traditional multi-fold cards like those you find in stores. Instead, it has templates to create flat, postcard-style cards.
Another potential drawback is Canva is a subscription service. However, it’s easy to cancel your membership, so depending on the scope of your projects, it can end up costing less than some of the other programs we tested. There is also a decent free version, though it includes limited access to graphics. The service’s excellent support pages make it easy to figure out which membership is right for you or your business – its support information is searchable and detailed.

Best Value

Greeting Box for Mac

Greeting Box comes with so few templates, backgrounds and graphics compared to other greeting card design software, that using it is almost like working with a blank canvas. It includes only 110 templates for major holidays and significant events, and its clip art isn’t very attractive.

Still, if you prefer to use your own photos and images and want to create quarter- or half-fold cards, Greeting Box may be a good fit.
Since Greeting Box doesn’t have photo editing tools, you need to use another application, such as Apple’s Photos, to correct red-eye and crop images before you upload them. Once the images are in the software, you can only drag, layer, rotate and reverse them. There’s also a transparency option, but compared to Hallmark Card Studio’s design suite, which includes more effects and filters, Greeting Box’s tools are very basic.
This program’s biggest benefit is its price – it only costs $9.99. Other greeting cards programs cost between $40.00 and $50.00. Our best pick, Canva, is a subscription service with a fee that, over time, can make it cost even more. While Canva has a limited free version, it can be frustrating to only have access to some of the features and graphics, and Greeting Box gives you full access with your initial download. Also, you can order more clip art directly from Greeting Box for a few extra dollars.

Best For Traditional Greeting Cards

Hallmark Card Studio

Best Graphics App For Ipad Pro

Best Graphics App For Mac

We were initially a little disappointed with Hallmark Card Studio for Mac because we’d already tested the PC version and liked it better. The Mac version has fewer features, and its interface isn’t as well organized or attractive.

However, it’s hard to ignore that some of the graphic design tools Hallmark includes give you more control over your creations than even Canva, our best pick, which only has basic drag-n-drop tools. Also, it has more filters, fonts and effects than Canva, though neither program has photo editing tools such as those for cropping images and removing red-eye.
Hallmark Card Studio comes with significantly fewer clip art choices than Canva, as well as some of the other greeting card design programs we tested. However, its graphics are high quality, so they are easy to resize and alter for your design. Though not quite trendy, there are a lot of cute and attractive graphics and templates that cover major and minor holidays and events as well as a host of other types of projects you can make, including ornaments, certificates and business cards. Unlike Canva, Hallmark includes templates for traditional single- and multi-fold cards.
Hallmark Card Studio also offers a lot of support to help first-time users, including a searchable index, video tutorials and an in-software link to its website. In addition, it is one of the few services we reviewed that offers technical support over the phone.

Best Photo Editing

PrintMaster Platinum 8

PrintMaster Platinum has a basic but important selection of photo editing tools. This program crops photos, adds filters and fixes red-eye.

There is a plethora of photo editing tools that come with Mac computers, but it’s easier creating greeting cards when tools are in the same program. It has more than 165,000 royalty free images and 4,800+ templates to help you build a customized card for any occasion.
All the editing tools are on the main page, which looks a bit cluttered. You hover the mouse over each tool for its name if you are having a hard time deciphering the images. You can print and export your finalized projects, but PrintMaster Platinum doesn’t have a sharing feature for popular social media platforms.

Best Editing Tools

Greeting Card Shop 4

Greeting Card Shop 4 has a user-friendly workflow and a great list of fun design tools.

The eyedropper tool copies the color of any single pixel in the editing window and allows you to auto-populate a color wheel and create a custom palette. There’s also a photo analyzer tool to help you identify the dominant color in a photo to make a more informed design choice. Using these advanced editing tools takes some practice, but once you figure them out, you can create high-quality and customized cards from scratch.
The biggest downside of this program is the lack of templates and graphics. Although, the included graphics are high-quality and showed no signs of distortion or pixilation when we moved and resized them to fit our test designs. This is a great greeting card software if you have basic design skills and want to create customized cards from scratch.

Why Trust Us?

Top Ten Reviews has reviewed and tested Mac greeting card software for over seven years. Our testers have graphic art backgrounds and their familiarity with these kinds of programs enables them to effectively evaluate and compare the variety of convenient features and helpful tools of each program.

How We Tested

We downloaded the available Mac greeting card programs – there are only six we could find that keep their software up to date and seemed safe to download – and tested them over the course of several weeks. In total, we spent about 40 hours designing cards and playing with the programs’ features so we could make well-informed comparisons between them. We created some event and holiday cards from scratch and with the provided templates. In each program, we also made invitations to a summer ice cream party to see if the software could help us make the designs we had in our heads a reality.

As we tested each program, we evaluated the quantity and quality of the graphics and templates it includes. To check clip art quality, we flipped, rotated, resized and recolored images. Both during the design process and after we printed our final designs, we made sure the graphics retained their shape and that they didn’t pixelate or have jagged edges. We also uploaded our own pictures to create personalized designs and to make sure the programs didn’t distort or corrupt our files.

After we finished our designs, we checked what file formats each program can export as. We also evaluated whether the software makes it easy to share projects on social media, make at-home or in-store prints, and create folded cards.

Programs with lots of training materials make it easy to use all their cool features to their fullest extent. We visited each software’s webpage to search for phone and live chat support information. We also visited each application’s help and support page and walked through tutorials to see how useful they are.

How Much Does Greeting Card Software for Mac Cost?

The programs we tested range in price from $10 to $50. Our favorite greeting card software for Mac landed near the bottom of that price range at $13 and has the best selection of templates and graphics. Some of the $40 programs have better sharing options and editing tools, but if you don’t need thousands of templates, we suggest checking out the low-cost software we tested.

Features To Look For In Mac Greeting Card Software

Templates & Graphics
The number of included templates and graphics varies widely from program to program. We suggest avoiding programs with fewer than 5,000 templates and fewer than 10,000 graphics. However, this is less of an issue if you plan to upload your own graphics and designs and just want a program for its tools and blank templates.

While having enough graphics and templates to choose from is important, you should also consider their quality. Before you buy, find out what resolution the software’s graphics are and if the program includes scalable vector graphics, the latter of which can be resized without quality loss.

As we tested greeting card software, we found that some of the programs have outdated, unstylish images and backgrounds. We recommend browsing the program’s library, or using a free trial if the application offers one, to see if its designs align with your tastes.

Editing Tools
Because Apple includes applications for photo editing and creative projects in its macOS, we found most of the Mac greeting card design programs we tested have fewer editing tools than their PC-compatible counterparts. This means you may need to edit photos in another application before you upload them to your greeting card software. A few of the programs we tested have some basic editing tools, such as those for cropping and fixing red-eye, but those same programs have lower quality graphics.

While it’s convenient to be able to find, upload, edit and incorporate images into your designs all in one space, none of the programs we reviewed have the full package of tools we looked for. As such, if you’re a dedicated Mac user, we recommend choosing greeting card design software based on the quality and style of its graphics rather than on its photo editing tools. If you also have a PC, you can check out our reviews of the best Windows-compatible greeting card programs, which have a better balance of editing tools and graphics.

Sharing Options
After you’ve spent hours choosing and customizing greeting cards, you probably want to share them with someone. Be it through email, a link to a photo hosting site or through social media, there are myriad ways to share your creations.

As with editing tools, Macs have built-in sharing features you can access through your Apple account. When you save a file to your computer, you can use Finder to connect to social media or iCloud and share your projects from there. Because of this, most Mac greeting card applications don’t include features that let you share your finished cards to social media directly from the software.

There are also plenty of photo hosting sites you can use to store your image files online, including Google Photos, Dropbox, SmugMug and Photobucket. Most of these sites offer basic free storage for a small quantity of files, and they make it easy to label and organize your images as you see fit. Different sites have different features, but most offer premium paid services that may better suit your needs.

If you’re simply wondering where to share your images online, check out any popular social media site. However, some of the popular options are specifically designed for visual media, including Instagram, Pinterest, Tumblr, Ello and Snapchat.

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