>Home>Craft Ideas>Letters>Graphics Formats

Graphics Formats

Finding Animated Graphics Formats

Hello do you know of a greeting card software that accepts most graphic formats ... for example .swf files?

Lenny

---

That’s a tough question because it appears to me that greeting card software programs, with the exception of Broderbund’s Print Shop and Print Master, are going the way of the dinosaur. I have Print Shop Pro Publisher 20 (Broderbund recently released Version 22) and PrintMaster Platinum 12 (they’re now up to 17).

A couple of my favorite greeting card programs have been discontinued. American Greetings Create-a-Card is one and is now only available on eBay from time to time.

I was very disappointed when recently I upgraded my computer to one with Vista OS and discovered that Microsoft Picture-It Publishing is no longer available. Not only that; but my old version of Picture-It is not compatible with Vista! I love some of the graphics in Picture-It and am keeping my old clunker of a computer running as long as possible just to have access to Picture-It.

But back to your question …

Print Shop 20 accepts the following graphic formats:

• .bmp
• .cgm
• .dpp
• .gif
• .jpg
• Photo CD
• .pcx
• Print Meta Objects

Photoshop Files

• .png
• .tiff
• .wmf

No .swf.

There is an animated card module in Print Shop, but it has very closed architecture. It doesn’t appear that you can import your own animated .swf files.

Photoshop (a graphic program which can be used to design greeting cards) has the longest list of acceptable formats I’m aware of:

• .bmp
• .dib
• .eps
• .gif
• .jpg
• .pct
• .pcx
• .pdf
• .pdp
• .png
• Portable Bit Map
• .psb
• .pxr
• .raw
• .sct
• Tanga
• .tif

Again no .swf. I don’t know which other file formats you would like to import to a greeting card program, but here’s a little more info on .swf files which may be helpful.

Shockwave Flash Object (.swf) file format is a proprietary file format owned and licensed by Adobe (formerly Macromedia). It is currently the dominant format for displaying animated vector graphics on the web.

Once created, .swf files are played by the Adobe Flash Player which has become pretty ubiquitous. According to an independent study by market research firm Millward Brown, over 99% of Internet users have Flash Player installed on their computers.

The reason you may not be able to find a greeting card program which accepts .swf file importation is Adobe’s licensing terms. A licensee may create .swf files but not any software to play them back.

The .swf files created under license must play “error free” in Adobe’s Flash Player.

So if .swf is important to your plans, I would suggest either that you contact Adobe or hire a programmer with experience in this graphics format. By the way, Adobe allows free trial downloads of all their graphics products, including a flash creation program.

  |Top | Letters | Crafts | Home |