Tuesday, January 08, 2008

Software for creating personal photo sports trading cards

I thought I'd have a fairly easy time making sports/trading cards for the MN Special Hockey Stingers, but it turns out to be harder than I expected.

Back in the days of MacOS 7 and Windows 3.1 I suspect there were lots of software packages to do this sort of thing. In the modern world they seem much harder to find.

Failing a traditional software solution, I figured I'd find an online service that would make cards. I did find one, but it was pretty expensive. This is definitely a niche business.

Thus far I've only found four solutions on any platform (Thanks Apple Discussions):
  1. HP sports photo trading cards: This web app will, very, very slowly, create PDF you can print. Requires thick paper, scissors, and blue.
  2. Portraits and Prints (OS X) claims some support for printing cards, but there's very little documentation. No free trial either!
  3. Photoshop Elements (OS X and Windows): "Old Toad" tells me that it supports creating photo cards.
  4. NCR Flip-Pix: My local Office supply store sells NCR Flip Pix (made in Germany?!) trading card sheets. The Flip Pix software for generating prints is a free Windows only download. (Funny note: the documentation says it works on "Windows on a Mac" - Boot Camp. It also says: "... If you are not able to do this by using Bootcamp or other Windows OS for Mac, then please call the customer support line for a CD of similar software that may work on a Mac." I suspect they have an old Mac classic version of this product.)
  5. An Apple Canada site suggested iWorks, but didn't provide much detail.
I'll update this post if I find anything else. I think it was easier to search for software products 8 years ago ...

1 comment:

Robert D. Matthews said...

Have you ever looked at McKenna Pro? (www.mckennapro.com) They are a pro lab that has a number of specialty templates, some of which are sports based. They have a trading card template that works pretty well. Not exactly a software program but it is a pretty good solution.