Downloads

We have also found some great, free programs. With these programs and PlainCards®, you can be even more creative and produce truly unique cards.

We have prepared a quick guide that will help you compare the following photo editors. It shows examples of the special effects and tells you how to achieve them.

Serif PhotoPlus is a free and full featured photo editor. It takes some time to learn all the capabilities of this program, but here's your chance to have a picture of yourself in front of the Eiffel Tower without ever leaving town. Want to look ten years younger? It's just a matter of knowing how to click the mouse. Also great for removing backgrounds, adding special effects, etc..                             http://www.freeserifsoftware.com/serif/ph/ph5/index.asp

Photo Wizard is a free product and very easy to use. You can easily crop your pictures to get them just right. You can also put your pictures into custom frames or insert them into sports cards or magazine covers and even add your own captions.                                                                             http://www.americansys.com/photowizard.htm

PhotoFiltre is a complete image editing and effects package, that will not only amaze you with features but also the fact that it is free (for personal use). It comes with many features that rival some commercial packages.
http://photofiltre.free.fr/frames_en.htm

Paint.Net is MSPaint with lots of bells and whistles including layers. Paint.Net keeps getting better and better with frequent new versions.
http://www.getpaint.net/

Making Custom Card Boxes. This is a great site. It has templates for making card boxes and even an online program that will generate a template to your specifications.
http://www.ee0r.com/boxes/

GIMP is a freely distributed program for such tasks as photo retouching, image composition and image authoring. From the introduction on their website, " It has many capabilities. It can be used as a simple paint program, an expert quality photo retouching program, an online batch processing system, a mass production image renderer, an image format converter, etc."
http://www.gimp.org/

Picassa is a photo organizer and editor from Google. Of special interest is its collage feature that can be used to create interesting designs for the backs of the cards.
http://picasa.google.com/

MS Windows Paint is not a download since it is included with Windows. We mention it here to remind you that it can be used to alter the size of photos, erase, crop, change colors and file types, etc. If you like Paint but wish it had more features, then Paint.Net might be your choice.

Fonts, including the Hoyle Playing Cards Font, are available for downloading at http://www.dafont.com/