Labels & Addresses — Print addresses on
labels/envelopes (was Mail Factory)
Reviewed by Harry {doc} Babad © 2009
BeLight Software, Ltd.
http://www.belightsoft.com/products/printfolio/support.php
Released: 18 Feb 2009
For a demo of this product:
The demo version if fully enabled
but leaves a visible watermark on all items you try to print.
Cost: Pricing
— Use Google to convert USD to $-CAN or £- Britain
Standard Edition {a 1 GB download} $49.95
Retail Edition {Broadband Download} $59.95
Crossgrade from Mail Factory $24.95
Upgrade to Retail Edition $24.95
German localization also available. [€38.5 + VAT]
Mac OS X 10.4 or later,
PPC/Intel and a label or other printer. Disk Space: 100 MB of available hard
drive space (1.8 GB required for a full clipart.) |
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Users: All who
might need labeling capability beyond just plain formatted text.
Previous Reviews:
Mail Factory 2.5 — Reviewed in macCompanion, June 2007
Strengths: With
its minimal learning curve, Letters & Addresses is excellent and flexible
package for creating labels and addresses with one at a time or by using it’s
almost intuitive mail merge features.
Weaknesses: None
worth mentioning.
Sidebar: Copyright Notice: Product and company names and logos in this review may be registered
trademarks of their respective companies.
Sidebar: The
software was tested on a Reviews were carried out
on my iMac 2.8 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo with 2 GB 667 MHz DDR2 SDRAM running Mac
OS X Leopard version 10.5.6. |
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Introduction
I have long been an admirer of the software developed by
Belight Software, Ltd and appreciate not only their software, which I actively
use, but also the quality of their service and responsiveness to problems. This
doesn’t stop me from being objective in my reviews, but full disclosure is one
of my commandments.
One element of my comfort with Belight’s products is that the
developers is using a common user interface for all their products, easing the
learning curve when adopting a new software module (see the toll bar examples
below.)
Although I’ve customized some of the tool bars, you can
easily see common interface features such as left of center, the text and image
placement tools and those identified below.
Inspector |
Art Text |
Fonts |
Text Color |
Their Printfolio Collection, which I use almost daily, is a
suite of programs tailored to create business cards, flyers, brochures, CD and
DVD labels, envelopes and address labels. The suite contains Business Card
Composer [BCC], Swift Publisher, Disc
Cover [DC], and the newly enhanced Labels & Addresses
as well as Art Text. All of these products
have been previously reviewed by the macCompanion staff.
Although I had not been using Mail Factory as often as I
do the other parts of the Printfolio suite, that’s only because, not being a
social animal, except for holidays and rarer special occasions, I can make do,
KISS, with my DYMO LabelWriter. But I do lust for iconic return addresses,
focused on my outreach activities.
Or the most part my label and addressing needs are simple.
As with all of Belight’s products, L&A offers a wide selection of professional
designs and templates. These can be used to make mailing labels, envelopes,
postcards, and even folder labels more visually attractive. For simplicity’s
sake, I usually skip those options and, as I do in Disc Cover for CDs, use a
blank mailing label or envelope.
Publisher’s Description
Labels & Addresses (was Mail Factory) is a home and office tool for printing all sorts of labels,
envelopes, inventory labels and price tags. The program helps to design and
print envelopes, postcards and diverse labels, such as address, shipping, file
folder and barcode labels. Merge printing capability makes the program a great
tool for Holiday seasons by helping users to design and print personalized and
focused multiple greeting envelopes and postcards that can automatically
contain substitutable addresses and postal barcodes.
Getting Started
Installing the product was as simple as a drag and drop,
entering a serial number, and the as always checking out and tweaking the
software’s preferences.
Let’s cut to the quick and I’ll provide you with a summary
of the product’s rich feature sets.
An Annotated Partial Feature List
Advanced Merging — Address merge printing makes it possible to automatically
substitute addresses and postal barcodes for every label or envelope being
printed. You can also automatically create and print numerous barcodes from an
external data list. Mail merging in Labels & Addresses [L&A] is easier
than in MS Word, a fact for which I’m grateful. Most industry-standard barcodes
are supported and barcode data can be added manually or from an external
resource.
Flexible Address Addressing — Easily import address information in a batch from:
Apple Address Book |
MS Excel |
MS Entourage |
Now Contact - a PIM |
FileMaker |
vCards or
tab-delimited text files |
or input them manually, one at a time.
Work, Home or Primary address locations can be selected for
each contact. I have not had time to figure out how to export that information
from Eudora, my email client, but since I can export my Eudora address book
into Apple’s, that not much of a big deal.
As an aside: Perhaps the biggest problem with maximizing the effectiveness of
L&A’s flexible data base systems is caused by your past practices in
entering contact data in the listed applications. I have contact information
stored in MS Word, FileMaker Pro, MS Excel, and DEVONthink Pro. BUT, few of the
entries are complete.
Some have names, affiliations and email. Others contain
only a phone number or two, or a just postal address. Rarely do I have a
complete dataset for each contact, and when I do each program I use for contact
information, like Topsey, in different field configurations. I’ll stick to manual entry for now and
perhaps, a bit at a time, switch to Apple’s Address Book as my primary PIM,
killing of my FileMaker Pro lists (Maybe — Perhaps — Mañana). [Oh
for a Macintosh using student to do this, a chore I’ll never have the time to
finish.]
As a result, transferring-aggregating (batch) contact
information from my existing address books or documents was not tested.
Creating a mass mailings' database to store and edit your
‘group’ lists is straightforward. The contact databases you create can be
sorted by their contact fields (Name, ZIP, etc.) There is also a built-in Smart
Address Recognition feature allows you to
paste an address from any text and then automatically formats it according to
the applicable postal standards.
You can even store and edit recipient's details directly in
the program’s recipients' database, avoiding the need to go back to enter the
new data in the original source program’s address book. For those who keep both
a personal and a contact business database(s), you can easily switch between
private, church/club and corporate correspondence.
Available Postal System Formatting Features — The program automatically formats addresses
according to the postal standards for over 50 countries. USPS POSTNET, Canada
Post and Royal Mail barcodes can be printed for the US, Canada and UK addresses
respectively. Indeed, you have 15 address fields’ arrangements to chose from,
actually more than I’d ever use.
A Well Designed Set of Graphic Tools and Features — These design aides include 100
ready-made label, envelope, postcard, file folder and name badge designs and
24,000 high quality clipart images (1,000
in Standard downloaded edition). I have not checked with the clipart collection
in L&A differs from those in other Printfolio modules. In addition, you get
an easy to access 100+ handling labels and signs for use on envelopes and
packages as well as 100 unique masks and option to use custom image as a mask.
The program can work with TIFF, JPEG, GIF, PDF, EPS and other image formats and
you can add to your designs by using Belight’s Art Text if that
product is among your tools. There’s more, check out both the printer related
capabilities and other features that make this pram a pleasure to use.
Features
As a bonus there are also 50 Bitstream fonts, but only in
the retail edition.
User Tests and Other L&A Shenanigans
Addressing Envelopes — I tried the software with #10 (4-1/8 x 9-1/2”) business envelopes, and
the more common #6+ (3 x 6-1/”) envelopes. I also occasionally use 6 1/2"
x 9 1/2 “ envelopes either in wallet or standard flap orientation. [See
Belight’s link for more information on envelope configuration and formatting.
Envelopes
All the other envelopes I use routinely are too large to fit in my laser
printer, so creating mailing labels, thank you, works just fine. In case you
have an odd size (non-commercial) envelope in mind, you’ll get to create custom
envelope design to fit the size of the missive you want to mail.
Designing Postcards — You need a special postcard and find email too informal. That too is
easy—front and back and/or portrait or landscape. For your two -sided
creations, read your printer’s manual; otherwise you’ll waste paper and ink. I
created a few cutsey items as a test, just for fun, but I’ll neither show nor
use them.
Note: L&A provides wide collection of sizes for domestic
and international postcards and envelopes are provided. But if you want to
create a design in a new size, you can create your own custom templates and of
course save them for future use.
Making Business Cards (Not Possible) — I use Belight’s Business Card Composer for
my custom made contacts, a very Victorian or Japanese habit. I also wanted to
the card-making feature in
L&A. Using the business card sized templates provided [Labels > Name
Badges (3.5 x 2”)]. Some of the labels provided for creating nametags
or badges appeared to be suitable for
creating and printing as business cards. However that is not their purpose. Th
experiment failed! The available
printer paper templates are 3.5 x 2-1/4” in size, a fourth inch larger than business card stock. In
addition, checking the lists of label paper, under the assistant function,
provided no business card specific items, at least for Avery labels and card
stock paper.
Testing Making Custom Labels for All Other Purposes — Mailing, return address, shipping, handling
instructions, custom file folders and separately via the L&A Assistant,
XXX. I was a bit miffed, however by the
absence of both the radiation symbol and the biohazard symbol from the handling graphics collection — I of course have them in
my clip art collection, so can easily use them in L&A as needed
Printing, in General — I use both a hp color LaserJet 3500 for
general printing — documents, envelopes, sheets of labels and ID Tags
— and my DYMO printer for creating
address 4-line return and address mailing labels and ID labels for boxes,
spices, and anything I want to identify with having to open the container. I
had no problems printing one or a few (DYMO) or
many labels using Avery paper (hp) with
L&A.
Create Name Badges — Not only can you design, and print name badges for all occasions. The
label fits into standard commercial badge holders by selecting them in L&A
Assistant > Labels or from the L&A Menu > File > Change Layout.
You can even go on the cheep using single use gummy (self Adhesive) labels,
avoiding the illegible name marker trap.
Kudos
One of the things I’ve admired about Belight is the
attention they pay to details associated with using their software. For
example:
Resource
Links — Learn about printing labels
and envelopes, learn about technology used in dedicated label printers,
international postal cost and conventions from the internet, all about {as
previously discussed} envelope styles and sizes, more than you wanted to know
about label paper, and information about the paper templates supported by
L&A.
There is some fine information about obtaining Clipart
Collections both free and low-cost, as well as on Font Collection Availability
and how to use them.
Iconographic Address Labels — Although I make almost daily use of my DYMO LabelWriter Turbo
360, I could never master the art of adding a logo to my return address.
[Other’s have.]
Therefore I welcomed L&A, which rapidly allowed me to
create a few custom return address labels (home, consulting, Macintosh club,
Folk-Life Society) and print them
on the DYMO printer. The contact information remained mostly the same (Street
address, City-State-Zip) but my Name varied between Harry Babad, Harry Babad,
Ph. D, and Harry {doc} Babad. I also added a second line that identified
persona I was assuming (e.g., Consultant & Author, MacEXpert, EWS-ANS
EDU-Chair.)
Conclusions and Recommendations
Labels & Addresses is an excellent
and flexible package for creating labels and addresses. The program goes
far beyond designing simple image and text combined labels and envelopes. You
have the ability to add, barcodes, and smart shapes to enhance your artwork.
There are also scores of sticker-like handling ‘instructions’ and warning ‘notices’ to assure you missive gets
the proper ‘respect’ in most post offices around the world. Unless I missed it,
there was no ‘hand stamp’ sticker available but here were many variation of
‘fragile’.
Its configurability, feature-set and versatility is user
friendly, a short learning curve that is easier if you’ve used other BeLight
products. The developers provide a sample gallery called sample tour that, illustrates their product’s versatility.
As Ian Osborne noted recently, “although not instantly
intuitive, Labels & Addresses is as straightforward as you could hope for,
given its rich features.”
I found the product either in the standard or retail edition
was reasonably priced {See the PPS}. It is easily worth 4.5 macCs, and is a
superior successor to Mail Factory. [More about that below.
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PS
For more information about the mail merge features and
dealing with custom lists read Jeff Carlson’s December 2008 review of L&A
in Tidbits.
PPS
My criteria of a software product’s value that I’ve never
previously documented, is simple. It is the value of my time, using poorer or
workaround methods to complete a task; ignoring the frustration factor. I
evaluate the so called ‘hours saved’ a month compared to what I could earn
working at McDonalds or as a barista at Starbucks.
If a software tool saves me time, depreciatingly valued at
$9-10/hr., it’s worth buying. With the BeLight products, for a bargain, you can
get the five applications at the price of about two, buy Printfolio for $89.00
and get the full version of BCC, Art Text and the other goodies. Of course
if a client’s tasks requires it, all bets are off — it’s part of my
business costs.
