HP's Free Online Print Studio

I haven't the foggiest clue as to when HP launched this service, but I was looking at HP printers today and noticed this free service for the first time. It's a browser-based Flash design tool that's surprisingly sophisticated - it's based around templates, so you don't have complete design freedom, but since most of us aren't designers it's nice to start with a template. The service starts with two broad categories: Projects for Home, which includes calendars, greetings cards, and iron-ons, and Projects for Business, which includes business identity kits, business cards, letterhead, and shipping labels. Once you select your project type, there are up to a dozen templates to chose from. I selected a single-page calendar as my project, and was impressed that they allow you to upload your own photos and import them into the project. It's all done in a slick Flash-based tool that allows you to drag and drop the photos into the project, and to crop, rotate, scale and flip the photos. Nice! Equally slick is the fact that once you upload your photos, they're available across any template you select.

There are templates offered that allow for both customization of photos and text - the greeting card templates allow you to add in your own photos, and customize the text inside the card. Don't like the colour of the text? You can change that as well. All of the templates are elegant and very professional looking - none of the ones I looked at were cheesy, which is an all too common state of affairs when it comes to default templates. HP did a great job here with the designs.

Once you finish the layout, you get the option to print it - and the browser tool prepares a high-resolution version of your project and sends it to your local printer. I printed up some shipping labels and a calendar, and was impressed with the quality of both - although I should point out that I printed both on my HP LaserJet 2600n, so the photo quality wasn't...photo quality. I suspect though that if you printed these projects on a high-quality inkjet printer, they'd turn out great. This online tool is, of course, a promotional tool for HP printers and HP paper, but HP did the right thing in allowing anyone to use it, regardless of the brand of printer connected to their computer.

About the only thing missing is an option to generate the template as a series of images - it would be nice to output the calendar layout as a JPEG for instance, which would allow you to further manipulate it, or print multiple copies to page, etc. HP has created a useful online tool that's easy enough for anyone to get great results from. It's definitely worth checking out.

Jason Dunn owns and operates Thoughts Media Inc., a company dedicated to creating the best in online communities. He enjoys photography, mobile devices, blogging, digital media content creation/editing, and pretty much all technology. He lives in Calgary, Alberta, Canada with his lovely wife, and his sometimes obedient dog. He still finds it thrilling to see a creation of his come out of a printer.