Label making for the novice (Media Label Maker)

Member Name: i_am_joy

Product:	Media Label Maker
Date:	03/06/08 (83 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Simple to install, very easy to use, nice and straightforward to import photos and add text

Disadvantages: ---------

I have never written a review on a technical type product such as this, so please bear with me if I talk about irrelevant information or it seems as though I am waffling!

I have lots of photos and videos stored on my PC from events such as holidays, my daughters graduation, days out and things like that and I decided I wanted to put them on discs and possibly burn extras for my daughters and sister. The burning of the second disc was underway when I realised that I would have to mark them somehow to prevent mix ups, I'm not bothered about using a black marker on my own discs but wanted something a little more special for everyone elses.

My brother suggested I buy a label making programme to help give my discs a more professional and personal look so I had a look in my local charity shop and picked up a copy of Media Label Maker for just £2.50. My charity shop sells lots of software so do have a look next time you are browsing the clothes or books because there are often some little gems at a fraction of Ebay prices.

Media Label Maker promised to solves all my labelling needs and looked quite straightforward to use based on the text and examples on the box. It was very easy to install on my computer, using a wizard where I just had to click 'next' and identify where I wanted the programme saved.

Once installed I was ready to start printing my labels. The first one I decided to create was a CD label to place on the disc of short camcorder clips from when I took my granddaughters to Disney Land Paris a couple of summers ago. I had a look through the large selection of pre-designed labels but there was nothing that jumped out at me as relating to our holiday so I decided to import one of the photographs we had had taken with Minnie Mouse and use that as a label.

I found it was very easy to import my photographs into this programme and equally simple to edit them to fit the various label sizes, add text and generally have them looking as good as possible to label my discs. I used JPG and WMF files and both types have uploaded perfectly and with the same quality as my original photographs with no stretching or fading.

You can also use one of the 900 clip art pictures provided on the software. I browsed these pictures and they are very nice, encompassing many different themes so you should be able to find something to fit your project. I liked the cartoon style animal pictures in particular and will use these when I help my granddaughter create a disc of puppy and kitten pictures as I have promised.

I wanted to add the names of everyone in the photograph, the date of our holiday and also a brief description of how we came to have this photo taken. This was easily done by opening a text box and simply typing in what I wanted to say, then with the touch of a button this was added to my label for previewing. I edited the font, text colour and size, and spacing of my lines and this was all very easily done using the clever editing tool which is basically a series of drop down boxes and shade/size selectors.

When all this was done I previewed my label before printing it off onto Staples stationery, which is the programme is perfectly compatible with. The manufacturer suggests using Avery stationery, but really as long as the label sizes are the same you should not have a problem with whatever company you decide to buy from.

I was amazed by how professional and well designed my label looked. The colours were fantastic (which is part way down to my photo printer) and were no different to the photographs I had originally imported. I liked the fact that I could save my own label as a template and the Label Maker software could easily change the sizing and layout to fit other types and sizes of label without me having to go through the whole process again.

All said and done, I am very happy I chose Media Label Maker because it is simple enough for a novice like me to use, but I have also seen my son in law use it to design and print documents and labels he needed for his work. The end results of these were fantastic because he put a lot more time into his design than I did and created several templates including such editing as sepia toning and creating photographs in negative. By the time he had added all his finishing touches his designs looked as good as any he has paid for in the past.

You can use Media Label Maker if you are using Windows 95 / 98 / ME / 2000 or XP.

Minimum System Requirements: P166, 16 MB RAM, 45 MB free hard drive space, SVGA graphics, CD-ROM drive (I have no idea what any of that means, but it was printed on the box and sounds important so I thought I had better pass it on!)

Even brand new this Label Maker will only cost you about £8 because it was first released in 2002 so is not the most up to date software available, for that price however I think it is perfectly good (excellent in fact) for the home user.

Summary: A useful piece of software to personalise my discs.

Variety of features:
Reliability:
User friendly:
Installation:
Update possibilites: