Serif Craft Artist Platinum Edition design software

Craft Artist Platinum takes things much further than other crafting software by including four CDs of themed objects (the themes are Wedding Day, Greeting Cards, Baby Photos and Scrapbooks).

These come packed with everything you need to make scrapbooks, invitations, certificates, posters, cards, party kits (masks and simple toys), table decorations, tags, labels, gift bags and photobooks.

The trick that Craft Artist pulls off so well is to duplicate the process of creating a scrapbook in real life, but without any of the associated mess or imprecision of actually making it on the kitchen table. So the projects feel three-dimensional, it uses familiar tools such as pencils and scissors and you can add realistic textures such as fabric, paper and coloured foil.

At the same time the program's brushes can be used to add embroidery stitches or to scatter realistic-looking glitter across the edge of a photo. The results are satisfying and surprising, though the embroidery was a little unsatisfactory and you'll need to invest in a good printer and decent card or paper to show your designs off to their best effect.

The program includes Photolab for editing pictures and adding special effects with a range of drawing, painting and cropping tools, hundreds of textures and effects – from fabrics to Photoshop-style metallic and fiery fills – frames and cut-outs, borders and gradient fills.

Items can be layered on top of one another to produce realistic 3D effects and they can be aligned, rotated and resized to neaten up the project. The templates are the best way to get started, using the Wizard to pick a project and drag and drop elements into position, but it's also straightforward to put your own twist on them because all of the templates are editable. That means you can change the background, alter the textures and fiddle with the way visual elements are cropped or framed to your heart's content.

It's not limited to the elements supplied with the program: Craft Artist can also import your pictures and other elements too, and you can even create your own 'Digikit', a collection of visual objects (backgrounds, buttons, swatches, motifs, bits of fabric, glitter and so on) that you can lift from the central library and then save together to use on a specific project.

Some clever 'make and do' projects even include real-world skills and materials – Craft Artist handles the design but you have to make it yourself using glue, scissors, a craft knife and more.

Craft Artist also lets the user start from scratch, choosing paper and card sizes or stationery formats, and then allowing them the freedom to add elements to the basic layout. You can even create your own brush styles, picture frames, letter styles, graduated fills, backgrounds and shadows.