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The Print Shop Companion
By Charles Brown
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In this article I will review a utility program for The Print Shop. It is
called The Print Shop Companion.  This program contains several useful
utilities for the main Print Shop program.  It also has some extra pictures,
fonts, and borders for you to use with The Print Shop.

When you first use the Companion disk, you must let your Print Shop disk know
that you will be using the features added by The Print Shop Companion.  This is
accomplished in the set-up routine.  The instruction manual just tells you to
follow the on-screen prompts to do this set-up. When finished, the new set-up
data will be saved to your Print Shop disk and copied to your Companion disk.
The Print Shop disk will now recognize the Companion disk.  You should put a
write protect tab on both your Print Shop and Companion disks.

Like The Print Shop, the Companion disk can be used with either the Joystick,
the Koala Pad or the Atari Touch Tablet.  The Print Shop Companion has several
new features. You access them from the main menu, just as in The Print Shop.

The first selection is the Graphic Editor.  I feel that this editor is much
better than the one provided with The Print Shop program. It has many more
features, such as: a selection of 17 patterns that you can use to fill in
different areas of your picture; different "mirror image" effects (as in Atari
Artist); flipping of the graphic both horizontally and vertically; a negative
feature, which creates an inverse of the graphic.  This editor even
automatically draws circles, boxes, and ovals for you.  I feel that this editor
is very useful, and that you will find it to be very helpful.

The next selection from the menu is the Border Editor.  You can use it to
modify one or more of the 50 borders provided on this disk.  You can even load
in and modify the borders from the main Print Shop disk, or you can use it to
create your very own borders.  When this feature is loaded, you will have three
different editing boxes.  The first box is used to edit the four corners of the
border.  The second box is used to edit the top and bottom parts of the border,
while the third box is used for the sides of the border.  This editor uses many
of the same features as the graphic editor. With the three editing boxes and
all the editing tools, you can really be creative with your borders.

The next feature is a Font Editor. You can use it to modify any of The Print
Shop's eight fonts. An additional twelve fonts are provided on the Companion
disk as well.  You can even create your own.  I haven't really tried this one
out, so can't comment on its usefulness.  I am sure it has the same features as
many of the other font editors you've seen.

The next feature chosen from the main menu is Tile Magic.  This feature is very
similar to the kaleidoscopes from the screen magic part of The Print Shop.  You
can browse through the different patterns that are provided.  When you see one
that you like, you simply hit a key to freeze it on the screen.  Then, you can
save the pattern to a data disk, or you can go to the graphic editor to modify
it.  You can use it to create a whole lot of different things for your
creations.

The next feature chosen from the main menu is a Creature Maker.  In this part
you have a choice of different zany creatures to start with. You can change the
three parts of a creatures body.  They are the Head, the Middle and the Feet.

You can exchange all of these parts at will. Once you have made your own
creature, you can save it to disk as a graphic, or you can go to the graphic
editor and modify it even more. (My kids love this part of the program! - Ed.)

The last selection from the main menu is the Calendar Maker.  You can use this
mode to create and print out your very own calendars.  You can either make a
weekly or monthly calendar.  You can put graphics on it. You can use different
fonts on it for unique effects.  A very nice feature is that you can put your
own messages in the daily spots on the calendar; you can put in things like
birthdays, anniversaries, appointments or anything you want to remind yourself
of.  This way, it will be already printed when you do the whole calendar.  This
is nice for people like me who have poor hand writing (or people like me with
poor memories! - Ed.).  After you have made your calendar, you can print it or
save it to disk.  It is nice to save it, and then load it back in later to
either print or revise it.

As you can see, The Print Shop Companion is a very powerful utility for the
main Print Shop program.  If you really want to create your own Print Shop
icons, I feel that the graphic editor on the Companion disk is far superior to
the one on the Print Shop disk.  If you are serious about using the The Print
Shop program, I'm certain that you will find the Companion disk very helpful.
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