Making holiday greeting cards

I have been considering various options for sending greeting to family and friends for the Christmas and New Year. In the past, we ordered paper cards customized with our own photos using iPhoto on a Mac. The quality was excellent for the price. Also, I like to believe that there is something special about a handwritten card that arrives in the mail. Unfortunately, I am almost always late with ordering the cards and then sending them out. This, combined with uncertain snail mail delivery times for some overseas destinations, often caused us to miss the actual holidays, which somewhat defeats the purpose of the holiday cards.

This year, I am considering a fully electronic alternative to traditional, handwritten paper cards, but I still want to convey the personal attention and avoid a cookie-cutter look.

Broadly, there are three options:

• Printed cards. There are several online printing companies that would accept a custom-designed card, print it and ship directly to the address specified by you. One example is Holiday Cards by Sincerely Ink. For me, the drawback of this option that the greeting would not be written by hand and thus would lack the personal feel.
• E-cards. There are many options for creating custom e-cards either on an iPad/iPhone or on a Mac (naturally, there are counterparts for Android and Windows machines). I have tried the eCard Express, and was a bit disappointed by the lack of customizable fonts and very few templates that accept your own photos.
• Fancy emails. This seems to be the most promising option. In OS X, the built-in email client, Mail, has an option of using custom stationery (accessed by pressing the button at the top right of the message window.) Several companies offer stationary sets that include greeting cards. For example, Equinux has stationary sets that cost between $8 and $15, which is substantially cheaper than printing and sending traditional paper cards. Finally, this page gives a comparison of greeting card software for Mac, with Hallmark Card Studio for Mac being the top pick.

Upon considering these options, I am leaning towards creating the card from scratch in Photoshop and sending it as an email attachment. I can use my own photo and draw the graphics elements, such as snowflakes, etc., using a Wacom graphics tablet. I can also incorporate handwritten text into the design, which I think would be a good compromise between a traditional card and an e-card. While my digital card would not be one-of-a-kind, it would still be “handmade” as much as a digital image can be.