Printing any kind of label or envelope can be a tricky process. Have you measured the dimensions properly? Do you have any leeway for exciting designs, or are you constrained by the limitations of your label printing program?

SOHO Labels is designed to take all the hassle away from designing striking labels, letterheads and envelopes. At its simplest it can be used in just three steps: pick a design, customise it and print. It works will all major brands of paper stock and popular label printers too.

The program can handle just about any kind of label from shipping labels and CD/DVD labels to jewel case booklets and gift tags. It’s packed with lots of intuitive formatting and addressing features, and it works comfortably with mail merge too. A lot of the features are perhaps overblown for the average user, but the key thing is that you can use it for as complex or as simple designs as you need, with design aids such as smart shapes and text-curving, your imagination shouldn’t be too tempered by the program’s abilities.

New in version 5: over 300 next-gen smart templates, Cover Flow (to preview kits in their own window), Trim to Label (hide objects outside the canvas for preview purposes), regular text and text+image placeholders, named placeholders, automatic images and 23 new iScrapKits containing over 1,300 graphics.

This is a fully functional 30-day trial version – once this expires, a single-user licence costs US$39.99, or a Family (five-user) Pack costs US$69.99.