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CNET editors' rating:
3.5 stars
Very good
Detailed editors' rating - Average user rating: 4.0 stars out of 8 reviews
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Product summary
The good: Excellent value; terrific, visual interface; includes vector, bitmap, text, animation, and panorama tools.
The bad: Photo organizer needs updating.
The bottom line: For experimenting with image editing without learning esoteric jargon, this program is a delightful and inexpensive introduction.
Specifications: License qty: 1 user; License type: Complete package; Min Operating system: Microsoft Windows Millennium Edition, Microsoft Windows XP, Microsoft Windows 98 Second Edition, Microsoft Windows 2000; See full specs
CNET editors' review
- Reviewed on: 04/26/2005
- Released on: 09/15/2004
Ulead has fluffed up version 10.0's interface with dockable toolbars and panels, while retaining the unusual (and clever) visual thumbnails for applying effects. The UI is totally configurable; customizing is just a matter of dragging buttons and toolbars around the screen, docking, or letting them float, depending on how you work.
When you load the program, you'll see what seems like a bazillion buttons and bars on the display. Fortunately, they are logically arranged. A standard toolbar on the left holds buttons for manipulating and adjusting images. Arrayed along the top of the display are bars for changing tool settings and managing files.
Although the interface looks cluttered, it's configurable and easy to master.
On the right side of the display is the hub of the interface: a set of panels for managing layers and documents, applying effects, and accessing Quick Commands. This last panel is especially useful for repetitive work, as it holds common tasks and a history of all editing changes you've applied to an image. You can save any command sequence in a macro to use again.
The EasyPalette panel displays a neat tree structure of available items. When you select an entry, it shows the available choices as thumbnails to the right of the tree. For example, if you choose Special Effects, it shows Engraving and Finger Paint among the options. To apply an effect or add an object, just double-click or drag the thumbnail onto the image. All effects may be easily fine-tuned by right-clicking it and adjusting the settings. We think this visual thumbnail approach is clever and especially appropriate for casual users and those who love to experiment.
EasyPalette's thumbnails provide a preview of the effect before you apply it.
You can customize all the settings for each effect.
There are two main views in EasyPalette: Galleries and Libraries. The Galleries view lets you add a brain-bending number of special effects, including photo frames, fills, lighting, animation, text, deformations, and touch-up. If you switch to the Library by clicking a button at the top of the palette, you can drop in shapes, outlines, paths, masks, and images. Finally, EasyPalette also holds a nice selection of templates for instantly creating Web pages, slide shows, business cards, posters, and CD covers.
Of course, if you dislike the panels or want to maximize screen space, you can always close them and use the plain-vanilla menus and toolbars to adjust every aspect of your photo. PhotoImpact is equally at home with bitmap, vector, and text objects, and it has a full range of tools for assembling surprisingly complex documents.
Version 10.0 beefs up digital camera support with a wizard for downloading images from your digicam. The Browse manager displays EXIF information (camera and photo metadata), and there are several new filters specifically for digital photos, including improved Remove Red Eye, Touch Up, and Reduce Noise. PhotoImpact updates its High Dynamic Range feature, which combines multiple exposures into a single image to brighten dark areas and darken lights in high-contrast photos; it now compensates for movement between the bracketed original shots. This feature can also mask out specific areas of component images and includes histogram clipping to adjust the displayed tonal range.
Use the Extract Object Command to remove the background of an image.
Even if there were nothing else in the box, PhotoImpact would be a steal. But Ulead bundles extra goodies with the image editor. Most useful are PhotoImpact Album, a decent image manager that's beginning to show its age; and PhotoExplorer, a visual file manager for executing batch commands, quickly sending images via e-mail, and browsing and acquiring images from memory cards, scanners, and cameras.
The handy Photo Explorer makes short work out of browsing, e-mailing, converting images, and executing commands on a group of files.
For Web animations, Ulead provides a program called GIF Animator. Cool 360 is a wizard-driven app that creates panoramas from a set of photos and lets you output directly to e-mail, screensavers, printers, and the Internet. And there are light versions of Alien Skin's Splat and Eye Candy filters, plus Hemera Graphic Desk for exploring and purchasing online clip art. Also included in the package are 10 excellent video tutorials to get you started.
This is one wonderful bundle, and we recommend it highly for quick and easy image editing.
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- Average user rating: 4.0 stars out of 8 reviews
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