photo-editing

Fly Free Photo Editing & Viewer offers several standard image-altering functions and a few helpful surprises. While it's mostly nothing new, Fly Free proves a solid enough performer to make it a good alternative to costlier choices, especially since it's free.

The program's interface feels very natural to operate. Its professional-looking design is a big part of its efficient, intuitive nature. Fly Free's functions felt familiar because we'd seen them in many similar photo and image editing programs. Within the interface's sleek design lies some expanded functionality. For instance, we were able to change … Read more

HP Photosmart Essential provides a simple set of tools for editing and sharing photos. While not offering a ton of options and functions, the program does a fine job of sticking to the basics.

We were surprised by how simple and professional-looking the program's interface was and it was clear the designers put a lot of effort into it. That was even before we watched the brief tutorial videos that showed us everything we needed to know. The program reminded us of many other photo editors, though with only a handful of tools, like color, lighting, resizing, and cropping. … Read more

This sophisticated little program packs a lot into a little. That is, a lot of standard photo editing tools and filters into a small iPhone screen. Despite the fact that the iPhone yields one of the largest mobile screens around, it's still tiny by desktop, even laptop, standards. Yet despite the handicap, Photogene arranges its tools in a standard layout, with cropping, rotation, color adjustment, filtering, and annotating tools represented by icons on the left side of the screen. Further menu tools, like sliders and color pickers, materialize below the image to allow for fine-tuning.

Restricted to mobile phone … Read more

With the proliferation of digital cameras, everybody and their mom probably has one. In fact, you may come away from parties with hundreds of images just waiting to be displayed. So why wait for the next gathering to showcase your photos?

The Fotobox Plus is an SD card reader that comes with embedded flash memory. But what's unique is that the internal memory also contains an editor that converts your images into a slideshow with music.

The finished product can be uploaded to YouTube or converted into various formats such as DVD, MPEG-1, MPEG-2, and WMV, as well as … Read more

Time again for Adobe's annual update of its consumer photo- and video-editing applications, Photoshop Elements (Windows | Mac) and Premiere Elements (Windows only). We're up to version 8 now, and while there's no killer must-have new capability--unless you consider automatic sync across multiple computers--the two products still provide solid mass appeal for their respective markets.

As in the past, you can buy the pair together for $149.99, which is a far more attractive buy for video-editing shoppers than Photoshoppers, and in fact the combination makes quite a nice bundle for home videographers. Independently, they're $99.99 each. Tack "Plus" to the name of the product for another $40 and you get an extra 20GB on the otherwise free Photoshop.com membership (along with ongoing new template and tutorial content), which will then cost you $50 annually to renew.

The latter becomes key if you plan to take advantage of one of the nicer new features, the ability to sync your videos, photos, music, projects, and PDF files across multiple systems using Photoshop.com as the hub. (In case you missed it, Photoshop.com rolled out video support last month in preparation for this release of Pre.) While Adobe doesn't make a Plus membership a requirement for doing so, you'll very quickly max out your free 2GB without it.

After allowing the product to languish for a while, with 8 Adobe brings the Mac version of Photoshop Elements up to parity with the Windows version and with the buzzy new features in iPhoto, including face recognition and geotagging/mapping. Unlike iPhoto, however, there's no direct upload to Facebook, though it supports a broader number of services, including Kodak EasyShare Gallery and Smugmug. Annoyingly, those choices are buried as More Options on the Share pane (likely because the interface decision was based on the technology used--implemented via an API rather than core program code--rather than where the user will look for them).

Like most current facial recognition implementations, Adobe's is only moderately accurate. For instance, in many photos it correctly identifies one person, but didn't detect others and thought inanimate objects were faces. The batch detection and labeling where you confirm different faces in groups of selected images is better, but still a little clunky.… Read more

A recent review of Corel Digital Studio 2010 got me close and personal with the consumer-oriented multimedia suite. Corel's studio excelled at providing a consistent, unified look, navigation, and toolset across its applications for editing photos and videos, making movies, burning content, and playing videos. It also copies photos, videos, and music to your mobile device, and can create photo projects like photo books and cards.

All good stuff, but it doesn't come cheap. Multimedia suites like this will put you out about $100. They're worth the price if you frequently use the tools, or if you vastly prefer the convenience and accessibility of a consumer-friendly setup. However, if you don't mind being scrappy, you can cobble together a spread of multimedia tools--your own "suite"--for next to nothing.

Edit and create

Photo editing, video editing, and making movies are the three largest focal points of multimedia suites like Corel Digital Studio 2010 and Roxio Creator 2010 (unfortunately, no download trial is available for the latter). Google's Picasa is one of my favorite freeware tools for casual users, and one of the closest direct matches to what's offered in a multimedia suite. Its uses are multifarious: organizing your photos and videos into albums, editing images and videos, sharing online, creating projects like collages and movies, and ordering prints.

The image-editing tools are serviceable, with red-eye removal, one-click lighting fixes, cropping and straightening, and finer tools for addressing blemishes and lighting. There are also 12 effects, like sepia tones and soft focus. This contrasts with Picasa's low-grade video editor, which can at least rotate videos and trim them. The movie maker has many more controls, but is basic; it doesn't build in the polished templates of a premium program. Picasa does, however, offer to sell you prints from a choice of providers (choice is good), and can help create a collage.

For standalone photo editing, the freeware applications FastStone Image Viewer, IrfanView, Paint.NET, and GIMP range in features from the accessible to the powerful. Read more about them in this resource guide.

Vista and Windows 7 users can try out Microsft's new Windows Live Movie Maker (review), freeware that can slap photos and video clips into a new movie in seconds. Deeper controls let you tweak transitions, captions, and effects after the automation. Editing tools include splitting, trimming, and applying fade points. As a point of comparison, video editors in these consumer-focused multimedia suites are better-equipped, perhaps with audio-tuning tools and features to adjust video lighting.

Creating calendars and photo books are a DIY project within your reach if you have an excellent photo printer and a home bookbinding kit. Otherwise, you can spend your energy on the editing and captioning and get a project printed somewhere else. Retail shops, like FedEx Office in the U.S., will print projects. Online photo albums and services like Shutterfly, Snapfish, and Zazzle will also gladly accept your business. The 12-month calendars run from $15 to $20; large photo books are often in the mid-$30 range (online services often charge for shipping). Corel Digital Studio is similarly priced.… Read more

LightZone offers users a stunning array of effects that go way beyond simple lighting tricks. With simple design and abundant tools, this is a great choice for photo perfectionists.

The program hinges right on the verge of being cluttered, but its professional layout is spaced just right to keep all the tools at your fingertips and not overwhelm. Commands are clearly labeled and users can easily preview all changes, which make for a great experience. Users begin LightZone by choosing a photo from the file tree on the left side of the screen. Once a snapshot is chosen, users are … Read more

PhotoPerfect claims it is a digital photo editor's dream come true. With a plethora of options and tools to dial in your pictures, this is certainly an impressive weapon. However, its features might overwhelm novices.

This program presents itself much like other photo editing software. Anyone who has tinkered with Photoshop or comparable programs will recognize the layout of command buttons along the top and left side of the picture. Where PhotoPerfect differs from the others is that it offers fewer opportunities to physically alter the photo. It does, however, offer plenty of innovative ways to tweak a shot … Read more

Photo Manipulation software can be a lot of fun for digital picture fans. However, some of the programs can be overwhelming and confusing. BatchPhoto offers a unique twist that should help users change their snapshots in a hurry.

BatchPhoto presents itself as an easy-to-use, three-step wizard. The primary screen, and the first step, is dedicated to finding pictures you wish to alter. File paths are listed individually on a long central screen for all chosen pictures. The second step offers a simple way to apply changes to all the pictures selected. Here the first picture selected is shown in the … Read more