Electronics & Computers Deals here!
Entered CNET Catalog: 11/02/2004
SKU: A304A01110A0000 W00995
Manufacturer: Ulead Systems Inc.
Manufacturer description
Enjoy the power and beauty of digital photography. Just plug in your digital camera to your PC and PhotoImpact takes care of transferring your photos. Then, do basic photo fixes or make creative enhancements with stunning effects. Beginners and advanced users alike can achieve professional results without expensive equipment and highly technical darkroom processes. Finally, share your works of art through the Web, e-mail, CD and TV.CNET editors' review
- Editors' Choice: No
- Reviewed on: 04/26/2005
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.
User opinions
Select a User Opinion to view: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
User Rating: 
8/10
I've used PhotoImpact for many years. My first choice!
Pros: The many options, ability to import, ease of use.
Cons: Is not always consistant, options change when I don't want them to.
Review:
I was hooked on PhotoImpact when it was just starting out, upgraded several times because I became so used to it. It's easy, has lots of options, the ability to import, export and scan easily. But sometimes it behaves like a spoiled child!
User Rating: 
9/10
Better than Photoshop
Pros: Easy to use with professional features
Cons: Nothing that I have noticed
Review:
Photoshop CS is fully over rated. If you want a program that is very easy to use and has the features of photoshop then this is the one for you.
If you look at the user review's of this program compared to Photoshop you will see that this is rated 9/10 while photoshop is only 6.5/10. There is a simple reason to it, this is better.
And I have actually used both programs.
If you look at the user review's of this program compared to Photoshop you will see that this is rated 9/10 while photoshop is only 6.5/10. There is a simple reason to it, this is better.
And I have actually used both programs.
User Rating: 9/10
Great and unique features make this a must-buy
Pros: Lots of point and click effects that are professional in nature
Cons: It's not easy to find this product in the marketplace.
Review:
Overall this does what you'd expect from photo editing software in it's price range (e.g Paint Shop Pro) but what sets it apart are all the filters it comes with and the menu you can use to implement them.
It's all point and click. You have an idea of what the filter will look like before you even attempt to apply it.
Great features for web designers too.
What I don't understand is why this product is so hard to find. Most local retailers in my area only had version 8.5 if they had any Ulead at all.
I ordered it online but even then I had to hunt for a retailier that had it. It's not as easy to find as say. Paint Shop Pro.
I'm not sure how Ulead dropped the ball in that area, but once you get it, you'll be glad you did.
It's all point and click. You have an idea of what the filter will look like before you even attempt to apply it.
Great features for web designers too.
What I don't understand is why this product is so hard to find. Most local retailers in my area only had version 8.5 if they had any Ulead at all.
I ordered it online but even then I had to hunt for a retailier that had it. It's not as easy to find as say. Paint Shop Pro.
I'm not sure how Ulead dropped the ball in that area, but once you get it, you'll be glad you did.
User Rating: 
10/10
Awesome product cheap price
Pros: Everything you will ever need for dig retouching etc
Cons: some minor changes to included tools but more pesonal style than "bad"
Review:
Been a suser of this for about 6-7 years after getting fed up with the Adobe prices climbing sky high. Most of the other "low end" (nothing could be further than the truth with some of these ESPECIALLY PImpact) setttle for being an lesser alternative whereas PImpact goes for the gold and does so admirably while still keeping its usability down at alevel where most can use it and access the high end features when needed and yet the pro will feel right at home. This is the best kept seceret I think in the genre... do get the retail or shipped version its much easier than downloading all the NOT included components in teh trial if you register. In teh end they ar equal but the boxed version is the best bet.
User Rating: 9/10
works good
Pros: lots of great features for specialty work
Cons: not always easy to do
Review:
I have used and updated with U Lead since photoimpact 5 and continually update. They offer lots of extras for various project and I have never been disappointed with their products.
User Rating: 9/10
This is a powerful graphics software package
Pros: Easy to use interface
Cons: None I can think of.
Review:
I was introduced to this software when
they had a lite verson packaged with
Hotmetal Pro 3.0.
It was pretty nifty then for graphics
for Web pages.
It's real good now.
they had a lite verson packaged with
Hotmetal Pro 3.0.
It was pretty nifty then for graphics
for Web pages.
It's real good now.
User Rating: 9/10
Superb tools & Interface, for Maximum Creative Value
Pros: Well balanced interface, excellent features, Great value
Cons: cpu and memory intensive
Review:
At first stability issues dampened my enthusiasm for Ulead's newest Photo Impact build. After system-wide upgrades, Photo Impact 10 now runs beautifully and is now of my favorite applications for quick web graphics and corporate identity designing. So what seemed to be a software problem was actually a hardware insufficiency.
PI10's effects and features are abundant and effective, and the revised interface is a pleasure to work with. Overall it?s a perfect package for Photo Impact users who want to move up from PI6 and XL. The web site building tools are good enough to work with more sophisticated editors such as Front Page or Dreamweaver. The photo touch up tools are excellent and if you are careful you can easily pick-up what works best out of the wide assortment of features, but it seems that there is a certain redundancy because several editing tools are repeated under different menu selections. I think the graphics creating capabilities are great for building basic images for Flash work and assembly with applications like SwishMax and Koolmoves.
Documentation though weak is not too much of an issue because the program is intuitive and the user interface is so friendly. If you are looking for the best value in graphics creation and image editing Photo Impact 10 is definitely on the top of the list. For those who have suffered from instability look to upgrade your motherboard and bus speeds to solve your problems. For reference purposes I switched from a P4 2.4 GHz on a MSI 845 PE Max Chipset with 1 Gb of DDR333 NVIDIA Ti4200 VGA to an Athlon 64 3500+ on a ASUS A8NSLI-Premium NVIDIA Nforce4 with 4 Gb of dual channel DDR400 and dual SATA 2 disks and NVIDIA EN6800GT PCI exp VGA so the difference in performance and stability is quite overwhelming.
Chris Mar
PI10's effects and features are abundant and effective, and the revised interface is a pleasure to work with. Overall it?s a perfect package for Photo Impact users who want to move up from PI6 and XL. The web site building tools are good enough to work with more sophisticated editors such as Front Page or Dreamweaver. The photo touch up tools are excellent and if you are careful you can easily pick-up what works best out of the wide assortment of features, but it seems that there is a certain redundancy because several editing tools are repeated under different menu selections. I think the graphics creating capabilities are great for building basic images for Flash work and assembly with applications like SwishMax and Koolmoves.
Documentation though weak is not too much of an issue because the program is intuitive and the user interface is so friendly. If you are looking for the best value in graphics creation and image editing Photo Impact 10 is definitely on the top of the list. For those who have suffered from instability look to upgrade your motherboard and bus speeds to solve your problems. For reference purposes I switched from a P4 2.4 GHz on a MSI 845 PE Max Chipset with 1 Gb of DDR333 NVIDIA Ti4200 VGA to an Athlon 64 3500+ on a ASUS A8NSLI-Premium NVIDIA Nforce4 with 4 Gb of dual channel DDR400 and dual SATA 2 disks and NVIDIA EN6800GT PCI exp VGA so the difference in performance and stability is quite overwhelming.
Chris Mar
User Rating: 8/10
Extremely Versatile and Easy to Use
Pros: Retouch photos, create web pages & graphics
Cons: Web buttons, banners, etc. haven't been updated much through the years
Review:
Download this software from Ulead.com & run it through the paces. You can manipulate photos, create web pages, graphics and produce results faster than with any software I've ever used. This is really powerful stuff for novices. Photo Impact 10 Pro has "movie" tutorials that teach you the basics. Have fun!
