CompuPic Pro 5.1

Traditional photo-editing packages such as Photoshop and Photo-Paint were designed to deal with one or two scanned images at a time, but these days users are bombarded with multiple images from multiple sources. When you're handling thousands of images from digital cameras, stock photography CDs or Internet downloads, you need some way to bring them under control. That's exactly what CompuPic Pro 5.1 promises to do - and it throws in a few extra tricks of its own in the process.

Central to the program is its Explorer-like interface. Running down the left of the screen is an Outline view of the drives and folders on your system. Click on a folder and CompuPic Pro immediately starts to generate thumbnails of supported files to show in the main file window. The program supports 40 formats, ranging from the bitmap standards such as JPEG, GIF, PSD and TIFF through to more surprising options such as TrueType fonts and HTML pages. In each case the thumbnail generation is very quick, even when working with files on CD. Even better, since CompuPic Pro 5.1 defaults to storing thumbnails in a central database, the next time you click on a folder its thumbnails are available instantly.

This ability to work visually with image thumbnails rather than relying on file information such as names and dates is essential when you're dealing with a large number of images - especially with digital camera photos where the filenames are meaningless. To help give you as much control as possible, CompuPic Pro 5.1 also lets you sort your thumbnails based on factors such as extension, orientation and area. Using the floating Keywords palette you can also add textual information to images and later search for files that match your keyword criteria. This is adequate for simple tasks such as storing a photographer's name with their images, but for advanced cataloguing you really need a dedicated asset-management package like Portfolio.

CompuPic Pro 5.1 makes it simple to find the images you want, but what else can you do with them? The first option is file management. As you'd expect, you can delete, rename and duplicate images. You can also drag and drop files to move or copy them, and this is handled in the background. Another nice touch is the provision of a Preview window under the Folder window which shows a much larger version of the currently-selected file. Best of all is the ability to select multiple folders and see and handle all the images they contain simultaneously. Again, this is ideal for digital camera work where you'll often have multiple sets of photos from the same holiday. On a slightly larger scale, I had no problems viewing and handling more than 3,000 of my photos from around 60 folders.

When it comes to displaying your images, again you're spoilt for choice. The easiest option is to show your photos on screen with the Slide Show command. By default, each image appears on screen for three seconds, but you can always customise timings. In any case, you can always press the PageDown key to move through the slides more quickly, Pause to concentrate on an image, or PageUp to return to the previous image. Another option is Maxi-Show which displays multiple images on screen at the same time with each updated sequentially. I like it a lot as each image is on screen for longer, and there's always something new to look at.

These days, of course, you don't have to be physically present to be shown images, and CompuPic Pro 5.1 has embraced the Internet with a vengeance. Sending images to friends is particularly easy: once you've selected your files, you only have to call up the email Files command, enter a subject, address and message and choose an encoding method. Alternatively, you could post your images to the Web using a free service provider and then just let all your friends know where they should visit. CompuPic Pro 5.1 makes this easy with dedicated dialogs to handle sign-up and image uploads to five free hosting providers - Fotki, Ofoto, PhotoIsland, PhotoLoft and PhotoPoint.