CompuPic Pro 5.1

If you have your own Web space, CompuPic Pro takes care of generating the entire HTML you need to display your images yourself. Again, the first step is to select your images and this is done using the Web Page Generator command. This lets you choose between a range of themes for your initial thumbnail pages, such as the 35mm option which makes your thumbnails look like a roll of film, and then between another set of themes for the main image pages. You can then customise just about everything from the number of thumbnails per page, to the placement and colour of navigation text. In each case, the dialog's Preview page updates so that you know exactly what you can expect when you finally hit the Create command. Again, CompuPic Pro 5.1 works in the background so that you can get on with other work until your browser opens with the pages ready to view.

CompuPic Pro 5.1 isn't just interested in Web uploads. Another option under the Internet menu is Web Site Scanner. Using this you can enter a source URL and a target directory on your hard disk and CompuPic Pro 5.1 will automatically download all graphics and HTML from the site. You can opt to limit the download to linked files on the main server, set how many levels deep the scanner should go, and minimum and maximum file sizes. You can also choose to maintain directory structure to create a mirror copy of the site and provide usernames and passwords where authentication is necessary. Apart from leaving you to get on with other things, the main advantage of automated scanning over manual browsing is that multiple connections can be opened simultaneously so that the entire process is much quicker.

CompuPic Pro 5.1 is right to concentrate on its Internet functionality, but it hasn't completely forgotten other more traditional media, such as paper. Select your images and the Print command and the Print Images dialog appears complete with Page Preview. You can interactively resize the image and add a header and footer, but you can't print multiple images on the same page. To begin with, it looks like the dedicated Picture Index command fills this gap. However, while you can set the number of images across and down, you don't have any precise sizing control and can't print multiple copies of the same file. The command isn't much good for producing multiple 4 « 3 prints then, but it's certainly more advanced than the print control offered by most photo editors, and useful for producing thumbnail references.

The main strength of CompuPic Pro 5.1 undoubtedly comes from its ability to work with multiple files at once, but the program also claims to offer individual image editing. Select the View/Edit command or double-click on an image and it opens in its own full-screen window against a black background. Without any toolbar or menu, however, it isn't obvious what you're expected to do and clicking on the image immediately takes you back to the main Explorer view. In fact, if you move your mouse up to the top of the screen a menu bar appears complete with various editing commands, even a few editing tools such as a red-eye remover and tools for adding speech bubbles.

These might be useful for the occasional humorous greetings card but I was still ready to move on. A little more exploring, however, revealed a lot more power. The Adjust command offers slider-based control over all the main colour-correction capabilities from brightness and contrast through to gamma control and sharpening. Even better is the ability to apply the most common commands such as sharpening, saturation and image rotation through keyboard shortcuts. Best of all is the ability to move through images with the PageUp and PageDown keys. Suddenly CompuPic Pro 5.1's editing is seen in a new light. Without any real pixel-level control it can't compete with dedicated editors, but if all you're looking to do is to quickly bring out the best in a batch of digital camera images, this may well be all you need.