CompuPic Pro 5.1

The control over individual images is surprisingly impressive, but CompuPic Pro 5.1 is still happier handling multiple images as can be seen with its two Batch Conversion commands. The first is very simple and only lets you specify a destination folder, colour depth and file format. The second is more advanced, offering these same main options along with customisable control over image adjustments, size, crop, border, rotation, flipping and even image and text overlay. This is ideal for everything from simple batch rotation of digital photographs, through to advanced preparation of images for the Web - though the lack of GIF-palette management is disappointing. Best of all is the ability to save settings for future use.

By now it's becoming difficult to see what more CompuPic Pro 5.1 can do, especially when you throw in the simple screen saver, wallpaper changer, batch scanner and screen capture available from the Utilities menu. However, the program has one more major trick up its sleeve. Using the Picture CD command it will burn all currently-selected images to CD. Not only that, it also adds a copy of the basic CompuPic software for viewing and handling the images and an Autorun file so that this loads whenever the CD is put into the drive.

There's only one problem with this - it doesn't work - at least not with the systems that I tried it on, and under Windows 2000 just calling up the dialog lead to the program freezing. Sadly, this is an indicator of a general problem - CompuPic Pro 5.1 just isn't rock-solid. There are a number of rough edges ranging from some incorrect link handling in the Web-page output, through to the occasional crash and disappearance.

Glitches aside, CompuPic Pro 5.1 is a remarkable piece of work. Much like the onslaught of video recorders into homes in the 1980s, I now find it difficult to imagine life without CompuPic Pro. The program is continually being developed and improved so that by the time you read this there will hopefully be a more reliable 5.2 version ready for download. With this in mind, and considering the non-severity of the problems in the version under review, I can still whole-heartedly recommend this product.

Author: Tom Arah