Product Reviews

Adobe Photoshop is the image editor everyone has heard of, but there are plenty of alternatives. Many other programs are not just a lot cheaper but arguably better suited to the needs of most amateurs. The home-oriented Photoshop Elements 2 is one example, and it's currently our top pick. But other mid-range rivals include Jasc Paint Shop Pro 8, Ulead PhotoImpact XL and Serif PhotoPlus 9. PhotoPlus is a very sophisticated program that offers Serif's trademark blend of cutting-edge features, smart design and bargain pricing.

It does take a slightly different approach to the others. Where Elements concentrates on user-friendliness, Paint Shop Pro on all-round features and PhotoImpact on effects, PhotoPlus offers lots of power, including Photoshop-style layers, adjustment layers, masks and levels and curves adjustments. What you don't get, though, is any hand-holding. This is a program for people who already know what they're doing.

Version 9 builds on this with a number of new features. A dust- and scratch-removal tool helps clean up grubby scans, and you can now use Lighten, Darken and Sponge (saturation) retouching brushes, plus a new red-eye removal brush to make photos look even better. A selection of new effects, called Pinch and Punch warp tools, has been added, too, and the printing options have been expanded to make it easier to print both single images and multiple images on the same sheet.

The new features also include the ability to save Adobe PDF files and ICC colour management, so you can in theory standardise colour

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reproduction across your scanner, printer, camera and other peripherals. If you're more interested in painting than photography, you'll want to try out the brand new paint engine, which includes highly customisable brushes, textures and shapes, and supports pressure-sensitivity for those using graphics tablets.

However, these new features don't represent a major update. At heart, PhotoPlus still feels like the same program and it's not going to suit everyone. The bare-looking interface is efficient enough, but pretty daunting for beginners. It doesn't have Paint Shop Pro's easy-to-follow Enhance functions, or Photoshop Elements' excellent Hints and Filters palettes. In fact, using PhotoPlus 9 is very much like using a rather crudely designed version of Photoshop. It gets the job done and there's no denying its capabilities, but it's not at all polished or helpful in the way it goes about things.

You can browse files visually when opening them, but the browser window doesn't send itself to the back of the stack when you double-click on a file and open it - you have to hide it manually. You can adjust levels and curves to optimise the tones in your images, but if you want to know exactly what these things mean and what's going on, you'll need to read the (admittedly rather good) printed Companion volume that comes with the program.

PhotoPlus 9 is certainly good at both painting and drawing. Like Paint Shop Pro, it allows you to create vector illustrations on separate vector layers, which can be interwoven with standard image layers. Combined with the new painting tools, it offers a powerful creative application for those prepared to experiment.

Indeed, PhotoPlus 9 continually surprises with what it can do. Its menus and options are uncannily similar to those in Photoshop, so it's easy to see where Serif is aiming with this program, though it falls short with more subtle, in-depth controls.

Technically, Serif PhotoPlus 9 is a terrific program for the price. You can't argue with its features or its value for money. It's just not as appealing to use, as user-friendly, or as exciting as its rivals.