Product Reviews

PhotoSuite 7 is one of a growing number of programs aimed at users who want to fiddle with photos but don't feel the need to invest time and money in the likes of Paint Shop Pro. It also helps you to manage your media files and combine them into presentations.

You start in a fixed-size window resembling a web page, which tries to make sense of the jumble of programs included. Selecting a 'Task' loads the appropriate module, the main one being PhotoSuite itself, a collection of user-friendly image-editing tools. PhotoDoctor does quite a good job of improving dull pictures in one click, although it seems to think every photo is underexposed. Other functions cover individual tonal adjustments, red-eye and blemish removal, resizing and titling, and a range of special effects.

You can select part of an image by drawing around an area (lasso) or selecting pixels of similar colour (magic wand). There's even an edge detection tool that helps with tasks such as cutting people out from a background. But there just aren't enough controls to tweak selections for seamless results. We found that

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masks didn't work as expected.

Although these flaws rule out serious photomontage work, PhotoSuite does provide a wide selection of 'props', good-quality cut-out photos of everyday objects that you can collage on top of your own photos. Unfortunately, resolution is poorly handled, so your artwork can end up pixellated even though it looks clear onscreen.

You can also add a range of fancy frames and borders, and use wizards to complete 'projects' based on supplied templates. These are attractive, but ignore the limitations of the software. Choose Magazine, for example, and you're shown a magazine cover, adorned with a barcode that can't be edited. Other projects are less stupid but none pays much attention to real-world paper sizes.

Of the other applications, Media Manager is supposed to organise all your image, audio and video files, although the tiny number of formats supported doesn't even include GIF. You can assign images to 'Collections', but there's no way to cross-categorise them except by assigning keywords. As in PhotoSuite 5, when you have found the image you want, there's no direct way to load it for editing.

StoryBoard is much better. It lets you combine images, video and audio clips into a multimedia presentation with transition effects. By starting from the idea of creating a slideshow rather than editing a video, it makes the process very easy to grasp, yet has enough features to give a decent end result. An export wizard creates video files of suitable quality for your needs, or you can switch your production to DVD Builder to burn it to CD-R. PhotoSuite 7 Platinum provides a lot of functionality but most of it is strictly for fun.