Picture-perfect image editing

Unless your photography is of a professional standard and on a par with the David Baileys of this world, you're likely to have the odd flaw or two within your photo collection.

With the help of a trusty PC and a good image editing package, not only can you fix up those old blemishes, you can also create an arty masterpiece your friends will envy.

With the latest software the possibilities are endless- fix old photos, edit any images, create a new project or produce a slide show to show the family. We've looked at seven image editing packages to see which is the best.

Adobe Photoshop Elements 2
Packaged as the cheaper version of the original Photoshop, Elements 2's editing tools are of a high standard. Although one of the most expensive products on test, the quality and range of tools go some way to justifying it.

The photo-enhancing tools are exceptional. The red-eye removal might need some playing around with but if you can master it, the results are great. The quick-fix tool opens a toolbox for colour, contrast, sharpness and so on, and a before-and-after window lets you preview any changes before applying them.

The colour variation section takes you through a selection of thumbnails on what variances of colour will do to the image. Other great tools, such as fast cropping, layers, extensive filters and shapes, are all included on the one CD-Rom.

It even has a direct-emailing icon that will automatically recognise the size of the document and reduce it accordingly to save time when emailing images.

A selection of menus covers a range of tasks - how tos, filters, effects, layer styles, history, layers and hints - and are all quick and fairly straightforward to use. There are also some fantastic filters to create really arty effects. We especially liked the chalk-and-charcoal filter with weathered wind effects.

Although Elements 2 is not as complicated as the original Photoshop, there's still a fair bit to learn. This is where the thorough tutorials are handy. If you want to become a pro then this is the way forward and the closest to feeling like you have a paintbrush in your hand instead of a mouse.

H&M StudioLine Photo Edition
StudioLine Photo Edition is marketed primarily as an archiving package for photos, although it does have additional editing tools.

Sorting and archiving your photo collection is easy to do. All your images can be transferred to the workspace through a simple My Computer icon. Better still, if you have the required folders open already, you can simply drag and drop the images so they all appear in thumbnail format in the workspace.

You can create and name as many folders as you like and than drag and drop your pictures into any of them.

If by chance you have so many pictures that you can't find the one you want, as long as you've named the file or folder as something obvious to you, there's a search tool that can be extremely useful. There's also a bin icon, which allows you to easily throw away images that you no longer want to keep in the archive.

For simplicity, a quickstep bar lets you go directly to any of the six main features: load images, edit, slide show, web gallery, email and print.

The image toolbox is easy to use and includes the standard tools for photo enhancing, such as crop, rotate and red-eye removal. The cropping tool is not as quick as Paint Shop Pro or Photoshop and you'll have to play around with gridlines first to select the area you want.

The red-eye removal lets you select as many eyes in the picture as need correcting and alter them individually. It's only a shame that the accuracy of the corrected eye colour is not as good as in other packages we've looked at.

All the usual types of adjustment like brightness and exposure correction can be made and there's also a good list of effects for you to choose from. Although there aren't as many special effects options as Photo Impact 8 or Photoshop Elements 2, there's enough to keep a beginner occupied.

These include changes like black and white, transparency and emboss. For what it has to offer, StudioLine is quite expensive.

Jasc Paint Shop Pro 8
Although version 8 of Paint Shop Pro was still in online beta version at the time of review, we decided to take a look. The final version is available to buy from April and will only have minimal changes.

Not only does version 8 boast the full feature set of Paint Shop Pro 7 but it has improved these and added new advanced features.

A new learning section has been incorporated at start-up and offers step-by-step tutorials. These are a must, as the main interface can be daunting for new users, thanks to the sheer number of tools to familiarise yourself with.

If you find these tutorials don't provide enough help, then the Jasc website has a great guidance tour for that extra helping hand.

Once we got used to the program, we were amazed at the results. Tools for correcting old photos are exceptional and you can opt for either manual or automatic correction.

In addition, version 8 has a separate enhancing photos bar from the drop-down menu that has all the photo correction tools and includes a 'one step' touch-up tool. This will automatically go through each of the correction tools and correct photos for you.

The retouching tools all performed well and it was easy to remove scratches and clone colour to fix photos or make changes, which you can see from the examples.

Creating new images is fun and the possibilities are endless. You can create anything from collages to layers, choosing from a full range of shapes and patterns. Your finished photos or creations can then be emailed directly from the workspace.

For more ambitious or advanced users, there are web tools for animation, image slicing and more, so you can create yourself a great website. For beginners and advanced users alike, Paint Shop Pro 8 is worth checking out.

Microsoft Digital Image Pro Version 7
The Pro version of Microsoft's Digital Image software manages to balance a large range of tools with a simplistic interface.

The application opens up to a software tour that is split into five sections: Touch up pictures, Edit multiple pictures, Apply special effects, Create projects and Print and share. Each of the sections takes you through all of the tools and offers step-by-step instructions to help you learn.

The main program's interface is both smart and user friendly. You can open any number of the images that are automatically displayed in the strip of thumbnails along the bottom of the program window.

This is useful for viewing all of your images at once or for switching quickly between them. Images can also be transferred directly from your scanner or digital camera or opened from anywhere else on your PC.

All the expected tools are here, including cropping and framing, different texts, and special effects. We found that the automatic red-eye removal would have benefited from more precision on the replacement eye colour.

The auto-fixing tool is a quick-fix option for improving a picture's quality by automatically adjusting colour, brightness, sharpness and so on. Although impressive, the final results were not as precise as Paint Shop Pro 8's.

If you prefer the manual touch, you won't be disappointed. There's a full list of enhancing tools so you can easily correct scratches or blemishes yourself. For the more arty, there are plenty of special effects to allow you to change the look of a picture from colour to black and white or even give it an antique finish.

With the second disc to hand, there are more than 150 special effects and 3,000 designer templates for creating projects. For the price you pay, Digital Image Pro has a lot to offer.

Roxio PhotoSuite 5 Platinum
Roxio's PhotoSuite is designed to be quick and simple to use and is a great choice for beginners. The basic interface is divided into four sections: Transfer, Edit and Create, Print and Share, and a final section for View, Organise and Archive.

At first glance, you wouldn't imagine there to be as many tools as there are in this package. A further look reveals the full range of options which impressed us, especially for the price.

Aside from being able to import images from different devices like a lot of the other software on test, the edit and create tools let you enhance photos with great red-eye and scratch removal tools plus the usual tools for removing blemishes and wrinkles.

There's a photo doctor on hand to automatically pick up any flaws with images or, if preferred, there are manual options including colour correction, contrast and image sharpness. The Special effects menu has a full offering and has an option for altering multiple photographs at once.

Organising your photo collection is nice and simple, with different archiving tools that let you create albums, add captions and create presentations.

The print and share section lets you produce slide shows and has an option to let you convert any images into an email-friendly format before sending. Whatever task you perform, a side toolbar will guide you through each step and clarify what options you have.

This package is a great all-rounder and beginners will take to its simplicity. It may not have all of the advanced tools of packages like Photoshop Elements but the emphasis is on fun and that's exactly what you'll have.

Serif PhotoPlus 8
With a straightforward interface, PhotoPlus 8 from Serif has a similar layout to the other software packages that we've looked at in this feature.

Novice users will especially welcome the start-up wizard, without which the interface can appear somewhat daunting. It will direct you to creating a new image, opening an existing one, creating animation or importing images from a digital camera or scanner.

If none of the above options appeal, there are sample pictures that you can have a play around with.

The photo-editing tools are impressive, with excellent resizing options that produce smooth results when enlarging images. In addition, the red-eye removal tool, which is unfortunately hidden in the Effects menu, is pretty good. It managed to eliminate the redness and detect the original eye colour, giving high-level precision and a clear finish.

The cloning and layer tools are on a par with Paint Shop Pro and the effects menu includes some fun options, such as the distortion and blur settings.

The editing and enhancing tools cater more for manual manipulation. Any changes you want to make need to be altered on an Effects bar and previewed first. For those who need more guidance, Serif includes a Resource CD that offers tutorials.

Although Serif PhotoPlus 8 offers a good range of tools, it doesn't leap out as being the best on offer, especially considering that Ulead has sliced half the price from its PhotoImpact 8. Serif should really think of following suit in order to compete.

Ulead PhotoImpact 8
When we last reviewed Ulead PhotoImpact 8 it was marketed as a professional photo editor and had a price tag to match. Since then, it has dropped to half its original price and still comes bundled with Photo Impact Album 8 and Ulead Gif Animator.

The interface is professional and similar to Paint Shop Pro in its style. For beginners, it might be intimidating at first and aside from the usual help menu, there's no emphasis on assistance.

If you don't have experience you'll need to spend time familiarising yourself with the program and its tools. There are some online tutorials but these are not as clear cut as Paint Shop Pro's on the Jasc website.

Images can be imported directly from your digital camera or scanner with the help of a wizard and edited with the normal run of tools. Cropping and resizing are easy to do but the red-eye removal did not give as good a result as other packages we've tested here.

Alongside the normal paint tools, there are some excellent artistic effects and distorting options, whether you're creating an original piece or just having some fun. We were impressed with the previews for each effect, which produces nine thumbnails that allowed us to pick the best result.

Batch conversion is done with a simple click of the mouse and lets you convert a group of pictures from one file format, straight to another. Similar to Paint Shop Pro, there's a tool to print multiple pictures onto a single page for easy printing.

Photo Impact Album is an advanced way to sort your photos and images. You can create image databases or use pictures from the existing library.

The Gif Animator can handle pretty complex animations and you can put things together fairly quickly. Although not a package for beginners, Photo Impact 8 is a great bundle for an excellent price.

Get in the picture
Depending on your individual needs, most image editing software will have the basic tools to improve or edit your collection of pictures.

All of the products here have various useful features, which made it hard to choose the overall winner. We decided to give the Buy It award to Roxio's PhotoSuite 5 Platinum. It was the best all-round product here in terms of ease of use and photo editing options. It was also the most fun to use, which was welcoming.

If you're after particular features, it's worth reading back over the individual reviews to see what caters best.

If you've passed the beginners' stage and want more from your software in terms of editing and creating works of art, Photoshop Elements 2 is an outstanding piece of software with an abundance of special features. It's also only £20 dearer that PhotoSuite 5, which is money well spent.

FILE FORMATS
Different file formats can be confusing. Almost all digital images are 'bitmaps', meaning that they are made up of a grid with thousands of pixels. Depending on how much detail there is in an image, this can result in very large files, making it difficult to email pictures.

To handle this, there are various ways of compressing these files. The two most common formats where digital photographs are concerned are Tiff and Jpeg.

Files saved in Tiff format can be compressed to reduce the image size without losing any quality. Pictures in this format are the best quality and you're best working with this file format while in the editing stages.

Jpeg images use a technique known as 'lossy' compression, which throws away some data. The payoff is a slight loss of quality but images can be five per cent of their original size.

Jpeg images work best on photographs, as other graphics can be distorted by the compression process. Jpeg is the best choice for email, putting pictures on a website or for storing large numbers of images after editing.

WHAT ABOUT PHOTOSHOP?
Adobe's Photoshop has become the byword for image editing to the point where manipulated images are referred to as 'photoshopped'. That said, you're probably wondering why we haven't included it.

The reason is that despite its power and flexibility, it's not designed with the consumer in mind. It's vastly expensive and contains a lot of features that will never get used.

Photoshop is meant for the professional computer artist so we've reviewed Photoshop Elements 2, which is more affordable and will meet the majority of consumers' needs.