With this latest release, Roxio's PhotoSuite has become more comprehensive than ever. It now allows you to import pictures from your digital camera as well as finding them on your hard disk, and organise them along the way.

After loading the software, you're taken straight to the 'home' area, from which you can choose from a selection of tasks. This includes importing images, as well as editing, sharing and printing them, burning CDs or DVDs and making projects, such as collages, calendars and postcards.

Each option opens up in a new window and, once you've finished a particular task, closing the window will return you to the PhotoSuite 7 home area, where you can select a new task or quit altogether.

The image-editing application is quite powerful, but the power is disguised behind an easy-to-use facade. Unlike more advanced (and more expensive) programs, there are no toolbars or menu options to navigate in order to fix your pictures. You simply select the touch-up tool you want from a list on the left-hand side of the window.

These are organised by category, so you can easily correct red-eye or remove wrinkles from one option, or change the brightness, contrast, or colour tint from another.

Each option takes you through a step-by-step process, making it fairly easy to perform quite complex image manipulation. If you have lots of images to work on, you can automate the process with the batch conversion feature.

The Photo Stitch function allows you to combine a series of pictures side-by-side to make a panoramic image. You simply select the pictures and arrange them in the order you want to make up the panorama. You can then set advanced options to correct for any lens curvature when you took the pictures.

This produces fairly good results if you have a set of suitable pictures that match up well. Even if your images are totally different, the stitch application can come up with some unexpected and fun results.

If you want to start from scratch, there is a 'New Canvas' function, which provides you with a blank page, onto which you can draw or add text or elements of other pictures. You can also use the same set of tools and filters that apply to the image editor to enhance your efforts.

The Projects section of PhotoSuite contains various fun elements; you can create a postcard featuring your favourite image, and add any text you like. There are also sample magazines, posters, greetings cards and calendars, all of which can be adapted with your own pictures and messages.

The Media Manager helps you to organise your pictures and prepare them for burning to CD or DVD. There is also a separate section for creating VCDs of your pictures that can be shown on most DVD players and computers.

These can include background music and menus, and to complete the set, there is a label creator for your burned discs.

PhotoSuite 7 is very fast and very easy to use. Overall, it provides a superb and comprehensive set of features that covers almost anything you could want to do with still images.

Contact: Roxio (no UK number)
www.roxio.co.uk