Although Ulead has never had the market presence of Adobe or Corel - perhaps because of its products’ early association with printers, scanners and camera bundles - its graphics software is widely used, for all the right reasons.

Photoimpact 12 is a sophisticated image editor that offers four different modes of working, which it calls workspaces.

Full Edit which, as the name suggests, provides all the tools and effects for somebody already used to touching up photos. The Web workspace offers tools useful to the Web designer and DVD & Video is there for designing menus for CDs and DVD photos.

Expressfix isn’t new to version 12, but it has been extended into a complete workspace of its own. It simplifies the look of the program and concentrates on its automated features. There are several very worthwhile tools in this category.

As well as automatic red-eye removal, there’s a whole range of exposure adjustments that can be applied automatically. White balance can be tweaked to compensate for the colour casts caused by interior lights, and you can reduce ‘noise’ speckles in low-light shots.

The focus can be softened or sharpened, and with all the tools you select between thumbnail images to control the extent of the adjustment. This is a very easy way to work.

Full Edit mode offers the tools you’d expect in a heavyweight image editor, but again with some useful extras. The trace tool now becomes a Wizard; draw an outline around a foreground object you want to extract and adjust the outline by painting in the foreground or erasing the background. The image can be enlarged to get at the fine detail.

For those interested in editing in RAW format – the format a digital camera uses to store an image taken straight from its sensor – the program directly supports more cameras and can edit high r esolution, 48-bit images.

At the lighter end, there’s more scope for photo-based projects. There are hundreds of templates for cards, CD labels and CD and DVD front ends and the Smartguide panel offers real-time advice on using most of the tools in the software. Photo Explorer 8.6, Ulead’s photo manager, and COOL 360, which turns sequences of photos into 360-degree panoramas, are bundled with the product.

The 320-page manual covers all aspects of the program in detail and with plenty of illustration. Although none of it’s in colour, there are many ideas here on how to achieve creative effects.

In short, this is a comprehensive image editor that Ulead has obvious worked hard on to make equally accessible to new and seasoned enthusiast. With a recommended price of just under £50 and a street price less than half that, Photoimpact 12 represents tremendous value.

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