Corel has released several photo software programs in its history. There was PhotoHouse and, more recently, a Corel version of Photo Album, one of the products it bought when it bought Paint Shop Pro’s creator, JASC.

Its new product, Snapfire Plus, appears to use some of the most automated tools of Paint Shop Pro and has combined them with good filing and sharing software to produce a useful photo management tool.

Snapfire Plus has a clean interface that's easy to get to grips with. Most functions are controlled by a panel down the left-hand side which includes headers for the key working areas of the program: Home, Enhance, Show and Create. 'Home' allows you to find photo and organise them.

A photo organiser at the bottom of the screen us used to drag and drop images into.
'Enhance' includes Quick Fix and Photo Fix; the first automatically applying brightness and contrast adjustments and the second proffering manual image-editing control.

There are rotate and crop functions, too, and a red-eye fix. 'Show' makes it easy to send photos with emails, but its main function is to set up and run slideshows, with a good selection of transitions and rostrum camera effects. Finally, 'Create' provides a variety of print projects, such as calendars and certificates.

While this all makes for a decent collection of tools, one of its main hurdles will surely be selling itself. Rivals such as Adobe’s Photoshop Album Starter Edition 3 and Google's Picasa, from Google, are free downloads.

The basic version of Snapfire is also a freebie, but Snapfire Plus costs £27, which also includes useful editing tools like straightening images, resizing photos and the makeover tools, which enable you to darken tans and brighten teeth.

Snapfire Plus includes basic video editing tools, too, though these are some way away from the core functions of a photo manager. Quick Disk and PhotoSafe backups are more useful, providing automatic and manual CD and DVD recording.

Overall, Snapfire Plus is a useful photo manager, but no better than its free competitors.

Also consider
Adobe Photoshop Album SE3
A good photo manager from the Adobe site or bundled with Acrobat Reader.

Picasa
Hard to argue with the price for this beautifully designed and well-equipped photo manager.

All image-editing reviews