The most recent articles from Computeract!ve

Review: Lasersoft Silverfast 6.6 Ai Studio photo-editing software

Simon Williams — 2008-09-11T12:03:00.000Z

Simon Williams, Computeract!ve, Thursday 11 September 2008 at 12:03:00

Get better images from your scanner

When using a scanner, most people use the software that comes with it and scan images into a photo-editing program such as Photoshop or Paint Shop Pro to apply corrections and effects.

It's possible to use a different method, though, with dedicated scanning software such as Lasersoft Imaging’s Silverfast Ai. This product works directly with each specific scanning device, so you need to check that your particular model is supported – there's a list of compatible scanners on the Lasersoft website.

Silverfast Ai Studio is at the top of the Silverfast range and includes sophisticated functions such as automatic calibration, automatic frame alignment, noise reduction through multiple exposures and direct export to PDF.

Pay extra for the so-called IT8 version of Silverfast of the software and you can use a special colour target, laid on the scanner, to automatically calibrate it to produce truer colours. The process is surprisingly simple and colour reproduction is much improved.

Silverfast Ai Studio can be installed as a standalone application, or as a plug-in for Photoshop (or Photoshop Elements) if you have that software.

Auto-frame alignment combined with auto-frame recognition enables the user to place several different photos on the scanner flatbed at the same time and have the software both recognise and rotate them so they are all aligned horizontally and vertically. On our test scanner the process wasn't perfect – it thought it recognised a few things that weren't photos.

Silverfast Ai Studio’s multi-exposure scanning can improve the dynamic range of transparencies (negatives or slides, rather than prints) by scanning them at different light intensities. The shadowed areas in photos benefit considerably from this technique, which effectively reduces noise speckles.

The program could really have done with a simpler pricing structure. It comes in four main versions: SE, SE Plus, Ai and Ai Studio. Ai and Ai Studio can be bought in sub-versions with IT8 colour calibration and with or without an IT8 printed target for auto-calibration. They can also be bought as download or CD versions, at varying prices and you’ll pay a different price depending on the make and model of your scanner, too.

While all scanner users will benefit from the expertise built into Silverfast Ai Studio and from the depth of its feature set, you have to decide whether you value your images enough to pay over £150 for those scans, or over £220 if you want automatic scanner calibration, too.

The cheaper SE version of the software costs around £50. Although it misses many of the advanced features above, might be a better fit for many home users.

Review: Portrait Professional photo-editing software

Cliff Joseph — 2008-08-27T10:36:00.000Z

Cliff Joseph, Computeract!ve, Wednesday 27 August 2008 at 10:36:00

Specialised editing for portrait photography fans

There are a number of low-cost photo-editing programs available for the amateur photographer, but Portrait Professional concentrates specifically on editing and modifying portraits.

It includes the standard editing tools as in ordinary photo-editors, such as red-eye removal, and the ability to remove wrinkles and moles from people’s faces. It also provides additional tools for altering the appearance of facial features such as the eyes, nose and mouth. You can even stretch a person’s neck to make it look longer and more slender.

Portrait Professional starts by asking you to use the mouse to click on a series of specific points, such as the corners of eyes and lips. This allows the program to isolate those facial features and edit them with great precision, while leaving the rest of the photo untouched.

Once you’ve placed those points, the program switches into its main mode, in which it displays a split-screen window containing before and after versions of the photo so that you can see the effects of any changes.

The main editing tools are displayed in a panel on the left of the screen. These include a number of pre-defined options, such as ‘redden lips’ or ‘slim face’ that can instantly make changes, but there are also adjustable settings that provide more detailed control over specific facial features.

There are eye controls that widen eyes individually, alter shapes of eyebrows or even sharpen detail in eyelashes. The mouth controls include an expression setting that can stretch a mouth into a smile, or purse lips together. You can widen someone’s jawline to make them look more masculine, or soften their hair and make it look more glossy.

These tools work well and do provide very fine control over portrait photos, but it’s not always clear what each tool does. Many tools simply have vague labels such as ‘upper lip’ or ‘lower lip’ and don’t really explain how they affect that part of the photo. This means that you often have to experiment by randomly clicking on tools to see how they work or flicking through the online help files. More control over the changes would have been good too, so that you could click on the points you place on the person’s face with the mouse and stretch the image by hand.

Still, for just £40 Portrait Professional does provide some very powerful and precise editing tools. It’s obviously a specialised program, and will mainly appeal to people who do a lot of portrait photography. However, it could certainly come in handy for touching up wedding snaps or other photos where you really want people to look their best.

Vista compatible: Yes

Review: Magix Xtreme Photo & Graphics Designer 2 graphics editing suite

Simon Williams — 2008-08-15T10:00:00.000Z

Simon Williams, Computeract!ve, Friday 15 August 2008 at 10:00:00

Draw and paint with one piece of software

Vector graphics applications such as Adobe Illustrator and Corel Draw define drawings using mathematics to make up lines and shapes.

Conventional painting or photo software, by comparison, works with the individual pixels that make up photos and painted images.

They're two very different ways of working but Magix (particularly Xara, the company Magix bought last year), here attempts to handle both in one program.

There are actually three applications in this collection: Xtreme Graphic Designer 2, Xtreme Photo Designer 7 and a special edition (meaning more basic) version of Facefilter Studio 2. Xtreme Graphic Designer 2 is a close relation of Xara Xtreme 4, which has acquired a strong reputation for everything from photo editing to website design.

The key feature separating Xtreme Graphic Designer 2 from other vector programs is its speed. Where other programs use before and after previews of images to show the effects of changes, in most places the Magix software does the same things in real time. For example, if you stretch the frame of a graphic around which text is wrapped, most programs will redraw the image when you release the mouse on the frame. Here the text rewraps itself as the graphics frame is moving.

Among new features is the ability to create and edit 3D objects. Although so far there’s only extrusion – you can’t create volumes of revolution as you would on a real lathe – the 3D objects generated are automatically lit from up to three different light sources and of course all changes including lighting happen in real time.

On the photo side, it's possible to do a lot with the new histogram tool, which shows the spread of colours in an image. By dragging sliders the lighting can be easily adjusted and with the eyedropper complete colour ranges can be changed easily so a red car can be turned blue without having to treat all the shades in its shiny bodywork separately.

Photo Designer 7 is a very competent dedicated photo editor in the Paintshop Pro style and Facefilter Studio doesn’t just remove skin blemishesbut can change expressions in subtle (and dangerously tabloid-newspaper-like) ways. To have these three applications in one box for £40 is exceptional value.

Vista compatible: Yes

Review: Cewe Photobook photo software

Anthony Dhanendran — 2008-07-18T17:42:00.000Z

Anthony Dhanendran, Computeract!ve, Friday 18 July 2008 at 17:42:00

Print your pictures in style

There's no shortage of companies that will print digital photos, both online and on the high street, but few of them specialise in larger-format prints and books that can be used to show off your handiwork.

Despite the silly name, Cewe (pronounced "see-wee") offers excellent quality books in several sizes, from the £15 booklet (which is a little smaller than a DVD case) to the £70 large-scale XXL book. The XL Photobook we looked at costs £30 and measures approximately one foot in width and height.

To make a book you need to download the software, which installed without a problem and was very easy to use. In addition to automatically making a book from a set of images, it allows users full control over which images go on which pages, and what the backgrounds look like. Images can be rotated to a jaunty angle on the page, given borders and in a nice touch, even stretched across a whole double-page spread. The image-moving tool takes a bit of getting used to but once we figured out how to use it, it was simple.

This size of book can accommodate up to 130 pages (more pages mean a higher cost, though), which is enough to make a book of even a large collection. There's a choice of covers, too, of which we chose the 'premium linen' which gives a finish like that of an old cloth-covered hardback book. It's easy to add titles to pages, too.

Delivery, promised in 10 working days, took only a week, although this will of course vary depending on your circumstances and the postal service. The Cewe Photobooks are an excellent choice for those who want a proper document of an important event such as a wedding.

Vista compatible: Yes

Gallery: Edit and share photos with Picnik

Matt Andrews — 2008-05-28T12:51:00.000Z

Matt Andrews, Computeract!ve, Wednesday 28 May 2008 at 12:51:00

Before spending money on a photo-editing program, first try a free online service like Picnik

Review: Serif Photoplus X2 photo-editing software

Anthony Dhanendran — 2008-02-06T00:00:00.000Z

Anthony Dhanendran, Computeract!ve, Wednesday 6 February 2008 at 00:00:00

Affordable editing software offers some powerful tools

Photoplus, while aimed very squarely at home users, nevertheless contains several tools and effects that wouldn't be out of place in a high-end program such as Photoshop.

It may look more old fashioned than the similarly named Corel Paint Shop Pro Photo X2 but some of the editing tools here are very impressive indeed.

One of the biggest changes is the addition of the Makeover Studio, which allows you to touch up family portraits in all kinds of clever ways, as a step-by-step tutorial. If you get bored you can get Photoplus to do it for you in a single click.

The usual effects and filters can be found in the menus, and the program includes quite advanced support for layers, allowing you to build up complex pictures fairly easily. It comes with a decent album management program called Albumplus SE, although this isn't as user-friendly as the one in Photoshop Elements. A very useful printed manual accompanies the CD to create what is a competent and user-friendly picture editor that's capable of advanced tasks.

Vista compatible: Yes

Review: Adobe Photoshop Elements 6 image-editing software

Simon Williams — 2007-11-23T00:00:00.000Z

Simon Williams, Computeract!ve, Friday 23 November 2007 at 00:00:00

Restyled for the newcomer, Photoshop Elements 6 still has a lot of editing power under its grey bonnet

Although it started as a cut-down version of professional image editor Photoshop, Elements continues to grow further away from the original.

Version 6 comes in the slate grey colours that all the firm's products now use, broken up by colourful icons and the main mode tabs that control the main functions.

Photoshop Elements 6 is divided into sections called Organise, Fix, Edit, Create and Share. The organiser, similar to that in Premiere Elements 4, makes it easy to create albums of photos and tag individual shots by categories such as people, places or events.

There's none of the date-based automatic tagging of Apple’s iPhoto, but once you put in the work to tag a collection of images, pulling them out and organising them becomes simple.

For automated adjustments to a photograph, it's not necessary to leave the Organiser because it can apply corrections to colour, brightness and contrast directly. You can even go into more detail and change things using manual sliders.

The Organiser is useful on its own, but clicking on Create or Edit opens the main Photoshop Editor, with a far more extensive range of tools, many of which are found in the full Photoshop. New to version 6 of Elements is the Quick Selection tool, which enables users to nudge the outline of a selection in and out until it covers just the area required. It's quite a bit quicker than trying to draw freehand around an element.

The Healing and Spot Healing brushes make it very easy to remove blemishes from skin or rips from old prints, and the Orwellian Photomerge tool enables you to change the face of a portrait. This is ideal if, for instance, you have a family photograph in which only one person is blinking: just merge in the same person's face from another photo, although it's best to pick a similar pose. The Guided Editing mode leads users step-by-step through basic procedures such as cropping, contrast and brightness adjustment.

The good range of collage templates for printed and online albums is an example of the improved support for those who want to share their photos, and the program makes it straightforward to send photos over email.

Vista compatible: Yes

Review: Serif Drawplus X2 design software

Simon Williams — 2007-10-30T00:00:00.000Z

Simon Williams, Computeract!ve, Tuesday 30 October 2007 at 00:00:00

What’s left to add to a drawing program in its 12th edition?

The vector graphics editor DrawPlus has been around since Leonardo was a lad.

You might think it would be hard to add new features and functions for what is effectively version 9 (the X2 of the title is there to line it up with PagePlus X2, Serif’s companion desktop publisher). You’d be wrong.

The program looks like most modern graphics editors, with a toolbar down the left-hand side of the screen and a set of palettes down the right.

A useful feature that provides extra information is automatic measurement of dimensions as lines and shapes are dragged out.

From a graphic artist’s point of view, two of the most useful additions to the tools are the Freeform Paint and Erase tools. Freeform Paint enables the user to draw an object stroke by stroke, with each new element being added to the object's outline, to make the drawing of more complex vector shapes much easier. The Erase tool rubs out segments of objects, to change their shapes or even split them into separate ones. Both tools are great time savers.

There's also the excellent Quick3D transformation: a single mouse-click can turn a composite shape into a 3D object (see our screenshot). You can, of course, adjust the colour, texture and lighting of the 3D shape, so it takes a lot of the slog out of producing such objects.

Another aid to 3D is DrawPlus’s 3D grids, which can be set up using the projections provided as standard, or by defining your own. Tools for lighting and live shadows work in a way reminiscent of Xara Xtreme. You drag arrow controls to set the position and orientation of the effects.

There are improvements on the animation front, too, with new Keyframe animation, so DrawPlus does the hard work of animating between key frames. You can pan across a drawing, too. Finished animation files can be exported as F lash, AVI, Quicktime and more, or rejigged for screensavers and phones. If you maintain a Web site, a quick and easy rollover tool produces three versions of DrawPlus images, ready to export to a web site as Flash graphics.

Review: Magix Xtreme Photo, Video & Graphic Suite

Simon Williams — 2007-10-29T00:00:00.000Z

Simon Williams, Computeract!ve, Monday 29 October 2007 at 00:00:00

Four photo and video apps in one box is neat, but how well do they hang together?

Magix is a leading German software supplier best known for its sound and music software.

With the acquisition of the UK company Xara, at the beginning of this year, it's also strengthened its graphic side and has now launched Xtreme Photo, Video & Graphic Suite.

This combines the earlier Photo & Video Manager, Photo & Videoshow Deluxe, Movies on CD & DVD 6 and Photo & Graphic Designer.

The Photo & Graphic Designer is what used to be Xara Xtreme, a very versatile graphics editor, for both standard pictures and photos (known as bitmaps) and vector graphics.

This program provides most of the standard editing tools, but often goes about implementing them in clever, more intuitive ways. For example, when you load a photo to fill any shape, a single tool can rotate, resize and reposition the image within the shape’s boundary. It takes a little getting used to, but ends up being very quick to use.

There's a good range of tools in the graphics editor and a separate image-editing tool which includes up-to-date features, such as horizon adjustment and one-click automatic correction for brightness, contrast, gamma and other settings. It includes full support for layers and Photoshop plugins (which add extra features to the program). There is also a wide range of templates for cards, newsletters, brochures and collages, where you can just slot in your photos and text to make professional-looking documents.

Xtreme Photo & Videoshow Deluxe isn't a full video editor like Adobe's Premiere Elements or Pinnacle Studio, but will take video clips and single photos, and create slide shows or combined videos from them, and burn the result to CD or DVD. It can be used to put menus onto the resulting shows, too. Xtreme Movies on CD & DVD 6 is designed for archiving video tapes and recording TV programmes to CD or DVD for future viewing, and it supports high-definition recordings.

Xtreme Photo & Video Manager is a management tool which can import and export photos, print them, burn them to CD and create slide shows for on-screen playback. The new version supports wide screens and can make adjustments to colour balance and exposure as well as red-eye removal on photos and videos.

Review: Corel Painter Essentials 4 photo-editing software

Cliff Joseph — 2007-10-23T00:00:00.000Z

Cliff Joseph, Computeract!ve, Tuesday 23 October 2007 at 00:00:00

The pro painting program gets much easier to use

Corel's Painter is a professional program that lets designers reproduce the effects of natural art media, such as oil paints and watercolours.

Painter Essentials is a less expensive version of the same thing for home users.

Much of the program’s emphasis is on transforming digital photos to make them look like old-fashioned paintings and drawings.

Unfortunately, previous versions of Painter Essentials were rather difficult to use, and it wasn’t easy for non-professionals to produce good results. However, we were pleased to see that this version has been completely overhauled.

The interface has been redesigned, and now works in one of two modes (switched by clicking on a button at the top of the screen). The Drawing and Painting mode creates a blank canvas where it's possible to create an original artwork from scratch. There are some simple colour palettes to select and mix colours, and several new brush styles, such as Japanese sumi brushes and the Sargent Brush that mimics the style of the artist John Singer Sargent.

Switch into Photo Painting mode and the program displays a different set of tools to help trace over a photo and make it look like painted artwork. A copy of the original photo is displayed at the side of the screen to give a reference from which to work. You can then either paint over the photo by hand or use the auto-painting option that tells Painter Essentials to try and automatically recreate the painting itself.

The redesigned interface makes it much easier for amateur artists to get good results. Corel has also improved auto-painting with a new technique called Smartstrokes, which allow brushstrokes to follow the outlines of objects more closely.

We’ve been critical of previous versions of Painter Essentials because of its difficulty, but the redesigned interface and improved painting tools in this version make it a great tool for anyone that wants to experiment with digital artwork on their PC or Mac. The price cut to £39 makes it good value too.

Vista compatible: Yes

Review: Corel Paint Shop Pro Photo X2 photo-editing software

Cliff Joseph — 2007-09-27T00:00:00.000Z

Cliff Joseph, Computeract!ve, Thursday 27 September 2007 at 00:00:00

Upgrade to the veteran image program

Paint Shop Pro has been around a long time, and as the name implies, it started life as a paint program that allowed users to create their own computer graphics and sketches.

In recent years, though, it has shifted its focus almost entirely towards digital photography, something that's reflected in the rather convoluted name the latest version, Paint Shop Pro Photo X2, carries.

There aren’t many new editing features in this upgrade. Instead, the emphasis is on simplifying and speeding up the editing process so that the user can plough quickly through large numbers of photos.

The main new feature is the Express Lab, which provides a simplified editing space where photos can be previewed and basic editing can be done very quickly. The program’s normal editing window is quite cluttered, with several toolbars and palettes taking up space on screen.

However, when the Express Lab button is pressed, the workspace changes completely. A larger preview of the photo takes up most of the screen, with just a single toolbar beneath it containing basic editing tools such as Crop, Rotate, and Brightness correction. There’s also a preview area running along the bottom of the screen that displays thumbnail previews of other photos so that it's easier to find one to work on.

The idea here is that it's possible to quickly step through a batch of photos and make simple changes to tidy them up. If the pictures still need more precise editing then they can be returned to the main editing window. The Express Lab mode does speed up simple editing tasks, although, by implication, it admits that the program’s main editing interface isn’t as tidy or as efficient as it could be.

But while the Express Lab helps to speed up the editing process, it’s a little disappointing that there are so few new editing tools in this upgrade. There’s a Thinify feature that can compress any part of a photo you click on, making it narrower. This can be used on portrait photography to make the subject look a bit thinner (though you’ll probably be shot if anyone finds out that you used it on them). There’s a variation on the standard red-eye removal, and you can also add effects such as drop shadows or reflections to text and graphics that are being added to an image.

These are useful enough, but there’s nothing really eye-catching in this upgrade that makes it stand out from its many photo-editing rivals. Paint Shop Pro Photo X2 does provide a powerful set of photo-editing tools at a very reasonable price, but it’s a shame that Corel didn’t take the opportunity to make a more ambitious upgrade and really challenge its arch-rival Photoshop Elements.

Vista compatible: Yes

Review: Roxio Easy Media Creator 10 media management software

Simon Williams — 2007-09-18T00:00:00.000Z

Simon Williams, Computeract!ve, Tuesday 18 September 2007 at 00:00:00

From video editing to backup, all in one easy-to-use suite

It’s hard to categorise Easy Media Creator, Roxio’s suite of programs.

It can manipulate photos and download them to a mobile phone or media player, transfer music to and from a music player, edit videos and copy them from video to DVD and even handle backups. It’s a media jack-of-all-trades, but how many can it master?

Down the left-hand side of the main menu screen are all the key feature areas, including video, photos and music, where different applications within the suite are gathered together. Down the right-hand side are the most popular applications, such as Photosuite 10 and Videowave 10. These are substantial applications – perhaps not up to the likes of Photoshop Elements or Ulead Video Studio, but well capable of everyday editing and organisation.

In the centre of the screen is an area where hints and tips drawn from the Roxio website are displayed, along with advertising for other Roxio products. The main applications have had useful updates since version 9: Videowave 10 now includes Smartsound, which tailors background music or sound effects to the length of a video. The software supports writing to HD DVD and Blu-ray discs and a one-click upload to Youtube, and can capture and edit high definition video.

Audio is another strong part of the suite and automation facilities such as the AutoMix feature, which creates a collection of songs with a similar sound from a single ‘seed’ song, are well implemented. The backup program, Back OnTrack, can write to a wide range of media, including external hard disks, Blu-ray and HD DVD. It can even remind you to back up files each time an external hard disk is connected to the PC.

As well as the main applications, there are plenty of utilities to fill the gaps, including like the audio converter for moving audio files between formats, including WAV and WMV, and Disk Image Loader, which assigns space on the hard disk to load a copy of any CD, so it can run without needing the disc.

Version 10 of Easy Media Creator is fully compatible with Windows Vista and includes new Vista gadgets – which sit in the Sidebar – for quick conversion of audio and video files. Mobile Photofit is a handy little tool for anybody with a mobile device, resizing photos for each device.

This is the kind of suite it's useful to keep on the computer for all the niggling little tasks that might otherwise catch users out. For any task related to pictures, music or video, there's bound to be one of the many applications and utilities here suited to the task. Looking at all that’s available in Easy Media Creator 10, £60 is a reasonable price.

Vista compatible: Yes

Review: Exifpro photo-editing software

Anthony Dhanendran — 2007-07-09T00:00:00.000Z

Anthony Dhanendran, Computeract!ve, Monday 9 July 2007 at 00:00:00

Quick and easy photo management

One upshot of digital cameras being so popular is that there are far more photos being taken today than there were 10 years ago.

That means the equivalent of lots of pictures in drawers, sitting in computer folders unseen. Exifpro can help to organise those pictures into a meaningful collection.

You can quickly browse through new images, tag photos with descriptive words, and even do a bit of simple editing and adjustment (of brightness, and so on). Its main use is in making it easy to catalogue images as they come off your camera, and select which ones to keep.

Other functions include generating simple slideshows – these are much more basic than those made by Roxio programs, for instance, and you can't add music, but it's simple and quick nonetheless, and can be easily emailed to friends to show off a few snaps. Previewing is done in the program window or using the full screen.

Unlike most 'album' programs, it doesn't attempt to take over your photo collection, and doesn't search the hard disk – you need to select the folders in which your images are stored, at which point the program can do its stuff. The title of the program refers to the 'Exif' information that is stored with all digital camera photos, noting the date and time, exposure and other information – the program can view and edit this information as well.

Exifpro is a bargain for anyone who finds that their photo collection is overwhelming them. A free, fully working trial is available, but it's certainly worth shelling out for the full edition.

Vista compatible: Yes

Review: Expert Pdf 5 utility software

Paul Lester — 2007-05-25T00:00:00.000Z

Paul Lester, Computeract!ve, Friday 25 May 2007 at 00:00:00

Create, edit and manage Pdfs with this alternative to Adobe Acrobat

The Pdf a very common file format on a computer. It's like a digital page of a book and is thus used manuals, help documentation and other literature supplied in this format.

While Adobe Acrobat Reader is free - one of the biggest reasons for the format’s success - the full version of Adobe Acrobat isn’t, and without it you’ll find that most of the functionality associated with Pdf files is lost.

To create your own Pdfs, edit existing files, or publish and distribute content in this format you’ll either need the full Reader application or something like Expert Pdf 5 from Avanquest.

While not brimming with the kind of features found in more expensive Pdf utility software, it has more than enough for the majority of us and integrates well with other programs.

After installation, it's incorporated into Microsoft Word and Microsoft Excel to offer quick access from these applications. This offers the added advantage of being able to integrate Hypertext links and live URL support, which means any clickable web addresses or bookmarks will be retained in the Pdf document. It will also allow you to convert any document you can print into a Pdf file.

The Pdf Creator application offers full control over the conversion process, including adjusting the quality and indexing settings. You can even add your own watermarks, choose which fonts to embed and automatically email finished Pdfs to recipients.

The most powerful part of the software is the Pdf Editor that, like Adobe’s Reader software, will let you edit text and images, shift page elements or collections around, add notes, stamps, highlighting or shapes.

This is all extremely easy to do thanks to an efficient interface layout that provides tool options and settings in front of an instant preview window.

For £40, it offers good value for money considering the tools and features included. However, those looking for basic Pdf creation might still find it a tad expensive.

Vista compatible: Yes

Review: Reallusion Facefilter 2 photo-editing software

Cliff Joseph — 2007-03-28T00:00:00.000Z

Cliff Joseph, Computeract!ve, Wednesday 28 March 2007 at 00:00:00

A special program for editing portrait photography

There is plenty of photo-editing software around, most of which seeming to compete by adding endless lists of extra features; artistic paint tools, slideshows, and myriad graphical and special effects features.

Reallusion Facefilter 2 takes a different approach. Rather than providing a wide range of general purpose photo-editing tools, it concentrates on one specific task – that of editing and adjusting portraits and pictures where people’s faces feature prominently.

When launched, the program displays six buttons that run across the top of the screen. Each button represents a different step in the editing process. The first button is marked 'Select Image', which opens a photo and then allows you to perform basic tasks such as image rotation colour balance adjustment.

Clicking the next button moves into the Facial Mask screen, where the Facefilter 2 will automatically attempt to analyse the photo and detect features such as eyes, nose and lips.

Once that’s done, click the Enhance button to open a standard selection of photo-editing tools, such as red-eye removal or the ‘smoothing’ tool, which can be used to remove wrinkles and other skin blemishes.

However, Facefilter’s best features are located within the Facial Expression button.

Here, the program outlines a set of templates that can be used to modify people’s facial expressions, such as ‘smile’, ‘sexy’ and ‘sad’. Rather than it being style over substance, we were pleasantly surprised to see that the results were often very effective. There's also the option to modify these templates by using simple slider controls to adjust details such as the droop of a person’s lips or the shape of their eyebrows.

Reallusion Facefilter 2 can’t replace the wider range of photo-editing tools found in rivals such as Photoshop Elements, but its facial editing tools will be very useful for anyone that does a lot of portrait photography – or who simply wants to make their mates look silly.

Vista compatible: Yes