Ulead Photoimpact XL

Ulead doesn't have a particularly high profile in the UK and is better known for its Videostudio videoediting software. However, Photoimpact XL is worth considering if you're looking for a powerful photo editor at a decent price.

Much like Paint Shop Pro, Photoimpact has an impressive range of features, but also has a rather dense interface that may be daunting for newcomers. The main editing workspace is surrounded by a variety of tools. There are toolbars running down both sides of the screen and across the top. There's also a status bar along the bottom of the workspace that provides a number of options, as well as several palettes that are floating in the main workspace.

Fortunately, Ulead has made an effort to provide help for first-time users. Unlike most of its rivals, it comes with a clear manual and there's also a second CD supplied with the main program that includes a number of tutorials and introductory video clips.

You'll soon find there's some logic to the way the tools are arranged. The main editing tools are all in the toolbar on the left of the screen, while the toolbar on the right controls the display of the various floating palettes.

The left-hand toolbar includes a standard selection of editing tools such as Crop, Erase, Paint, and Text. Most of these also lead to pop-up sub-menus providing additional options and there's a context-sensitive toolbar running across the top of the screen that allows you to quickly adjust the settings for each tool.

The Text tool works well, with a special palette that allows you to distort text or add special effects. You can add textures such as concrete and glass, and apply a variety of lighting effects. Oddly, though, some basic details have been overlooked, such as a drop shadow tool.

That's a relatively rare oversight, though, as Ulead has got most of its bases covered in other areas. Running along the top of the screen, above the context-sensitive toolbar, is yet another toolbar containing a number of wizards and automatic adjustment tools. One useful touch is the Postprocessing wizard, which is designed to quickly tidy up scanned images, but works equally well with other images. This wizard guides you through a number of steps, allowing you to quickly crop and straighten images, adjust focus, brightness and colour balance. There's also an Express fix wizard that allows you to adjust exposure and colour saturation and even has a Beautify skin option that can help you remove wrinkles or other blemishes from portrait photography.

Finally, of course, there's a good selection of effects filters. The artistic effects are fairly limited, but there are plenty of distortion effects, particle effects and a wide range of lighting effects, including the ability to add lightning and starlight to an image, or even to add a glowing moon to night-time photos. There's also a special filter for adding watermarks to your photographs. This will appeal to more serious photographers who want to protect their work from unauthorised distribution on the Internet.

Other features include a separate bundled program for creating animated web graphics, and a file-management program on top of Photoimpact's built-in file browser.

There's no shortage of powerful photo-editing features, then. Our only real criticism is that the program's interface is rather hard going at times. There's an important feature called the Easypalette that allows you to create your own customised palette containing all your favourite tools, but we still feel that the interface could be tidied up quite a bit. There's a lot of duplication, with features appearing in multiple menus and toolbars, and there seem to be about half a dozen different options and palettes for viewing or browsing photos stored on your hard disk.

A more streamlined interface would make Photoimpact XL more accessible to new users. However, it does provide a wide range of powerful features at an attractive price, so it's worth considering if you've outgrown simpler editing programs.

Contact: KL Associates 01327 884 880
www.ulead.com

System requirements:

• 200MHz processor
• Windows 98 or later
• 256MB Ram
• 500MB hard disk space

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