Adobe PhotoDeluxe Home Edition 4

There are times when using Photoshop is overkill. It's unbeatable when it comes to digital photo-editing, but if all you need to do is organise your snaps and do the occasional bit of tweaking, then you can happily settle for something a lot less powerful. Adobe is aiming PhotoDeluxe Home Edition at that market.

With a friendlier and easier to navigate menu system, many Photoshop tools have been either removed or disguised as a series of project icons running along the top of the screen.

Hit 'advanced menus', though, and you'll find many familiar options for advanced editing. Poke around a bit more and you might be surprised to discover that, like Photoshop, PhotoDeluxe is layers-based, letting you apply edits on separate layers, to avoid ruining work already completed.

The package launches with a short video guiding you through its most important areas, and when you're actually using the package the emphasis seems more on fun than business. Click on any of the menu icons and you will be led, step by step, through projects for creating calendars, greetings cards, labels and various other novelties using your own images. Considering the release date, we were a little surprised that the calendar activity could only cope with the years 1999 to 2003, especially as 1999 is over.

Images themselves can be stored in a virtual album for easy organisation, making this a good choice for first-time digital photographers who are still having difficulty organising obscurely named files.

We were disappointed that unless we activated the 'advanced menus' the smallest increment by which we could rotate our images was 90 degrees, which is no good if all you want to do is slightly straighten up an horizon.

Another downfall is the way in which it handled resizing. Although you can scale your images by dragging handles on each corner, the canvas will not resize to accommodate your alterations unless you once again navigate the 'advanced menus', so less experienced users could find themselves unwittingly lopping off edges. On a positive note, it includes a range of pre-set photo sizes enabling instant cropping for frames or wallets.

A range of one-click functions will apply pond ripple, spherical distortion, twirl, diffusion or pinch effects. Similarly, easy-to-use tools zap red eye and remove dust and scratches from battered photos.

It's easy to see how they achieve this latter option as one of the most visible effects is blurring, so if you're thinking of touching up your old family photos in this way for reprinting, then you might achieve better results if you opt for the more advanced tools of Photoshop LE and tackle the job manually.

Artistic effects will turn your image into an impressionist painting or a piece of curled paper, and even disguise your face by slapping on clip art noses and moustaches. This is more of a fun novelty than a practical application, though, and is unlikely to fool anyone.

Perhaps the most ambitious function is the 3D clip art in which your images are applied to the sides of 3D lorries, books, airships and so on. These can in turn be dropped onto a static background and then sent to friends, along with a browser in which they can be viewed and rotated.

If all of this seems a little too ambitious, then an alternative - PhotoDeluxe's PhotoParade option - links images, sound and movement into a multimedia presentation, again with its own integrated viewer.

In all, PhotoDeluxe is an easy-to-use and fun way of manipulating and storing images. Novice users will welcome the project-based, step-by-step approach to achieving common tasks, while those with more experience should find much of what they need on the 'advanced menus'. £45 all-in is a good price, but for another £30 you can get your hands on a copy of Photoshop LE, which for the more advanced user may be a more suitable buy.

Contact Adobe Systems 0131 458 6842