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There's a huge price range covered by the photo-editing programs in this review. Adobe's Photoshop costs about £500 more than Jasc's Paint Shop Pro (£99.95), while all the other contenders come in at well under £100.
The surprising thing, though, is that even the least expensive programs provide an impressive and powerful range of features. Most of these programs will meet the needs of home and business users and it's really only professional designers and photographers that will need to break the bank to pay for the full version of Photoshop.
Microsoft's Digital Image Suite costs just £69.99 and its well-designed interface makes it a good choice for less experienced designers. Microsoft's approach is to put all the most commonly used tools right up front. Instead of a standard tool palette, Digital Image Suite presents you with a panel that lists common tasks, including fixing red-eye or removing dust and scratches. Click on one of these tasks and you?re presented with instructions on how to use the relevant tools to get the job done.
It?s a simple and well-organised approach that puts the emphasis on ease of use. But look just below the surface and even this inexpensive program includes some extremely powerful features. There are automatic controls for adjusting brightness, contrast and colour balance. If you need more precise control you can even open up a histogram that allows you to manually adjust shadow, mid-tone and highlight settings within an image. The program does have some weaknesses, though, such as limited options for working with layers, and some artistic filters that don't work as well as we'd like. As a result, we can't quite give it a Highly Commended award, although we'd definitely recommend it to first-time users, who will appreciate its ease of use.
The winners
Ulead's Photoimpact XL is the same price, and is even more powerful. In fact, its range of special effects and animation features is excellent value for money and will appeal to the more serious hobbyist who really likes to experiment with creative effects. However, the program's interface is hard going at times, and Photoimpact isn't as accessible as some of its low-cost rivals.
The same is true of Jasc's Paint Shop Pro. This is the most powerful photo-editing program in the sub-£100 category, so it's well worth considering if you need in-depth editing power but can't afford the full version of Photoshop. Its range of special effects filters rivals that of Photoshop, as do its powerful options for working with layers, and its extensive controls for tonal and colour adjustments. Experienced photographers will also appreciate features such as its lens correction tools, and the batch-processing and scripting tools that will help them to automate routine tasks. However, it's slightly let down by its ease of use. The interface tends to just dump features onto the screen and leave you to find your own way through them, and there are odd glitches such as the clumsy Text tool. However, in terms of sheer power and value for money, Jasc Paint Shop Pro is hard to beat, and thoroughly deserves a Highly Commended rating.
That leaves Adobe's two offerings. There's no doubt that Photoshop is the biggest and best photo-editing program currently available. If you're a professional then you buy Photoshop, end of story. But for most home and business users, the full version of Photoshop would simply be overkill, as well as being way too expensive. That is why Adobe released its less expensive stablemate, Photoshop Elements.
Elements isn't the most powerful program in the sub-£100 range - that honour goes to Paint Shop Pro. However, it does provide all the photo-editing tools that most home and business users are likely to need, and may even meet the needs of many serious photographers. Adobe has also been clever enough to redesign its interface in order to make it more accessible to less experienced users. Features such as the How to palette take a simple step-by-step approach that helps new users quickly get to grips with common editing tasks. Once you've mastered the basics you can then explore the many powerful special effects filters, lighting, tone and colour controls. Thankfully, though, the program's tidy interface design allows you to keep everything in its place and it feels a lot less cluttered than Paint Shop Pro.
It's that all-round combination of power, ease of use and low cost that earns Adobe Photoshop Elements our Editor's Choice award.
Back to photo editing software group test
See also:
If you are a keen photographer, Paint Shop Pro's wide range of filters will appeal to you. 06 Aug 2004
All Image Editing & Management
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