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Photos on CD & DVD is something of a misleading title for this Magix multimedia suite.
The Deluxe version we have on test is actually a powerful collection of tools covering a wide range of multimedia, akin to the excellent Roxio Easy Creator 6.
The most immediate function of the software is to allow you to create slideshows of your photos to burn to CD or DVD and show off to your family and friends.
You’ll find a wide range of transitions and effects all controlled through an intuitive interface, which involves dragging and dropping your photos onto a template.
From here you can make individual adjustments such as adding text, changing the orientation of the images and applying a range of special effects - all with quick preview options. The interface makes it obvious as to what you’re doing at all times and there's a surprising attention to detail right down to configuring the way the text appears over each picture.
You’ll also find it easy to add music, create intro and outro sequences and burn the resulting project to disc. The end result is that extremely professional presentations can be created with ease.
The title application is just one of a range of powerful tools available in the suite. As an accompaniment to building your own photo-based projects you’ll find Photo Clinic, a photo retouching and image-processing application for improving your snaps.
Here you can either perform quick fixes based on criteria such as red-eye, lighting correction and removing scratches and stains. There are also more creative Photoshop-style effects and manual correction tools for fine-tuning. Each of the effects are added as layers over the image, which means it’s easy to remove individual effects or simply revert back to the original if things aren’t working out.
Elsewhere on the photo front you’ll find Photo Manager 2007. This lets you keep track of all the digital snaps on your computer while offering easy access to printing and burning. You can gain more control over printed media using Print Studio, which makes it fast and easy to create disc layouts and cover art for your finished projects.
Digital photography aside, there are additional tools that can help you create, edit and produce audio material in a similar fashion. Supplied as part of the main suite of applications is Music Editor 2.0, which offers a full range of audio editing and production for those who want to create and edit their own music. Your work can then be added to your slideshows.
An additional Music Manager tool keeps track of the audio files on your hard drive and offers you a range of cataloguing, editing and burning options for your tunes.
Finally, you’ll find Gota BurnR, a comprehensive burning application that’ll help you produce anything from audio CDs to photoshows as well as convert double-layer DVDs to single-layer discs. Gota BurnR supports new formats such as HD-DVD and widescreen layout.
One annoyance with the suite is that you’re often confronted with upgrade dialog boxes encouraging you to purchase advanced versions of the audio and photo applications supplied. You’ll also find many of the applications act completely independently from the others. It would have been preferable to have the suite totally integrated into a single interface, or at least tighten up accessibility between tools as found in rival packages from Nero and Roxio.
Magix has produced an impressive collection of multimedia software that, on the whole, is extremely easy to use and allows you to quickly create professional looking projects. It’s slightly more niche than suites such as Roxio's Easy Creator, focusing most of it’s attention on building photo and audio based material, but if this is your main concern then you’ll find more than enough here to keep you happy.
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