Bruce Von Stiers

Not quite a year ago, I wrote a review on PhotoImpact 7. That followed a review written earlier that year on PhotoImpact 6. It seems that Ulead Systems is beefing up this product every few months and shipping out a new version of it. Now they have released version 8 of PhotoImpact. Is it better now than ever? Do users of previous versions need to upgrade? Is this a product that new users will want to hurry up and grab off of store shelves? Yes, yes and definitely yes. There are more tools than ever for utilizing digital photography and creative design.

This program has been described as a jack of all trades kind of image editor. Create java rollovers, buttons, web banners and icons with little effort. Capture images with a PC video camera or download them into the program from your digital camera. Editing these images take only a little work and very little instruction.

The evaluation packet came with a product comparison sheet, similar to the one I got with the previous version. This one compared PhotoImpact 8 with Paintshop Pro 7 and Adobe Photoshop Elements 2. In 29 comparison areas, only Paintshop Pro 7 was able to beat PhotoImpact 8 in any area. This was the Retouch Tool area, where Paintshop Pro 7 had 19 tools and PhotoImpact only had 13. But Photoshop Elements only had 7. Of the 29 areas, Paintshop Pro only had 11 of them and Photoshop Elements had 13 of them. PhotoImpact 8 has all 29 comparison areas. These areas include photo stitching, freeform vector drawing and editable lasso selections.

Some of the new things that were added to this version are De-interlace, JavaScript Slideshow, Flatten Uneven Area and Match Background Color. You can now create some dynamite slideshows on the Web without being a master at JavaScript. You can also blend in and mend stitched together images with the Flatten Uneven Area tool. De-Interlace removes horizontal lines from video captures and you can now blend objects into their backgrounds with the Match Background Color tool.

The editable lasso selection that I mentioned above will come in real handy when you need to precisely select and image area for editing. And the programs Undo has been boosted up to 200 steps that can be undone. The program now features an Autosave function as well.

Some of the key things that this program can do are photo acquisition and management, basic photo enhancements, refinement of photos and the use of camera filters. There are also mask and selection tools, path drawing tools that include Bezier and freehand modes, 3D creation tools and even cloning tools. If you have a need to slice images that are going to be part of a web page, the program has a tool to make it easy to do so.

PhotoImpact 8 supports almost 40 different graphic file formats from BMP on up through PCT and WBMP. It also supports almost all of the TWAIN/WIA compliant scanners, frame grabbers and digital cameras on the market.

For those of you who own a previous version of PhotoImpact, there should be enough new features to seriously look at upgrading the program. For the other folks out there, if you are looking for image editing program that has a ton of features but doesn’t cost and arm and a leg, then PhotoImpact 8 would be well worth looking into. You can even download a trial version from the Ulead Systems web site.

The list price for PhotoImpact 8 is $ 89.95 US. The downloadable version can be purchased at a $ 10 discount. As with the upgrade version of PhotoImpact 7, you can upgrade to the new version for $ 49.95 US. The downloadable upgrade version is $ 5 cheaper. If you don’t want to buy online, check with your local software retailer for their price.

For more information about PhotoImpact 8 or other Ulead Systems products, visit their web site at www.ulead.com.