Cheap PhotoImpact 8 (Software) (Windows Me, Windows 2000, Windows NT, Windows 98, Windows 95) Price
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While the workspace may seem rather cluttered when you have all the toolbars, option bars, and palettes open, the Palette Manager lets you dock and hide palettes easily. You can also record a set of editing steps to reuse later. Tools like the Post-processing wizard (to fix problems like redeye) and the EasyPalette (which lets you browse fills, effects, shapes, text styles, and templates) help you get great results without being an expert.
Combining several images is easier with the Match Background and Defringe features, which prevent your additions from sticking out like sore thumbs. The selection tools let you select several areas in one image at once, and you use control points to get your selection to cover exactly the area you need. Effects range from subtle to dramatic, including animated Particle Effects like rain and fire and the eye-catching Star Filter that adds some sparkle.
PhotoImpact 8 doesn't just convert your pictures to the right format for Web pages; it builds the Web pages for you, including JavaScript effects to create an album with controls to move from picture to picture. You can also burn an album onto CD. The printing controls are excellent for printing several photos in a range of sizes and shaped, from thumbnails to CD labels.
With this many features, you'll need to take the time to find out where everything is to make the most of it, so it's good to see that PhotoImpact 8 comes with the kind of comprehensive printed manual that's becoming all too rare. You also get GIF Animator--the definitive program for creating Web animations--and PhotoImpact Album for organizing your images.
Instead of features for professional graphics designers, PhotoImpact 8 sticks to tools for photo enthusiasts, including some innovative options you won't find elsewhere. --Mary Branscombe
| PLATFORM: | Windows Me, Windows 2000, Windows NT, Windows 98, Windows 95 |
| CATEGORY: | Software |
| MANUFACTURER: | ULead Systems |
| TYPE: | Computer software (programs), Graphics (Graphic), Home Publishing |
| MEDIA: | CD-ROM |
| # OF MEDIA: | 1 |
| UPC: | 756405013656 |
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Customer Reviews of PhotoImpact 8
The patch is out -- the problems remain PhotoImpact 8 has been patched, but my issues (see my earlier review "Wait for the patch release") have not been corrected. I found no change in the performance or behavior (inability to echo keystrokes) in Unsharp Mask. And I was looking for one of two responses to the pressing Enter to activate a crop issue (the word Enter is missing in my earlier review because I naively surrounded it with angle brackets): 1) make it work, or 2) Update the manual and on-line help to stop saying it does.
I agree with the other reviewers that this is an amazing product for the money. Unfortunately, Ulead has clearly demonstrated to me that they have poor communication between Engineering, email support, phone support, documentation, and their customers. My installation, support, and functionality problems destroyed my confidence in the company and the product. The failure to include an Unsharp Mask fix (or rollback to PhotoImpact 7 functionality which was excellent) further undermined my confidence. I now consider PhotoImpact an amusing toy.
I mentioned in my earlier review that I owned other photo editors and was looking at Photoshop. My conclusions: I bought and love Photoshop (and the third-party books that support it); I'm giving away my copy of Paint Shop Pro (the file browser trashes Windows XP's ability to show you EXIF data in JPEGs); I'm hanging on to my copy of Photoshop Elements 2.0 (it was practically free and works much like it's big brother); and am keeping PhotoImpact because of all the stuff it contains -- and they just might fix Unsharp Mask. I sold the five books I had on PhotoImpact/Paint Shop Pro/Photoshop Elements. My digital editing library is now exclusively focused on Photoshop and my 3 Megabyte JPEGs and I no longer wait for PhotoImpact 8's Unsharp Mask.
By Far the Best $$$ish Image Editor
I recently received the assignment from my boss to evaluate the various digital photography/image editing programs in the ~$$$ price range. Included were:
- Adobe Photoshop Elements 2.0
- Microsoft Digital Image Pro 9.0
- Ulead PhotoImpact 8.0
- Jasc Paintshop Pro 9.0
My review centered around three criteria: image mainpulation, advanced design and photo effects, and suitability for making web graphics. I spent a total of 16 hours on the various programs performing a pretty intensive evaluation in order to determine which product to select for our business. (We needed to purchase a large site license and so there was a lot of $$$ at stake.)
I will tell you that, much to my surprise, PhotoImpact came out on top - not just overall but in each of the three areas individually, as well. I say "to my surprise" because it's definitely the underdog. It doesn't have the kind of sensationalism that the other seem to have, and you don't see it advertised all that much. But it's definitely the champ.
I found PhotoImpact and Paintshop Pro the easiest to use when it came to digital photography features. (Photoshop Elements was far too difficult for business use, and Digital Image Pro far too simplistic, in my opinion.) But PhotoImpact takes the cake in this area because its drag-and-drop orientation is very straightforward.
When it comes to the higher-end design features, PhotoImpact was the clear winner. It supports Adobe's plug-in architecture, so all of the cool filters you can get for Photoshop (and elements, for that matter) are compatible with PhotoImpact. But PhotoImpact gives you a much greater degree of control over customizability than Photoshop Elements, the no. 2 contended in this second area, in my opinion. Once again, it's very easy to create some spectacular effects: There's built-in sophisticated vector drawing (which none of the other evaluated products have), as well as 3D text with some outstanding effects.
And, lastly, in the area of web graphics, PhotoImpact came in tops with Paintshop Pro following second. PhotoImpact has a great system for compressing GIFs, plus it includes a GIF animation application that's really sweet.
Anyway, I hope this helps all you image editing shoppers. Wish I had seen this sort of review upfront; it would have made the decision much easier for me,
Good Product that Crashes Your System
When I was deciding between Jasc and Photo Impact when selecting image editing software, I read the reviews about how Photo Impact caused system trouble for several users. I bought Photo Impact 8 anyway becuase I wanted their web page publishing features and I thought the other users might have simply had inadequate resources for a demanding application type. But I should have heeded the warnings of others. I had a brand new, bullet-proof 3 GHz Windows XP system, but after I installed Photo Impact, the system crashed once and ground to a crawl often-- even when the application wasn't open! Not a problem of resources, just a badly programmed application "back-end." Luckily, when I uninstalled it, the system recovered.
As far as features go, well, they might have been the best for the money, but it's a moot point. Definately not worth the probliems the application caused to my system and the $89 lost.