Ulead PhotoImpact 12 is a complete image-editing suite. Choose powerful yet easy-to-use tools and share in your photos, greeting cards, labels, calendars, prints, e-mail. ExpressFix mode is perfect for beginners to get started fast. One-click fixes and enhancements make it great for anyone. Powerful, high-end image editing new Auto White Balance Control makes colors look natural. Enhanced RAW file & 16-bit image support.
PhotoImpact's new ExpressFix mode, for instance, has a wonderful side-by-side interface for correcting problems with exposure, color, focus, and the like, but it's flawed by illogical procedures and a confusing workflow. Here's one example: The top button, which you might presume to be the first you should apply, is Reduce Noise, which is usually the last filter applied, since you often can't see noise until you boost exposure. The next control, the SmartCurves adjustment, enhances the dynamic range of an image by applying a camera curve—a set of adjustment parameters for your camera. You can't, however, select a camera from the ExpressFix window or even see which camera you've previously chosen; you have to use the regular menu. When you do choose SmartCurves in the menu, you exit the ExpressFix interface into a new window with a similar side-by-side display, but with different controls. Close this and you're back in ExpressFix.
Rather than putting its excellent White Balance adjustment along with other ExpressFix corrections, the adjustment button sits atop the side-by-side display, confusing the workflow further. Which do I do first: SmartCurves, white balance, color cast, or color saturation? Ditto for the red-eye adjustment, which should also sit with the other ExpressFix controls.
PhotoImpact's new ExpressFix mode, for instance, has a wonderful side-by-side interface for correcting problems with exposure, color, focus, and the like, but it's flawed by illogical procedures and a confusing workflow. Here's one example: The top button, which you might presume to be the first you should apply, is Reduce Noise, which is usually the last filter applied, since you often can't see noise until you boost exposure. The next control, the SmartCurves adjustment, enhances the dynamic range of an image by applying a camera curve—a set of adjustment parameters for your camera. You can't, however, select a camera from the ExpressFix window or even see which camera you've previously chosen; you have to use the regular menu. When you do choose SmartCurves in the menu, you exit the ExpressFix interface into a new window with a similar side-by-side display, but with different controls. Close this and you're back in ExpressFix.
Rather than putting its excellent White Balance adjustment along with other ExpressFix corrections, the adjustment button sits atop the side-by-side display, confusing the workflow further. Which do I do first: SmartCurves, white balance, color cast, or color saturation? Ditto for the red-eye adjustment, which should also sit with the other ExpressFix controls.
The options are split up into standard categories like Edit, Adjust, Photo, Effect, Selection, Object, Web, View and Window. What's strange is that Adjust and Photo have an Auto-Process option for automated processes, but the Photo menu is simply a cut down version of the Adjust one. The entries on it are exactly the same. For digital photographers there are a few headline functions like white balance correction, chromatic aberration correction, HDR image creation, lens distortion, noise removal and photo frames. Most of these work quite well, particularly the lens distortion correction, and are worth having.
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There is the feeling that PhotoImpact has moved in the right directions by catering for the digital photographer, and away from the graphics-creation aspirations it may have had. Those effects are still there, being able to create clouds, rain, fire etc, but they are rendered distinctly in two dimensions, making them unsuitable for use in photographs. The bubbles and firework effects are quite obviously intended for graphic design rather than inclusion in photos. That said there are some effects that are well worth having – the selection of photo frames isn't huge, but they are effective and offer variety.