Photo Center

Although the wizard will suffice for many basic editing jobs, it won't be long before you start delving into the menus and toolbars to discover a wide and impressive range of pre-set effects that can be applied to your photographs. These include frames, artist effects (like chalk, pencil, and oils), masques to change the outline of a photo, various kinds of distortion, and some excellent lighting effects, especially the spotlight control. Elsewhere there's a range of tools for adding pre-drawn shapes like rectangles and circles, good freehand drawing tools, a text tool (which includes some super textures and 3-D effects), drop shadows (impressively easy) and a highly effective tool for removing red eye.

The program reads and writes all the popular graphics file formats, including JPG, GIF, TIFF, and BMP, and supports a wide range of printing styles (full-bleed single images, multiple photos on the same page). Finally, the included Photo Album program allows you to find and then organize your photos into albums that you can browse, print out or share electronically via a wizard that creates a simple Web site in a few mouse clicks. The world isn't short of photo editing software, but Photo Center is definitely worth considering for beginners and enthusiasts alike. --Rob Beattie

REVIEW: This is a great program for anyone looking for a graphics program. In looking at the screen when the program first loads, a user would believe the program has a very limited capacity. But WAIT! Just click on the drop-down menus and there are TONS of other tools available. Need help in figuring out what each is? Just click on the HELP and the explanations are given. The tools are similar to those in PhotoShop or Fireworks.

The software comes with a User's Guide of almost 100 pages of helpful information. One whole chapter is devoted to an explanation of the menus and where you can find what. Photo Center also allows you to set up an album for displaying your pictures on the web. One very nice feature is the pre-set masques. Color gradients are very easy to apply in Photo Center.

Do you use a digital camera? Photo Center uses TWAIN to transfer between camera and computer. Go ahead, take a few pictures and download them to the computer. Now play around with the features, such as, cropping (take out the neighbor's dog), color correction (that dress really was FIRE engine red), add some text and print. A few sheets of glossy paper are included so you can see the results right away.

If you can think of a problem a picture might have, Photo Center can help you get rid of it or add it as the need may be. And for a price of less than [$$], it is a really good buy.