Serif AlbumPlus X2 - TechRadar UK

Renowned for producing quality, cost-effective creativity software, Serif brings a typically logical layout to the latest version of its photo-album program. A simple toolbar across the top of the screen gives quick access to all the main modules, comprising Get Media, Fix & Enhance, Create & Share and Search.

In the first of these, you can acquire photos from your hard disk, memory cards or direct from a camera, as with other programs, before moving on to add customisable tags and ratings that range between one and five stars.

Moving on, the Fix & Enhance section enables you to rotate or flip images, and there's also an Auto Fix feature that attempts to enhance selected photos to make them look their best, while also backing up the original file. For more control, a Fix Photo button opens a new window with tools for adjusting brightness, contrast, colour cast, saturation and for cropping or removing red-eye, so most bases are covered.

Where's my picture?

Search facilities are pretty good, with individual toolbar sections for various criteria, such as star ratings, import history, text and tags. You can also choose from the various media types supported, including photos, audio, video and previously saved projects.

The Create & Share projects include photo discs slideshows, screensavers, wallpaper, calendars, greetings cards and stylish photo albums.

It's all fairly good but the program is let down by a few annoyances, like the way that filenames aren't displayed with thumbnail images in either standard or simple viewing modes. Furthermore, AlbumPlus had a knack of displaying our Nikon RAW images upside down.