Overview

PaintShop Pro X4 is overflowing with both new and enhanced features. Replacing PaintShop Photo Pro X3, and now omitting the word "Photo" in its title, Corel PaintShop Pro X4 seeks to address the issues raised by its predecessor's users, who delivered a mixed response thanks to issues with both stability and performance.

It seems that - in light of the extensive user feedback that Corel started collecting at the beginning of the development process for PaintShop Pro X4 - the creator has taken the red flags that X3's critics raised seriously, working hard to produce a more streamlined, comprehensive package than anything it's released before. Corel also offers a free 30-day free trial on its website, so you can try before you buy.

We're pleased to see that Corel's commitment to keeping its software affordable -as well as powerful - continues, with several different versions of the software being available, starting at just £44.99 for an upgrade or £79.99 for a full Ultimate edition package, which includes some added extras that we'll discuss later.

New features

Corel PaintShop Pro X4 incorporates a significant number of new and upgraded features over its predecessor - 75 to be exact - so there's plenty to explore.

The first of the new developments is a set of HDR (high dynamic range) tools that have undergone a complete overhaul. There's an Exposure Merge option that offers a decent range of presets, as well as the opportunity to manually control the merging process and save your own presets.

The Batch Merge facility will appeal to prolific HDR enthusiasts who are happy to leave the processing up to the software, having it merge numerous bracketed sets of shots while you get on with something else.

Also new is a Fill Light & Clarity tool, which helps to lift the shadows in underexposed areas of your image and enhance detail, to improve backlit shots and those with uneven lighting, for example.

Photo Blend is ideal for merging multiple group shots where, for example, someone is looking the wrong way in one, while someone else is blinking in the other. Just combine the two to create the perfect image. It's also useful for removing distractions from backgrounds or creating surreal photos with multiple cloned subjects.

Selective Focus creates Tilt/Shift-style effects, making your subjects seem miniature in comparison to their surroundings. Or you can use it to blur distracting backgrounds if you find the depth of field in your shots is too wide.

The new Vignette Effect similarly helps to soften the impact of distractions, enabling you to darken or lighten the area surrounding your subject.

Performance and ease of use

Fire up the software for the first time and you're ready to get going in just a few seconds. The unobtrusive charcoal background is lined with customisable palettes, which can be moved, collapsed or expanded in order to suit your preferred method of working.

Corel PaintShop Pro X4 features a user-friendly interface that's split into three separate tabs, making it really easy to access the tools you need for the job in hand. Click the Manage tab to upload and organise your photo collection, the Adjust tab for making tweaking your images or the Edit tab for applying more advanced manipulations and/or adding text and effects.

The Manage section is all pretty self-explanatory, whether you've used Corel software before or not. Down the left-hand side you have a folder tree from which to browse through files on your computer, as well as quick links to any collections you create using the software - a handy feature that makes it easier to keep track of your photos.

By default, the central preview window is well proportioned, providing a large view of the image you have selected at the time, while a filmstrip-style gallery runs along the bottom of the screen.

However, you can make any of the panes bigger/smaller or switch to a full-screen thumbnail view if you prefer.

Images are quick to load and scroll through, making the task of organising shots faster and more streamlined.

We particularly like the Info pane - set in the top right-hand corner of the screen, you get a quick overview of the camera data recorded for each image you click on, displayed in a format that's easy to read. If you want more detailed information, then the window nestled below provides a comprehensive look at your settings, including EXIF and IPTC data.

From the General tab in this window, you can also quickly add ratings, captions and tags to your shots, with the option of then sharing your images directly via Facebook, Flickr or email, using the Share button just above the thumbnail film-strip.

Click the Adjust tab and the interface changes to provide a set of simple-to-interpret options for perfecting your photos. Basically a revamped version of the Express Lab seen in earlier versions, in the top left-hand corner there's a useful split-channel histogram so you can keep track of your exposure at-a-glance. Just below there's a set of five icons: clicking each in turn accesses the Crop, Straighten, Red Eye, Makeover and Clone Brush tools respectively, enabling quick edits to be made.

Smart Photo Fix

Next in the workflow is faithful old Smart Photo Fix, which offers a bank of sliders for controlling Brightness, Highlights, Shadows and Saturation in your shot, along with an eyedropper tool that enables you to quickly remove a colour cast. If you're unsure, simply click 'Suggest Settings' and Corel PaintShop Pro X4 will take care of things for you.

You could leave it there and save at this point, but if you want to work on more aspects of your photo, a further six tabs deliver Color Balance, Brightness/Contrast, Fill Light/Clarity, Local Tone Mapping, High Pass Sharpen and Digital Noise Removal options, each with their own set of sliders and drop-down menu options for fine-tuning the final result.

The tabs are all laid out in a logical order, and the slider interface works well for fuss-free editing, with the enhanced Full Screen Preview providing a handy way of reviewing your edited images without distractions as well as performing basic tasks such as rotating shots.

The speed at which Corel PaintShop Pro X4 renders images has certainly been improved, being noticeably faster than its comparatively sluggish predecessor - even when loading large files from medium format digital cameras and combined exposures for instance.

The Edit tab is where you can really get down to business. The simplified controls and drop-down menus present in the other tabs are replaced with an array of icons, buttons and menus. These may look a little daunting by comparison the first time you encounter the interface, but closer inspection reveals everything to be just as logically laid-out and easy to interpret. Previous Photoshop users will find most of the familiar tools present here, just in a slightly different location.

By default, the helpful Learning Center palette appears on the right-hand side of the screen, to show new users the ropes when it comes to doing anything from importing your images and making quick adjustments to more complex tasks such as working with layers and selections and applying effects to your images.

Clicking any of the headings opens up a list of tasks you might wish to perform - just select the one you want and you'll be guided through the process. Once you no longer need this feature, it can be hidden from view.

It's here that the Photoshop purists will appreciate just how much functionality Corel PaintShop Pro X4 has to offer, with a great selection of powerful tools that supersede Adobe Photoshop Elements and perhaps even, to a certain extent, rival Photoshop Lightroom.

Cloning, cropping, red-eye removal, selective lightening and darkening, adding gradients and making colour adjustments: you can do it all and much more besides.

The one slight point of criticism here is the sheer volume of options stashed away in the drop-down menus at the top of the screen. While it's great to have so many features and functions at your fingertips - with more than enough to keep both beginners and advanced users busy - it might take a while to orientate yourself sufficiently to be able to find what you need with any great level of speed.

That said, practise makes perfect: with time, you should learn where your favourite functions lie and be able to find them more easily.

Thankfully, there are shortcut buttons available for Corel PaintShop Pro X4's all-encompassing set of choices in the Layers tab - previous Photoshop/ Photoshop Elements users will be right at home with the control layout in this respect.

With regard to the new features, the HDR tools are excellent: Corel PaintShop Pro X4 does a great job of auto-aligning multiple shots, and can produce a merged file in a matter of moments. A few of the presets on offer might look a little 'overcooked' for some people's tastes, but you can fine-tune each or create your own, which is welcome.

Once the initial merged file is processed, you can then apply final tweaks to the exposure, remove noise, sharpen and adjust the colour balance - among other things - to perfect your HDR image.

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There's no doubt that this is a powerful new addition to the software and the results are admirable. But Corel PaintShop Pro X4 does lack a few added extras in comparison to Photoshop, such as ghost removal.

The new Fill Light & Clarity tool is another impressive feature that's simple to use, but produces great results. It boosts the shadows without affecting the rest of the image and subtly enhancing fine detail and texture.

Photo Blend is also very good: we tried it with a couple of group shots taken at a wedding. It's easy to use and there's plenty of options for tweaking to fine-tune the final result.

If you need to overcome issues like busy backgrounds, the Selective Focus and Vignette Effects are also excellent.

Once again, there's a simple slider-based interface for each, along with preset and freehand selection tools that enable you to control precisely how your final image looks. Results from this feature are good, but personally we would be inclined to stick with the more realistic look generated from our pre-existing favourite plug-ins.

Verdict

With a comprehensive set of advanced features for such a reasonable price, Corel PaintShop Pro X4 looks like a serious contender at the top end of the photo editing software market.

In addition to the brand new features mentioned in this review, Corel PaintShop Pro X4's other enhancements all add up to a much more streamlined, professional-feeling package than X3 was able to deliver.

Improvements such as a speedier Full-Screen Review feature, GPU optimisations that really accelerate performance and enable real-time application of a greater number of effects to your images and 16-bit support for over 20 tools - along with scores of others that there isn't space to mention here - all make a superb impression when putting the software to work.

Opt for the Ultimate package for just a little extra cash and you also get a superb set of additional content, including WinZip Pro, a collection of Fotolia royalty-free images, a custom Blurb photo book, more Picture Tubes (in addition to the ones already included in Corel PaintShop Pro X4), plus the excellent Nik Color Efex Pro 3.0 filters.

We liked

The low price, comprehensive set of tools, fast performance and good balance between beginner-friendly and advanced functions all create a great impression.

We disliked

As yet, there's no support for Mac users and raw file processing - although faster than it was in X3 - can be a little sluggish on slower systems.

Final verdict

In spite of its budget-friendly price tag, Corel PaintShop Pro X4 offers sophisticated enough tools to perform many of the same functions as much more expensive packages - including Apple Aperture and Adobe Photoshop. If you don't need all of the bells and whistles that the pricey top-end software provides and you're looking to save some cash without scrimping on functionality, then Corel PaintShop Pro X4 is certainly worth a look.

Adobe claims Carousel is the only tool that enables you to access your whole photo library from your Mac, iPhone or iPad, without storage issues or manual synchronisation.

The first thought on any Mac owner's mind, though, is going to be what Carousel does that iPhoto/iTunes/iCloud doesn't. And the second is why they should pay for photo synchronisation when they already get it for nothing.

Carousel is pretty similar to Apple's Photo Stream, which is part of the free iCloud service, but with a bit more control. Like Photo Stream, instead of copying photos across to your devices it stores them online. It then delivers files to your devices on demand, via your network connection.

There are no storage limits, and any changes you make, from creating Carousels to importing and editing photos, are automatically uploaded to the Carousel server.

You'll need an Adobe ID, which is free, but you pay a monthly subscription for Carousel, though there is a free 30-day trial. You download and install the Carousel client on your Mac and iOS devices, and you're ready to go.

Strips of film

Carousels are horizontally scrolling filmstrips of photos, and you can create a Carousel for a single set of photos or for shots taken over a longer period of time; in which case they're automatically split by date, so a single Carousel may consist of a series of these filmstrips that are arranged vertically. It's quick, simple and intuitive, and the consistency in appearance across the Mac and iOS versions is one of Carousel's strong points.

It's quite something to see photos you add on your Mac appear in moments on your iPad, but this does rely on the quality of your network connection. Carousel communicates with Adobe servers constantly, so you can't work offline.

Storage solutions

Adobe solves the problem of limited storage space on iOS devices by downloading only thumbnails and low-resolution proxies. It's only when you tap on a thumbnail to view the picture properly that it downloads a higher-res version.

So yes, Carousel does indeed make your whole photo library 'available', or at least all the photos you've imported into Carousel, even on a device with limited memory.

It also reacts to changes made on any device straight away. The downside is that it's heavily dependent on the quality of your network connection. Wi-Fi speeds are okay, but Carousel can be painfully slow over 3G which can go a long way to eating up your monthly allowance.

There are other limitations that gradually become apparent. This version will only import JPEGs, not TIFF, PSD or RAW files. You can carry out basic cropping, straightening and enhancement tasks and apply a range of nice but basic image effects. And it's all non-destructive, too, so you can rewind your changes if you make a mistake.

But for cataloguing and editing tasks in general, Carousel is too lightweight even to compete with iPhoto. Things begin to get redundant when you consider that you may end up running two photo collections, with your 'proper' one still on your Mac in iPhoto or Aperture.

Carousel shows promise in its current form. But its reliance on good network speeds, its monthly subscription charge and its very basic cataloguing and editing tools blunt its appeal considerably. We recommend you try before you buy.

Overview and features

Plug-in software publisher Alien Skin made its name long ago with its striking Eye Candy effects for illustrators and designers, but the company also publishes a range of photo enhancement tools, and Bokeh 2 is just one of those programs.

It aims to recreate the shallow depth of field effects you get from shooting in larger formats at wider lens apertures, and it can at the same time produce a range of vignette effects to help concentrate attention on your main subject.

You can try for a subtle background defocus that improves the picture's impact without being obvious, or go for a 'lo-fi' effect reminiscent of Holga or Lomo cameras, with strong vignetting and edge blur.

It's a direct rival to OnOne software's FocalPoint 2 plug-in, but it costs around twice as much, so the key questions are not just whether it's any good, but whether it's worth the money.

Ease of use

First impressions of Alien Skin Bokeh 2 are mixed. The interface looks a little old-fashioned, especially the plain text presets and settings in the control panel on the left side. It looks more like a shareware plug-in than a premium product.

But then when you start to work with the controls, you realise it's both fast and efficient. You can enlarge the plug-in window to fill the screen and zoom in and out of the preview image at will. It updates quickly and in real time, too, so you don't have to render a finished version to see the effects of your blur settings.

You start off with a single focus region. This is the area of the image that will be kept sharp, while the rest will be blurred. This region can be circular, elliptical or 'planar'.

Circular focus regions are ideal for concentrating focus on a specific part of the picture, perhaps with a vignette effect too, while planar regions are designed for creating realistic depth of field effects into the distance. For example, you'd use a planar region to create the miniature effect that makes real-world scenes look like models.

Compared to the 'Focus Bugs' in FocalPoint 2, these focus regions aren't much to look at. They're just an inner shape that defines the sharp area, and an outer dotted line showing how far outwards the blur effect is feathered, or blended in.

Actually, though, it's really simple to change the shape, size and position of the focus regions and the feathering. It's easy, too, to add new focus regions and, if you need a more precise selection, you can make it first in Photoshop, and Bokeh 2 will add it to the focus mask it creates.

Performance

There is a rather technical, almost unfinished look about the Alien Skin Bokeh 2 interface, and the hierarchical list of settings or presets you see in the first control tab is pretty daunting.

However, the in-depth bokeh and vignette controls in the other tabs are more straightforward, and provided you don't mind spending a little time with the online tutorials, you'll soon see what this plug-in can do.

It can simulate the highlight shapes produced by simple three-blade lens diaphragms, right up to expensive eleven-blade types, or choose discs or even heart-shaped highlights. You can change the blade curvature, the 'creaminess' of the highlights and boost them for more impact.

Interestingly, there's a Zoom option for creating defocussed detail that seems to streak outwards from the focus region, and an option to apply a Twist motion blur effect. Alien Skin uses a great example of this being applied to an image of a surfer.

The vignette controls work nicely, and you can link the effect to the focus region or apply it to the whole image, with plenty of control over the vignette size, darkening the amount and feathering.

Provided you've spent a little time learning the controls and choosing suitable images to work on, Alien Skin Bokeh 2 can produce some wonderful effects. If anything, its results look slightly more realistic than OnOne's FocalPoint 2, but that could be down to the differences in the controls and which interface you find the most natural.

Sample images

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BLUR: A planar focus region was ideal here for blurring more distant detail, but with awkward objects, such as the tree trunk on the left, you may need to make a selection in Photoshop before you edit it in Alien Skin Bokeh 2.

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LO-FI: A combination of blur and vignetting creates an effective lo-fi 'look' that's reminiscent of cheap lenses and old-fashioned cameras.

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GRAIN: What happens to film grain if you apply a bokeh effect? Normally, it's blurred along with the detail, but this plug-in's grain-matching tools mean you can preserve the grain structure.

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MINI: A planar focus region gives a realistic miniature effect to this Las Vegas night scene, and Bokeh 2's extensive highlight controls have been used to create a 'star' effect in the neon lights.

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TOO MUCH BLUR: It doesn't always work. This aircraft's wheels are too blurred and the hills behind the cockpit are too sharp - sometimes it takes Photoshop's selection tools and a lot more work to get a good result.

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See full-res image

CLOSE-UP: Close-ups often respond very well to the 'bokeh', treatment. A planar focus region near the base and a smaller, circular region over the watch face give this still-life arrangement more 'depth'.

Verdict

Real-world scenes consist of different objects and planes at different distances, and it's rare to be able to recreate depth of field effects accurately. But you can create the impression of depth of field very easily with Alien Skin Bokeh 2, and that's all you really need.

We liked

Once you've found your way around, Alien Skin Bokeh 2 is easy and fast to work with, and it produces excellent defocus and vignette effects with little effort on your part.

We disliked

Alien Skin Bokeh 2 looks both technical and distinctly old-fashioned. It's also pretty expensive, costing twice as much as OnOne's FocalPoint 2.

Final verdict

The quality of the results is terrific, but Alien Skin Bokeh 2 is not cheap, and the software interface itself isn't much to look at, either.

In Color Efex Pro 4, there are 55 different filters. Some of these are, admittedly, similar to each other or of limited use outside specialist fields, but there are plenty of others that can warp, stretch or re-invigorate your photographic imagination in ways that you might not realise using Photoshop alone.

Photoshop is fine if you never run out of inspiration, or you already have an encyclopedic knowledge of every photo effect there is and can pre-visualise each one before you start using it.

But Color Efex Pro goes further. With just a few clicks, you can see how your image would look using a whole array of different effects and treatments you might not have thought of, pushed further than you might have dared.

The full list of filters is displayed in a scrolling panel at the left side of the screen. They are also organised into categories, such as Landscape and Wedding, and are accessed using buttons at the top of the panel.

Filters and controls

When you select an effect, you see the result applied to your photo in the main window, while on the right is a vertical tools panel that offers a whole range of manual adjustments that vary according to the filter you've selected. Some are quick and simple, with few options. Others, such as the Black and White filter and new Levels and Curves, are almost like mini image editors in their own right.

The Black and White filter, for example, creates very good black and white conversions at its default settings, but it can also apply red, orange, yellow and other black and white filter effects, just like the Channel Mixer in Photoshop.

It also offers a Tonal Enhancer that produces low-key, regular or high-key images, and a Dynamic Contrast mode, which produces really strong, graphic monochromatic images. With all three, you can adjust the brightness and contrast, and protect shadow and highlight detail using sliders below the main controls and a histogram at the bottom of the panel.

The controls vary, and these filters don't all have the scope or depth of the Black and White filter, but what they do have in common is Nik's unique U point technology. It's used to apply the effect or remove it from specific areas of the image.

You do this using control points, which create a resizable, circular adjustment zone. Within this zone, the software automatically selects similar areas to the one at the centre of the control point. You can think of it as an automatic selection tool, where the size of the circle is simply the maximum radius of the effect.

This works really well. The selections blend well with surrounding areas, with no hard edges and rarely any edge/halo effects, although you do sometimes need to make a couple of attempts at finding the right area to create the control point.

Fans of Color Efex Pro 3, the previous version, will be thinking that this all sounds very familiar, but there are some major differences in this new version that make it well worth upgrading to.

There are some new and very interesting filters, for a start. Dark Contrasts creates a pseudo-HDR effect from a single image, with intensified contrasts, edge glow effects and heightened saturation. Detail Extractor works on localised contrast and rebalances highlight and shadow tones.

The Film Effects in the previous version have been split up and expanded into different sections, including Faded, Modern, Nostalgic and Vintage, and the new Levels and Curves filter is extremely useful, particularly with the U Point adjustments.

Presets and combinations

One of Color Efex Pro's strong points has always been its ability to preview effects directly and simply, and version 4 takes this further by adding presets for each filter, which are accessed by clicking a button to the right of the filter's name. You choose a preset you like, it's applied in the main window and you can then tweak the settings if you need to, or accept the effect as it is.

The other big change to Color Efex Pro 4 is the ability to combine filter effects. Previously, you could only apply one at a time - it would be applied in Photoshop as a new layer, complete with layer mask, but then you'd have to reopen Color Efex Pro to add another.

Now, though, you can combine any number of effects without leaving the application. Not only that, you can save these combinations of effects as Recipes - Color Efex Pro comes with a selection of great-looking recipes to give you an idea of what this new feature can achieve.

The ability to combine effects in this way greatly expands Color Efex's potential. It's true that there have been only modest additions to the range of filters in this release, but the changes to the way the plug-in works, although less glamorous, are hugely significant. Color Efex Pro always offered a large array of excellent photographic filter effects, but now it enables you to combine them quickly and in much more exciting ways than ever before.

Verdict

If you already use Color Efex Pro, version 4 is definitely worth the upgrade. And if you don't, you're missing out on one of the image-editing world's truly great filter collections. It's not cheap, but if you try out the fully-functional trial version, you'll soon find out why. It beats rivals such as Tiffen Dfx 3.0, OnOne Perfect Effects 3 and Alien Skin Exposure 3 in our books.

Color Efex Pro 4 is expensive, but you get a huge range of effects, many with in-depth controls. It's both powerful and inspirational, and the new filters, combinations and presets are a big step forward.

Overview and features

Adobe Photoshop may be the world's most famous image-editor, but it's a complex, professional tool with a professional price tag. Photoshop Elements is the 'amateur' alternative. It's much cheaper and it's designed not just for experts, but novices and intermediate photographers too.

It's designed around Adobe Photoshop, and in its Full Edit mode it has many similarities with Photoshop and the same techniques can often be used in both programs. Some of Photoshop's more advanced features have been taken away in Elements, though, and a range of novice-friendly quick fix tools and effects have been added, with Quick and Guided Edit modes designed for less experienced users.

In Full Edit mode, Elements has much in common with Photoshop, but there are also Quick and Guided Edit modes.

Elements is also designed more as a complete end-to-end tool for all your photographic activities. It comes with an Organizer which you can use to catalog your whole photo collection, offers simple image enhancement tools and can be used to launch a whole series of 'creations' like photo books, greetings cards and more.

The Elements Organizer is an application in its own right, managing, sorting and searching your photo collection.

You can get Photoshop Elements on its own, but it's also available as a bundle with Adobe Premiere Elements, Adobe's amateur-orientated video editing program. This has the same relationship to Adobe Premiere as Elements does to Photoshop. The Organizer works with both programs, which is why you'll see references to video, even if you just go for the Elements-only version.

New features for Elements 10

Elements 10 comes with a list of enhancements to both the Organizer and the Elements editor itself. The Organizer gets some interesting new visual search tools which use clever image-analysis techniques. Not everyone has the time or patience to apply keywords to their photos, so this offers an alternative way of finding matching images where the software does the work, not you.

There are enhancements for social networkers, too. You can now use your Facebook friends list to tag photos, and it's possible to upload videos straight to YouTube. It's never been that hard to do using YouTube's own upload tools, but you might find it useful to be able to do it from within the Organizer.
Improvements to the Elements editor include 30 new Smart Brush effects and patterns which you can paint straight on to your photos. There are three new Guided Edit effects, too, for those who want to enhance their pictures and learn at the same time.

New overlays for the Crop tool help you compose your photos more effectively according to the Rule of Thirds and the Golden Mean, and it's now possible to add text to a path (curved line), the outline of a shape or a selection. This won't hold much interest if you use Elements mainly for photography, but it enables you to add more interesting text effects to greetings cards, calendars and other photo creations.

Performance

The Organizer is an important part of the Elements package. This is not an ordinary file browsing tool like Adobe Bridge, for example, or Google's Picasa. It's an image database which brings all your photos together into a single catalog, where you can add keyword tags, organise them into albums, carry out searchs and 'stack' photos together, whether they're similar pictures you took at the same time, or edited versions of the same photo.

Stacks prevent related photos from becoming separated, and they also simplify your catalog, so that you don't see whole screens full of similar-looking photos - instead, they're all stacked under a single thumbnail.

Stacking photos keeps related images together, like these three shots of a derelict boat, and they can be collapsed to a single thumbnail.

Organizer combines regular cataloguing tools like keywords and albums with new search technologies which use sophisticated image analysis techniques to find photos.

It uses face-recognition technology, for example, to not only identify faces in photos but to distinguish one individual from another. You can use this to tag your friends and family so that they appear in the People section of the Keyword Tags panel.

It also has a Visual Similarity Search tool where you select a photo you want to match and the Organizer then attempts to find similar-looking images to the one you've selected. It does this using a combination of shape and colour, and if the results don't quite match up, you can shift the balance between these two properties using a simple slider to try to improve the match.

Visual Similarly searches can work well, though the percentage match ratings seem quite arbitrary and you can get some odd 'matches' thrown in.

This is new in the Mac version of Elements 10 and enhanced in the Windows version. And it's joined by a new, more specific Object Search tool. Here, you choose an image containing the object you want to search for, then define it more precisely with a rectangular marquee. Organizer will then find images which it thinks contain the same object.

The Visual Search tool isn't too bad. It does seem to match colours and shapes reasonably well. You might still end up with large numbers of completely dissimilar photos mixed in with the good ones, but there is clearly some intelligence at work.

The new Object Search is less convincing. It helps if the object you use as the basis for the search is as clearly defined as possible, and ideally set against a neutral, contrasting background. If so, you've a fair chance of finding photos of the same object. The Organizer ranks these with the best matches at the top, indicated by a percentage value. As you scroll down through the search results, the percentages - and the relevance - drop off very quickly indeed.

The new Object Search verges on the random. We searched for boats and Organizer came back with everything but the kitchen sink.

Maybe it's still a very new technology that's going to improve in the future? It the meantime, though, it seems more like a smart-sounding gimmick that really doesn't work very well.

The Duplicate Search is both more effective and probably more useful. It groups together images which it thinks are the same or similar so that you can stack them together. It's very good at finding matches, and while it does often throw in some bizarrely irrelevant images too, you can sidetrack those and just stack the ones which match.

The new visual search tools might not be very reliable, but its existing cataloguing and search options are very good, so the Organizer is still a great tool for managing an ever-growing photo library.

But what about Elements itself? How does that stack up against Photoshop, and are the new features in Elements 10 worth upgrading for?

Like the Organizer, Elements is rather good. It's certainly better than either its price or its market position would suggest. As far as photography is concerned, there's not much you can do in Photoshop that you can't do in Elements. There are exceptions (see the blow-by-blow comparison below) but, essentially, Photoshop and Elements are interchangeable. Most published Photoshop techniques can also be carried out in Elements, sometimes with modest workarounds, but often without any modification at all.

But Elements isn't just aimed at enthusiasts and experts. It operates not just in one mode but three. Quick mode offers a very simple set of sliders consisting of an Auto Smart Fix or separate Lighting, Color, Balance (white balance) and Sharpness adjustments. You can crop photos too, make them black and white and fix red-eye. It's all pretty basic, and there's a clear crossover here with the Photo Fix options in the Organizer, which could be confusing, but it's ideal if you're just starting out with image-editing tools.

The Quick Mode's simple adjustments are ideal for those who are new to image-editing, and there are similar tools in the Organizer.

The Guided Edit mode is more interesting. Here, Elements shows you how to apply a range of more advanced effects using a step-by-step approach that also introduces key Photoshop tools in an active context that shows what they do far more effectively than manuals or videos. And Elements 10 introduces a further three Guided effects, including a diffuse glow 'Orton' effect, a Picture Stack montage effect and a Depth of Field effect designed to de-focus backgrounds to make your subjects stand out.

The Orton effect adds a flattering and atmospheric glow to portraits which is quite pleasing, and if you want to see how it's done, you can take a look in Full edit mode at the layers the effect has created.

The new 'Orton' effect in Elements 6 works in Guided Edit mode and adds a subtle blur which can enhance portrait shots like this one.

The Picture Stack effect takes a single picture and splits it up to make it look as if it's been assembled out of a series of smaller snaps. You might use it a couple of times, but it really has novelty value only.
The Depth of Field effect works in two modes. You can create a crude but effective result using a radial gradient tool, or use the Quick Selection tool to define your main subject more precisely. The results aren't bad, but both the subject and your own technique have to be right.

The Quick Selection tool turns up again in another guise as Elements' Smart Brush tool. This adds special effects to specific areas of your pictures, the selection and the effect both being created 'live' as you paint. And this is where another set of improvements can be seen in Elements 10. There are 30 new effects and patterns, including Snow, Pencil Sketch and Oil Pastel effects.

The Smart Brush tool's been used to apply an 'Old Paper' texture to the background of this picture. Elements 10 has 30 new effects and textures.

The disadvantage of this tool is the same as the Quick Selection tool - it only really works with objects that have clear, sharp edges. For softer-edged subjects and more subtle blending of image effects, you'll need to use Photoshop manually in Full edit mode and do some work blurring and editing the layer mask.

The Crop tool's new compositional overlays are a minor enhancement rather than any kind of breakthrough. The Rule of Thirds is a compositional aid designed to help you produced more satisfying off-centre compositions. The Golden Mean is a more esoteric artistic concept that's trickier to grasp and apply to photographic subjects. They could be useful for students of photography learning to apply some basic theory, but composition is a little too complicated for rules like these to be effective all the time.

The new Rule of Thirds overlay in Elements 10 can help you crop your photos more creatively, though the Golden Mean overlay is a little too technical.

There are improvements to the photo creations, with new artwork and templates. You can create photo books, greetings cards and calendars, and share your photos via Facebook, Flickr or Adobe's own Photoshop Showcase site.

You can launch these either from the Organizer or from Elements itself, which offers flexibility in one sense, but also illustrates one of the program's weaknesses - it offers a few too many ways of doing the same things, which can cause as much confusion as over-technical processes. Should you create an online album from the Organizer or Elements? Is there a difference? Should you use the Photo Fix tools in the Organizer, or the Quick mode in Elements? Why have both?

Elements versus Photoshop

So what does Photoshop have that Elements doesn't?

Adobe Bridge: The Elements Organizer is more sophisticated, acting as an image database rather than just a file browser, but Bridge can display 'virtual' adjustments made with Adobe Camera Raw, and a wider range of metadata (copyright, keywords and much more).

Vector tools: Photoshop has path and pen tools comparable to those in a dedicated drawing/illustration package. Elements can do basic shapes but it's not in the same league.

Colour modes: Photoshop supports CMYK and Lab modes, which can be useful in commercial print publishing and some image enhancement tasks.

Curves: Elements has an Adjust Color Curves dialog, but it's a weak imitation of the curves adjustments in Photoshop. Curves are important for precise contrast adjustments.

Channels: In Photoshop you can manipulate individual colour channels and create new channels for saving selections and creating certain effects. It's something more advanced users might need.

Masks: From version 9, Elements supports layer masks, a key took in many image-editing techniques. Photoshop also supports editable 'vector' masks made with the Pen or Shape tools.

Actions: These are sequences of commands you can record and play back with a single mouseclick, and they can save a lot of time. You can't record Actions in Elements.

Enhanced RAW tools: Both Elements and Photoshop come with Adobe Camera Raw, but the Photoshop has many more image-editing tools and options.

Automated lens corrections: Photoshop Elements offers basic manual correction for lens defects, but Photoshop adds automatic lens correction based on profiles developed specifically for the lens in use.

Layer styles: Layer styles can be used to add a wide range of effects. Those in Elements are limited in their scope, but Photoshop's are much more powerful.

Verdict

Photoshop Elements is not one program but two. The Organizer is very good image cataloguing tool, and an application in its own right. And Elements itself is far more than a dumbed-down Photoshop. Its Quick and Guided modes are designed to make image-editing easier for beginners, and there's, nothing wrong with that, but in its Full mode it can do the vast majority of things that Photoshop can. But Elements was this good already, even before this latest version.

We liked

Elements 10 combines a great cataloguing tool with an image-editor that's almost as powerful as Photoshop but a fraction of the price, and with its three editing modes it caters for everyone from novices to photo experts.

We disliked

Half-successful new visual search tools, some new image effects, enhancements to the crop and text tools and new creation templates don't make much of an upgrade. There's a bit more icing, but the cake's the same.

Verdict

The enhancements in Elements 10, even though they are fairly numerous, are pretty minor. You're just getting more of what it did already rather than anything genuinely new. And there does seem to be a trend towards features, like the visual search tools, which sometimes yield good results and sometimes don't. Maybe the problem is that there's nothing more for Adobe to add? If so, that's a testament to how good Photoshop Elements has become, but also explains why Elements 10 leaves a vague feeling of disappointment.

Cyberlink is best known for its video editing tools, including PowerDVD and PowerDirector. It's now turned its attention to photo editing with PhotoDirector 2011.

Will it be able to stand out in such a crowded market, and can Cyberlink apply its successful video editing formula to a new type of media?

When you start the software you'll find it looks similar to Cyberlink's video editor, with an attractive interface that helps you get started straight away. When we began using PhotoDirector 2011, the only photos imported were the example pictures that came with the program.

Our own photos didn't take long to find and import though, and we were impressed by how quickly they were added considering how many of them were taken at high resolutions.

You can browse imported photos in the Library, and search through them by the date they were imported, the number of stars you've awarded them, their folder, album or the tags that you've given them. You can also see metadata, which includes information like GPS location and camera model.

So far so good, but all these features can be found in free image sorting and editing software like Windows Live Photo Gallery. Once you start editing your photos, PhotoDirector proves its worth.

Slide show

You can make adjustments to your photos via various sliders. As you move these, the photo is updated to show the effect. Each setting, like sharpness or saturation, is grouped with similar ones for ease of use.

This suite uses non-destructive editing, which means that no matter how much you tweak your photos, the original shot is always kept. A log of changes lets you review each change you've made to the photo in depth. You can also see side-by-side comparisons of your photo before and after editing, which gives you a good sense of how the photo is evolving.

We also appreciated the multi-monitor support, which lets you to view and edit photos over two screens.

We were pleased to see that one of PowerDirector's best features, the online DirectorZone that lets users share effects and presets, is included in PhotoDirector.

In some ways the DirectorZone works better for PhotoDirector, as the effects seem to be of a much higher standard. There are hundreds, if not thousands of these available, with more uploaded every day. Hovering over the thumbnail of an effect gives you an example of a photo before and after it's applied.

Microsoft's free Windows Live Photo Gallery can now handle RAW files, so has PhotoDirector 2011 been made redundant so soon after being launched? Having spent some time with the program, we'd say no – this is a great product for people who are getting to grips with editing their photos.

Fluid Mask 3.2 is an accomplished plug-in for Adobe Photoshop and Photoshop Elements that adds a whole suite of powerful image masking tools to the popular image editor.

Image masking lets you isolate and cut out parts of a photo, and Fluid Mask 3.2 contains features that make the process easier and more reliable.

Because this is both a plug-in and a standalone product, time and technology has been spent on perfecting the tools, with very impressive results. The tools included with Fluid Mask 3.2 are much more powerful than those supplied with standard photo editing software.

Users of Photoshop Elements will see the biggest improvement, although we think even professionals using the full version of Photoshop will be impressed.

Fluid Mask 3.2 identifies and segments images according to colours and tones, and for the most part it does a good job. Similar tones can sometimes get mixed up, though – in one test photo, a person's arm and the desk behind it were identified as the same colour and combined as one.

This was easily rectified by drawing a line with the Forced Edge tool through the selection, dividing it along the edges of the objects. With care and attention, even fine hairs can be identified and busy backgrounds removed.

One of the great things about Fluid Mask 3.2 is that you don't need to be a professional artist to use its powerful tools. Image segmentation, edge blending and other complex masking techniques can be implemented easily.

A handy Tip pane gives you in-depth information about every tool you click on, without being patronising or obstructing your work with annoying pop-up windows. If you're more confident in high-level photo editing, you can tweak and edit the tools, and with a little effort the results can be amazing.

As mentioned, if you don't have access to Adobe's software, Fluid Mask 3.2 also comes with a standalone editor for using its tools, although it works best as a plug-in for the more advanced package.

Sooner or later, everyone wants to do more with their photos than iPhoto allows. FX Photo Studio Pro is potentially the next step, offering editing tools as well as 159 special effects.

FX Photo Studio Pro's interface is simple, easy to use – but also fun. Just drag and drop an image onto it and the program will give you a scrolling set of effects. Click on one to see the 'before' and 'after' versions next to each other and a palette offering you customisation options. Click on the green 'Apply' button to apply it, then continue adding as many effects as you want.

There are also tools for cropping and rotating the image that are just as easy, if not easier to use as iPhoto's.

And there's an Adjust section for changing colour balance, levels, sharpness, noise, shadows and highlights, as well as the usual brightness, contrast, and so on.

You can save the image in formats including raw, JPG, TIFF and CR2, or share the image on Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter or Flickr. You can also share a combination of effects you've used as a 'Preset' – a simple code to type in to recreate the complete set.

FX Photo Studio Pro is a fun, easy tool to use. Many of its 159 effects feel like they're there to bolster the set, rather than because anyone would use them. But there are some decent ones in there.

Still, at nearly £25, it's an expensive app that's halfway to the price tag of Adobe Photoshop Elements. While it's worth considering, do so carefully.

Corel Painter has long been the pro choice for digital painting, thanks to its amazing natural media feature set that accurately replicates the look and feel of traditional materials such as paint, pencils, gouache and, well, you name it really; if you can use it in real life you can simulate it in Painter.

In recent times, it has had a number of high-quality competitors – ArtRage and the excellent SketchBook Pro to name but two – so what does version 12 bring to the table to help artists achieve their best work yet?

Quite a lot, as it happens. The first thing you notice is the new interface. It's not a major change, but the app feels slicker and more intuitive. You can, from the welcome screen, now choose a workspace preset depending on what you're using the app for – concept art, illustration and so on.

Painter then loads the panels that are associated with that particular workflow. It's nothing new but it makes customising Painter a lot easier. You can also add a paper texture and set up document presets from the welcome screen.

Other workflow enhancements include enhanced layer and colour preservation when switching between Painter and Photoshop; and a High Quality display mode, giving you a view of how your image will print when zoomed right in (rather than displaying pixels).

There's also enhanced brush library management and a new Temporal Colours palette, it being a simplified HSV wheel that floats above your document.

But enough of the workflow – what are the creative tools? Well, most notable are the new Mirror and Kaleidoscopic Painting modes.

The Mirror mode enables you to paint in perfect symmetry across a number of planes. You can change the amount of planes and their position. This tool is great for quickly sketching faces and the like, meaning you only have to draw one side before refining.

The Kaleidoscopic mode is a little more bizarre: you specify a number of planes and then have your artwork reflect in the segments between the planes. We're not sure you'll use it that often, but it is a lot of fun! Being able to clone from multiple sources is also a nice addition.

A new Painter release wouldn't be complete without new brushes though, and thankfully Painter 12 has some great additions. Firstly, the whole engine has been speeded up with multicore support, meaning brushes are faster.

There's also 'Computed Circular brush controls'. This means brush properties are calculated rather than being a bitmap – and you can, in the Computed Circular brush control panel, specify the tip profile of certain brushes. This enables you to change dab opacity and hardness, which controls the colour density at the outer edge of the dab. It's all behind-the-scenes stuff that speeds up Painter and makes it a much more enjoyable app to paint with.

In terms of new brushes, there's Gel brushes, enabling you to tint an image's underlying colour (with blending mode controls); six new digital airbrushes; and Real Watercolour – these simulating working with a watercolour brush, paper, pigments and a glass of water.

And they are great – you can adjust paper texture settings on the fly and even specify wind settings to determine which way the paint will flow. They are a joy to use and add another dimension to your creative toolbox. There's also Real Wet Oils, to which you can add solvents to thin and create washes, and so on.

Overall, Painter 12 is a great update. And a must for anyone serious about digital painting.

Acorn bills itself as the "image editor for humans" and it's easy to see why.

Rather than sprinkling myriad palettes around the screen or deluging you with a baffling amount of options, you get a single tools palette; this houses the app's selection of tools, context-sensitive settings for the current tool, and your image's layers.

On small screens, this 330-pixel-wide slab of interface might grate, but it's easily toggled with the Tab key and it works well on larger monitors.

The user-friendly nature of Acorn continues throughout the bulk of the application: tool settings are clearly labelled, and powerful filters can be applied in a separate window that enables you to chain multiple effects and save them as a preset.

Acorn 3 introduces Layer Styles, a feature that provides a stripped-down (and slightly less configurable) set of effects that are non-destructive, including shadows, blurs and colour settings. In both cases, the ability to preview how combinations of effects amend your image or layer is useful.

Acorn 3 also brings some big changes to vector objects, making it more suitable for interface design. For example, if anyone's designing for screen, then they can use the 'snap to pixels' option for shapes, to keep everything sharp. The ability to dynamically update corner radius and stroke settings for vector objects will also be a boon for web and interface designers.

Elsewhere, anyone working with shapes and text will be pleased to find these things can now be rotated, have gradients applied to them and be converted to Bezier objects. And Bezier curves are now also more flexible, since you can add and subtract points.

Selections are also much improved in Acorn 3, moving the app from being primarily about special effects and basic image manipulation to one suitable for complex bitmap editing.

The new Instant Alpha tool aims to work like a magic eraser — you click-drag to remove blocks of colour; this is fine for large, flat areas, but we found it lacking for making detailed selections. However, the new QuickMask deftly deals with complex masking, enabling you to 'paint' a mask and turn it into a selection.

However, the update's not quite without problems. While we appreciate the 'Color Correction' section of Acorn's documentation, some quick-fire tools for photography colour-correction would be welcome, and we also found Acorn's performance a problem on a Core 2 Duo iMac, especially with larger images and when compared to Photoshop. Also, PSD import is billed as 'improved', but remains variable.

But, criticising Acorn 3 too much would be a tad churlish, because this release represents a turning point for the application. We've long admired Acorn but have always wondered who it's actually for, largely due to its scattergun approach regarding features, offering a few insanely powerful tools but irksome omissions.

With the improvements in this release, it matches Pixelmator for basic image edits, betters all of its rivals regarding special effects, and is even starting to muscle in on Adobe Fireworks's turf regarding interface design.

It's not quite in MacFormat Choice Award territory yet, but Acorn now does more than enough to justify purchase for basic interface design, quick image edits and effects work – at least if you've a reasonably recent Mac to run it on. And for existing Acorn fans, the upgrade price is a total no-brainer.