With Photoshop CS and Elements costing so much, is there a gap for a high-powered, low-cost image editor such as Serif PhotoPlus X5?

Serif WebPlus X5 aims to beat the blog services

Serif MoviePlus X5 might be a little clumsy, but it ably handles the basics of video editing

Serif PagePlus X5 proves an excellent tool for beginners and veterans alike

Serif PhotoPlus X4 brings great photo editing tools at a great price

Serif WebPlus X4 offers power and ease of use

One of the biggest traumas of producing any Web site is the constant back and forth to image editors, browsers and FTP sites every time you decide on an alteration. What makes WebPlus a joy to use is its convenience: all that stuff can be done in one window.

PhotoPlus is a very capable editor that's never quite escaped the shadow of Paint Shop Pro. Will version 11 be any different from its predecessors? Certainly not with regard to the interface: it's more cluttered, and not as straightforward for beginners.

Compared to the recent mass-adoption of photo editing programs, spurred on by the digital camera revolution, vector-based drawing has become something of a lost art.

Updated Desktop publishing allows you to create everything from a leaflet, a poster or even a brochure. The first thing to know about this latest package from Serif is that it has launched each product independently, but this is a cost-effective way of picking up three distinct tools: PagePlus 11, DrawPlus 8 and ImpactPlus 5 for a mere £50 (inc. VAT).

You may have come across Serif's PagePlus if you've ever needed to create a poster, flyer, calendar or small booklet on your laptop. It's one of the oldest and most widely used home-based DTP (desktop publishing) packages

Renowned for producing quality, cost-effective creativity software, Serif brings a typically logical layout to the latest version of its photo-album program.

If you received a digital camera for Christmas, it will have come with its own basic editing software. While this will be fine for the basics, you may find you'll soon outgrow it. Serif PhotoPlus X2 is the next logical step, as it's an introductory product that has plenty of tools to help you develop your skills.

From its birth 20 years ago as a Pagemaker lookalike, Serif 's PagePlus has gone on to be a major player in the home and small-business DTP market, selling rather more copies than its progenitor

Serif made its name by introducing DTP to people who, at that time, couldn't afford PageMaker. With WebPlus, it does the same thing today for people who can't afford Dreamweaver.

And now, how to design a website without even knowing what HTML stands for