Photo Studio La Crosse WI

Rating: 8/10

The Focus Multimedia range of products is ideal for users who want good quality software without paying a fortune for it. Many of these are simply repackaged from the back catalogue of software developers like Serif, who are responsible for this latest release called PhotoStudio - this, when it launches up, is in fact PhotoPlus 8.

This is an image editor that bears more than a passing resemblance to Adobe's Photoshop, although the methodology behind the tools themselves is completely different. Also Serif have obviously looked at the way people use image editors and tried to improve the workflow with a few new touches of their own. For example if you have a wheel mouse, you can alter the value of any adjustment scrollbar with the wheel.

They have also added a full set of vector drawing tools, so you can create practically any complex shape and then convert it to a bitmap; (creating complex shapes is not easily done in a raster based program). In a similar way the editable QuickShapes allow you to create a wide range of predefined shape; these have slide bars that can morph them into something totally different.

I was particularly impressed with the layer effects palette, which works very much like the PhotoShop version, but with a new twist. It provides the facility to add drop shadow, bevel and emboss, 2D and 3D bump mapping and some very effective 3D lighting to any selection or layer. But the twist is that you don't have to convert the layer to raster before applying the effect. So text remains editable, making it much easier and quicker to try new fonts or point sizes.

This repackaged product is now exceptional value and I have no hesitation in recommending it.

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