Ulead PhotoImpact 10
Image Editing Software

Are you hunting for a good image editing program? Well, of the products you'll want to consider would definitely be Ulead PhotoImpact. I've been a big fan of Ulead software for many years - they produce exceptional graphics and video editing programs. In this review, we'll take a look at some of the new features in Ulead PhotoImpact 10, especially the revamped user interface and support for digital photos.

As you'll see, although the software does have some kinks to be ironed out, it's still a great piece of software for its price.
 

Overview

Ulead PhotoImpact 10 is an extremely versatile piece of software. There is an amazing suite of tools for basic and advanced image editing, web graphics creation and digital photo enhancement. Personally, I've worked with Ulead image editing programs for a long time and I can say that they are among the most user friendly products around.

What's more - you simply can't beat the price. At $85, the package itself is much cheaper than competing products like Adobe Photoshop Elements 3 (selling at $135) and Paint Shop Pro 9 (selling at $100).
 

User Interface Enhancements

When you first launch Ulead PhotoImpact 10, you are greeted with a clean, new Welcome Screen which shows the basic tasks you can perform in the program. This screen is very useful for newbies but of course, advanced users may scoff at it (there's an option to turn it off though). The Welcome Screen allows you to access a variety of common functions - browse images, download images, scan images and fix photos, to name a few.

The overall user interface has also been revamped to allow two different workspace modes - Basic and Standard. Basic mode allows the user to access basic image editing functions like importing of photos and fundamental effects. Standard mode opens up more options including support for layers, an EasyPalette and the Browse Manager.
 

Better Support for Digital Photos

Ulead PhotoImpact 10 introduces a set of enhanced functions for digital photo editing. Three key features come to mind:

• EXIF information - you can now use the Browse Image command to view all your photos with EXIF information displayed. This is great for more advanced users who like to see what time or ISO setting was used to take the picture.
   
• Download photos - downloading of photos from your camera to the PC is made simpler with an enhanced and more intuitive wizard. You can select the brand name of the camera you're using and also instruct the program to clear out the camera memory card when the download is done.
   
• ExpressFix - there is now a new ExpressFix function to apply common image editing effects to a digital photo. These include adjustments to overall exposure, subject exposure, color cast, color saturation and focus. There' even an in-built effect to beautify a subject's skin. There is a split view to allow you to compare the before and after images.
   

Artistic Effects

I really enjoyed tinkering around the new artistic effects in PhotoImpact 10. They're really great for sprucing up an otherwise boring image. The special effects include Engraving, Impressionist, Cartoon, Contour Drawing and Stippling. Each effect has slider controls to allow you to define the amount of parameters for the effect.
 

Those Lovely Extras ...

And guess what? There's tons of extras bundled with PhotoImpact 10. Buying the program not only gives you the basic image editing program, but also the following:

• Ulead Cool 360 for creating panoramic images
• Ulead GIF Animator for creating GIF images for the Web
• Thousands of royalty free images
• Ulead Photo Explorer image management software
• A booklet on digital photography techniques

Ulead Systems also has a very complete set of image editing tutorials, which are regularly updated on its website.
 

Limitations

As much as I like the features thrown into Ulead PhotoImpact 10, there are some shortcomings which I need to reveal here:

First, some of the effects (e.g. Cartoon) can take pretty long to apply. This will be more obvious if you have a slow computer (I guess anything less than a Pentium 3 CPU and 256MB of RAM would be considered slow these days).

Next, the lack of support for the camera RAW image format may pose a problem for professional photographers. Many users with advanced digital cameras like the Canon EOS 300D or Nikon D70 typically like to work with RAW images to preserve image resolution. The lack of support in this area means many of them will turn to higher end packages like Adobe Photoshop CS.

Lastly, Ulead PhotoImpact 10 lacks image management capabilities. Although there is a bundled Photo Explorer program for this purpose, I find the image tagging and cataloging capabilities far inferior to products like Adobe Photoshop Elements 3.
 

Conclusion

As you can see, all in all, Ulead PhotoImpact is a great entry-level photo editor that comes with a ton of powerful features. Even intermediate users should be able to use this package for most of their tasks. It's one of the best value photo editors in the market - if you're shopping for one, this program should be high on your list.

Related Articles

You may also wish to read the following related articles:

Paint Shop Pro 9 software review
Simple techniques for touching up digital photos
An overview of digital photo software
Top 5 beginner photo editors for Windows
Top 5 free photo editors for Windows