Review
Created: December, 1999
Adobe
Photoshop is considered by many to be the Cadillac of photo-editing
programs, but the price tag is prohibitive for many small businesses.
If you shop around you may find editions in the $600 US range, which is a big enough investment but compare that to the list price of $995 US. The number of options Photoshop provides can also be confusing if you've never edited photos before.
Enter Adobe's PhotoDeluxe, which allows a novice to take an image and make basic modifications to it without a large investment. PhotoDeluxe's basic mode has large blue buttons to access various groups of activities. Each activity has a guide that holds the user's hand through every step. Photoshop pros will find this setup frustrating, but the uninitiated will be glad to have the help.
Deviating from these predefined steps is possible -- by using a combination of advanced and basic modes -- but this is not easy to accomplish.
Available from the "Advanced" button on the left side, the advanced mode allows access to menu options. These afford a lot more power, but can be daunting to a novice or anyone not already acquainted with the Photoshop interface. PhotoDeluxe's advanced mode does makes more sophisticated use of the program possible, but provides little guidance for using it.
The program always launches in basic mode, even if you switch to advanced mode and wish to always start in advanced mode.
The default settings allow one to work only on one document at a time, but this can be changed in the preferences. If only they had allowed a similar way to change the number of levels of Undo. It remains at one level -- no more than one previous action can be reversed by clicking Undo, instead of being able to go back through a series of actions to where you made that problematic change in color or shaved an edge a little sloppily.
The power of PhotoDeluxe can ostensibly be extended using plugins, but a search of the Adobe Web site found that few were available. These consisted solely of alternate templates used for extending some predefined activities available in Basic mode.
PhotoDeluxe lifted a powerful concept lifted from Photoshop: the concept of layers. Using layers is akin to having transparent sheets where you can place a photo on one layer, then add text or paint to a second layer. This allows you to edit each layer separately, making it easy to correct a mistake in one layer without having to alter another layer.
Images can be imported from a variety of sources, including files from a hard drive, clip art from the CD ROM and images from a scanner or from a digital camera. Saved or modified images are kept in galleries. Some galleries are predefined and include clip art images from the CD ROM. More galleries can be defined but they cannot be nested. If you like to subcategorize, this is limiting because you cannot have a gallery within a gallery.
Help screens are adequate, but were obviously designed for the Windows edition -- many screen captures are shots of Windows screens.
The help guides and the button bar are useful in basic mode. But they take up a lot of real estate on the screen and cannot be dismissed or closed. The canvas area can be overlaid on top, but they are still obtrusive.
PhotoDeluxe is not the speediest of programs. Informal comparison testing with its bigger brother, Photoshop, demonstrated that some of the more common effects ran a bit slower on PhotoDeluxe.
In addition, the pace of the Web has left this program behind. Released in 1997, PhotoDeluxe still contains references to the now defunct AT&T Worldnet and looking up the product Web page brings up information on Version 4.0 of the Windows edition of the product.
PhotoDeluxe provides an inexpensive entry for people who want to try a hand at editing photos without a large cash layout. Anyone who anticipates needing more editing power would be better served by Photoshop or other photo-editing programs.
Reviewer's rating: 3 / 5
Comments: Not an unreasonable program for learning the basics if you do not plan to become a professional in this or a related field.
Price: $40 to $89 US. Commonly included as part of scanner software bundles.
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