IBM PerfectPhoto 1.0
http://www-3.ibm.com/software/ad/ perfectphoto/
= interesting, promising
Software Tool (Win)
Free to try or USD $ 34.95

Here is another great, very powerful low-cost image editor that has been out for more than two years, but that almost nobody has heard about. The original copyright statement in the software says 1999.

PerfectPhoto sports an impressive array of powerful features that are well designed and easy to access.

The interface is adequately designed and organization of tools and commands is well done. The look and feel is unique as the whole working environment is set on a black background.

Tools and icons are intelligently grouped and it is easy to learn to use this application. There is also an integrated wizard that guides the user in a step-by-step fashion in executing all key image editing feats requested.

PerfectPhoto can save to a handful of key graphic file formats including .TIF, .JPG, .GIF and .BMP. For .JPG and .GIF offers handy and well designed and very usable controls for managing compression (.JPG) and transparent color selection (.GIF).

Under the hood PerfectPhoto sports all of the features one would hope to find in an Image Editing program. Imaging controls are present including panels that allow the preview of edited settings on a range of image clones as to visually provide a range of preprocessed options to select from.

Selection tools offer all that one could ask for by providing both pre-shapod selection tools as well as a polyline tool and a "magic wand" tool allowing to select parts of an image on the basis of a selected range of colors. Tye magic wand sensitivity can be controlled just like in more expensive image editing tools like Painto Shop pro or Photoshop in one hundred increments.

PerfectPhoto integrates also two complementary applications:

1) PerfectPhoto Gallery Editor which provides a simple tool to create a gallery of images to be later displayed in a slide show. The image sequence can be saved and distributed to Windows users who do not have PerfectPhoto installed on their machines.

2) Album Explorer which provides a facility to create organized image catalogs.

I have had to ask help to Google to be able to find a way to download a trial version of this product from the original manufacturer web site (IBM/Lotus) an as a positive consequence I have found a few alternative locations from which you can download and fully try out this impressive tool.

A free 60-day trial version can be downloaded at:

a) http://www6.software.ibm.com/devcon/ devcon/docs/ibmpphot.htm

b) http://www.downseek.com/download/ 3050.asp

c) http://www.zdnet.com.au/downloads/ pc/swinfo/0,2000036746,915355,00.htm

Watch out as this is a 50 MB download!