Serif Digital Photo Suite 2009

Taking digital photos couldn’t be easier – it’s organising and keeping on top of them that’s hard work. Serif is offering a solution in the form of its Digital Photo Suite.

Features:
There are two parts to the suite, AlbumPlus X3 and PanoramaPlus 3. AlbumPlus is where you’ll do the bulk of your work, as it collates and organises the photos on your hard disk. It’s a bit like Google’s Picasa – not quite as friendly but it arguably handles things like tags slightly better. PanoramaPlus will take several photos of a scene (or even a panned video shot) and stitch the pictures together to make a single image.

Performance:
The panorama-maker is a cracking piece of software that does a great job of stitching images together. You could accomplish the same thing with a regular image-editing program but we’d challenge you to do it as well or as efficiently as this software does.

Ease of use:
Although there’s nothing terribly difficult about using Digital Photo Suite 2009, it isn’t as intuitive as some of its rivals. We had to consult the Help file to work out how to stitch photos into a panorama and AlbumPlus isn’t as easy to use as the likes of Picasa. However, as you grow more familiar with how it all works, its superior organisational power becomes apparent.

Value for money:
The biggest downside to this product is undoubtedly that it costs anything at all. Picasa has spoilt us with its free solution to organising photos and, although Serif’s product doesn’t skimp on anything, the bottom line is that AlbumPlus does pretty much the same job. PanoramaPlus is a handy addition that you don’t get with other products but you’ll need to use it an awful lot to justify paying this price.