Photo Center

by Data Becker

Product Details

• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces
• Shipping: This item is also available for shipping to select countries outside the U.S.
• ASIN: B00006H3DI
• Date first available at Amazon.com: July 30, 2002
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #33,216 in Software (See Top 100 in Software)
• Discontinued by manufacturer: Yes

Product Description

Amazon.com Review

Photo Center is an image editing and organizing program that manages to combine powerful functionality with excellent ease of use. Beginners will appreciate the Image Wizard, which walks you through the process of correcting imperfections in an original photograph, cropping it to a specific size for printing on photo paper, colorizing and sharpening it, and removing dust and scratches. The "variations" control is particularly useful here, displaying thumbnail images of how the different effects will alter the look of the photo before actually making any changes.

Although the wizard will suffice for many basic editing jobs, it won't be long before you start delving into the menus and toolbars to discover a wide and impressive range of pre-set effects that can be applied to your photographs. These include frames, artist effects (like chalk, pencil, and oils), masques to change the outline of a photo, various kinds of distortion, and some excellent lighting effects, especially the spotlight control. Elsewhere there's a range of tools for adding pre-drawn shapes like rectangles and circles, good freehand drawing tools, a text tool (which includes some super textures and 3-D effects), drop shadows (impressively easy) and a highly effective tool for removing red eye.

The program reads and writes all the popular graphics file formats, including JPG, GIF, TIFF, and BMP, and supports a wide range of printing styles (full-bleed single images, multiple photos on the same page). Finally, the included Photo Album program allows you to find and then organize your photos into albums that you can browse, print out or share electronically via a wizard that creates a simple Web site in a few mouse clicks. The world isn't short of photo editing software, but Photo Center is definitely worth considering for beginners and enthusiasts alike. --Rob Beattie

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

26 of 28 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great Graphic Program - Small Price, August 22, 2002

By 

Barbara Rhoades "Jackie of all Trades" (O'Fallon, MO USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Photo Center (CD-ROM)

Photo Center
SOFTWARE
PUBLISHER: DataBecker
REVIEWED BY: Barbara Rhoades

REVIEW: This is a great program for anyone looking for a graphics program. In looking at the screen when the program first loads, a user would believe the program has a very limited capacity. But WAIT! Just click on the drop-down menus and there are TONS of other tools available. Need help in figuring out what each is? Just click on the HELP and the explanations are given. The tools are similar to those in PhotoShop or Fireworks.

The software comes with a User's Guide of almost 100 pages of helpful information. One whole chapter is devoted to an explanation of the menus and where you can find what. Photo Center also allows you to set up an album for displaying your pictures on the web. One very nice feature is the pre-set masques. Color gradients are very easy to apply in Photo Center.

Do you use a digital camera? Photo Center uses TWAIN to transfer between camera and computer. Go ahead, take a few pictures and download them to the computer. Now play around with the features, such as, cropping (take out the neighbor's dog), color correction (that dress really was FIRE engine red), add some text and print. A few sheets of glossy paper are included so you can see the results right away.

If you can think of a problem a picture might have, Photo Center can help you get rid of it or add it as the need may be. And for a price of less than [$$], it is a really good buy.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Editing application good, May 4, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: Photo Center (CD-ROM)

Editing portion of application is good.

2.0 out of 5 stars Album functionality doesn't work properly, May 4, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: Photo Center (CD-ROM)

The product was pretty good for correcting pictures. However, the Album feature did not work properly. I tried it on two different computers to make sure that it wasn't a conflict of some sort. On one computer, the Album feature did not work at all. On the other the slide show function did not work. I had a feeling that I should have gone with an Adobe product to begin with, I was correct.