Customer Reviews

Photo Explosion 4.0 [Old Version]

5 star:		(13)
4 star:		(12)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(8)

 

 

I have been using Adobe Elements 4 to improve my pictures but I was forced to make a change when I recently purchased a new PC running Windows 7. Upgrading my Adobe Elements would have cost $100 so I looked for alternatives. I was a bit suspicious of Photo Explosion. After all, its price was $30 with a $10 mail-in rebate. However, it turns out to be a great package. Easy to use and far more capability that I will probably ever use. And, the software comes with a very useful manual. I haven't had a decent manual in years from anyone else. I recommend, without any reservations that you buy Photo Explosion.

Photo Explosion-Version 4 is an editing program for photos. It includes templates, clip art, and different photography projects. It is easy to edit your photos after uploading. It even has a makeover studio to retouch your pictures. There are all kinds of photo effects that you can create including panoramas. I love all the included frames and all the scrapbooking items. The program itself is organized well. You can import photos directly from your camera, scanner , or CD's. Photo Explosion has many of the same features as Adobe's Photoshop but easier to use. The program allows you to easily share pictures through email or albums. You can even burn a DVD with this program. There is also a 90 money back guarantee.

I've spent an hour trying to do something as simple as draw a circle on a photo. The manual says to insert one using the "Insert Menu", but that menu is not to be found. Help does not mention it, nor does the manual index say where it is. I'm new to this application, but I should be able to find answers using the help menu and the manual. Nova's web site has no help feature. In fact, much of the site is not working. The "Learning Center" tab instead goes to an application to join the "User Community". The "User Community" tab goes to "Product Updates", and the "Product Support" tab goes to "Page not found". What a joke. The site promises a 90-day "satisfaction guarantee or your money back", but no supporting info, no way to actually use the "guarantee". Don't waste your time with this product or this company.

Photo Explosion 4.0 is great photo software! It's packed with features and is fairly intuitive to use. Project Studio allows you to create greeting cards, calendars, family trees, journals, scrapbooks, magazine covers--the list goes on. You can either choose a project that is already set up and import the picture(s), change the words, fonts, and effects (such as shadows on the text or put frames on the photos). There are lots of options to customize! For more creative people, you can create a project from scratch. Some projects, such as booklets and brochures, are only available from scratch. There's a text-based tutorial if you need extra help.

The Image Editor allows you to edit all aspects of your photos, from the usuals, like cropping and removing red eye, to the less common, like removing blemishes and whitening teeth. It's not as intuitive as Project Studio, but the tutorials are pretty complete, taking you step-by-step through each activity; however, be sure you know the names of all the toolbars! I would prefer Flash movies, rather than simple text tutorials, to show how to do each action.

Photo Explosion Album allows you to organize your photos, tag (categorize) them, and share them on social networking and other websites. I particularly like the tagging feature. You can either tag a photo with the standard tags they provide (such as family or events), and you can create your own tags, and you can create subcategories (for example "Uncle Andy" under Family). Then you can search for all photos with a certain tag. I make lots of photo books using Picaboo, and I haven't figured out how to have Picaboo call up the Photo Explosion Album, it only searches my photos folder--that's probably a fault of Picaboo, not Photo Explosion. It's very easy to upload photos to websites, or as a screen saver, or to the other Photo Explosion programs.

Photo Explosion includes a bonus program, PanoramaPlus, which allows you to turn a series of photos or a video into a horizontal, vertical, tiled, or 360 degree panorama. It's a fairly simple program--download the photos or video and click "stitch". Then you can do some editing or leave it as is. It's also easy to export the panorama as a PDF, JPEG/TIFF/etc, or a movie, or to email it.

Photo Explosion Deluxe has these same programs plus three additional ones to create montages, morph two photos into one, and create slideshows with background music that others can view on TV. If you want these extra programs, spend the extra money and get the Deluxe version. For more basic needs, Photo Explosion 4 is all you'll need!

*This review was posted by a member of the Nova Development User Community (NDUC). NDUC members are real people who use Nova Development products and share relevant feedback about the products they use in order to help other users. More information about NDUC, its programs and members is available on the Nova Development website.

I ORIGINALLY GOT A FORMER EDITION OF PHOTO EXPLOSION FREE WITH SOME COMPUTER HARDWARE THAT I PURCHASED. IT WAS SO USER FRIENDLY THAT I EXCELLED WITH IT WITHIN 24 HOURS. I LOVED THE CLONING, PHOTO FRAMES, SPECIAL EFFECTS, TRIMMING TOOL, ETC. THIS LED ME TO PURCHASE THIS 4.0 EDITION WHICH IS NOT THE SAME. IT LOOKS LIKE I WILL HAVE TO CONSTANTLY REFER TO THE MANUAL AND I HAVE YET TO GIVE THIS SOME TIME SO IT WOULD BE UNFAIR TO RATE IT INDIVIDUALLY BUT AGAINST THE FREE PROGRAM, I WOULD SAY THAT THIS VERSION IS NOT USER FRIENDLY; (YET).

This is just a very slightly downgraded form of the Delux version. You can still do almost all the same stuff, it just has less projects and graphics that come with the software. As far as editing the photos this is the same and just amazing! I have used other photo software that was suppose to do the same things, but actually doing it didn't work very well most the time. These programs make it very easy. The first thing I did was try out the Tan Creator, because this is one in I've had a program suppose to do and it would just ruin the look of the picture and look so obviously shopped. This looks real, I don't know how they do it, but it looks real and it only seems to target skin on top, so you don't have to worry terribly about being precise with the 'brush'. I was very impressed. My older brother just got married so I uploaded a bunch of these pictures and was able to do amazing things, like clean up my very acne prone 15 year old brother's face and look normal, not shopped. It smoothed out the look of skin over scars on other family members and it elimenates red eye in a way that looks real. It can also do all the normal stuff like play with color saturation, change to sepia, black in white, make it look like oil paint or color pencil, sharpen and that stuff. This is just such a wonderful tool Then on top it has many photo related crafts, like scrapbooking, disc covers, cards, collages (it has an extract tool to get rid of background so you can make some awesome collages) and etc... Very cool software!


*This review was posted by a member of the Nova Development User Community (NDUC). NDUC members are real people who use Nova Development products and share relevant feedback about the products they use in order to help other users. More information about NDUC, its programs and members is available on the Nova Development website.

When I purchased my new PC I discovered my Photo Explosion 3.0 Deluxe would not work in Window 7.
So, I purchased the recommended 4.0
I have worked with this version for days now, but can not figure out even the most simple tasks.

Why did they have to change the entire program?
Where are the drop-in features?
Why did they have to make it so complicated?

I used different Photo Explosion versions over the years and I always loved them.
I am very disappointed in the 4.0 version and wished I could get my money back.

I purchased this software, and let me tell you, unless the company made some big changes to it, don't buy it. All it did was crash my computer and flood my screens with pop ups saying "ArcSoft notifier has stopped working" ,even when the software was not running. I would click ok, and 3 seconds later it would pop up AGAIN...it never stopped. I looked it up on the internet and found THOUSANDS of people who had the same problem.
The only way to fix it was to uninstall ALL the programs, and then my computer started working normally again.

This photo editing software is SO complicated! It has a HUGE user manual! I bought it because I wanted something quick and easy.. This is NOT! If you are an advanced editor, then this would probably be great for you.. but beginners.. I feel like I have wasted my money!

It is a competent image editor and a decent bargain for the price. Perfect for a person starting out or just wanting to do editing for self and family. It has an easy-to-view user interface and all the necessary adjustment tools for the average person, nicely laid out on the margins. With a little practice easy enough to work with, unlike much advertised products by Photoshop and Paint Shop Pro, best left for diehard photo experts.

Some of the extra features are interesting, but the workable QUICK-FIX-STUDIO seems to lack automatic features and the INSTANT ARTIST has few options producing less than amazing results. There is a DE LUXE VERSION available for a few more dollars, which is packed with all sorts of goodies for someone interested in collages, scrapbooks, slideshows and the like. In fact, this latter version seems like a really good bargain for the price.

If you are just getting your feet wet in the photo editing, you could add to your software collection by downloading some excellent freeware (free and freeware are not the same!!!) basic photo editors, like PHOTOFILTRE and PHOTOSCAPE.

In any case, PHOTO EXPLOSION may turn out to be a good buy for you. :)