First of all, I love this software!
I've never owned dedicated photo editing software before - other than Google's Picasa - instead using the photo editing tools within full-blown graphics packages.
It's for this reason that I recently upgraded my copy of Paint Shop Pro to
Corel PaintShop Photo Pro X3 (PC DVD) which as well as being a fully fledged graphics creation tool, has also added a lot more photo editing features as well.
Then I got hold of PhotoPlus X4. Now, I've said
elsewhere that in the past I associated Serif with cheap and cheerful software, but that I have now completely changed my mind about that.
PagePlus X4 (PC CD) is a brilliant piece of software and now PhotoPlus X4 has gone further to prove how wrong I was in the past.
PhotoPlus is a VERY feature-rich photo editing package. Basic features such as colour correction, red-eye removal, horizon straightening, contrast/gamma/saturation etc corretion all work very well (so long as you don't push the sliders too far and create artifacts by over-doing things - not a fault of the software, more a tendancy for those not so familiar with the power of the software they are using).
The 'special effects' functions such as colourisation (including sepia toning, b&w processing etc) are also very good, and there are a good few, suprisingly good filetr effects as well (oil painting, water-colour etc).
But once again the feature that really won me over (thanks to my growing interest in this area of photography) is the HDR processing/merging.
[ Briefly, for those who don't know, HDR is a process whereby (usually) three or more photographs are taken of the exact same scene at different exposures - one under exposed to capture detail in bright, one correctly exposed, and one over exposed to capture the detail in dark areas. The HDR merge process and tone apping then combines these images to create a final image that is much more dynamic than can be captured in the camera. ]
In PhotoPlus X4 you are given far more control of the HDR process than in
Corel PaintShop Photo Pro X3 (PC DVD), and the results are quite stunning.
On a powerful machine you probably won't notice this, but on my aged laptop (900MHz Centrino) PhotoPlus is markedly quicker to do anything than Paint Shop Pro.
Put all this together, and at Amazon's price you have an indespensible photo editing tool that has all the features of far higher priced alternatives.
Combined with
Corel PaintShop Photo Pro X3 (PC DVD), I now have everything I need for graphics and photo work.
If you don't intend to create graphics, then PhotoPlus X4 is all you need.
It really is a superb piece of software.