Reviews

PhotoPlus 6 | rating: Description: Paint program/ image editor/ animated gif tool File Size: Unspecified Platform: Windows 95/98/98 SE/ 2000/ ME / NT 4.0. / XP Download

The Rundown

PhotoPlus 6 is an earlier, yet fully functional release of Serif's current version of PhotoPlus 9, an image editor meant to compete with higher end products, such as Photoshop and Paint Shop Pro. As a webmaster freebie, where does it stand, and what are some of its features? Briefly, a rundown:

Features

BASIC IMAGE EDITING FEATURES
Because PhotoPlus is primarily photo retouching software, it shines when it comes to tweaking or correcting photographs. Adjust and correct colors and brightness (HSL), crop your photos, or rotate your images. You can also resize images, expand their canvas sizes, and add a minimum of filter effects, such as blur, motion effects, and noise.

PAINTING AND DRAWING TOOLS
PhotoPlus also has some interesting painting and drawing tools. Aside from the usual suspects (airbrush, pencil, eraser) are what are called "Quickshapes," pre-made shapes that you can drag and resize onto your canvas. Besides circles and squares, also available are: stars, spirals, hearts, thought bubbles, and other shapes. As for selection, PP also has standard selections, such as lasso, magic wand, and freehand. 

ANIMATED GIF PROGRAM
Besides allowing you to edit and create images, PP has a built in program to make animated gifs. 

LAYER SUPPORT
Happily, PP6 is one of the few freeware image editors that supports layers and layer properties. This means that you can not only have different layers to play around with, you can blend them with such popular effects as darken, screen, overlay, color, dodge, and burn. This makes the program one of the most versatile freeware image editors around.

HANDY TOOLS FOR WEB PAGE PRODUCTION
It's great that this program has so many good features, but what about those of us who create primarily for the web? No problem. PP has image mapping and slicing tools, complete with the option to export your creations in html.

Even better, though, is PP's optimizing feature, which enables you to reduce the file sizes of your images before exporting them for web use. No longer do you have to worry about how large your images are; with this feature, you can tweak them and see in real time how they will look at reduced file size. You can even view up to four different versions of your images for comparison.

PHOTOSHOP PLUG-IN COMPATIBLE
Lastly, PP6 is Photoshop Plug-in Compatible. This means that you can add additional filter effects to the program by installing plugins that were designed to work with Photoshop. 

Shortcomings

The software can be a bit buggy at times. It's not majorly bad bugginess, but the type of once-in-a-blue moon thing where occasionally it will shut down when you least suspect it. 

In summary

PhotoPlus  may not exactly be the free Adobe Photoshop or Paint Shop Pro webmasters may be hoping for. But for those wanting nothing more than a handy program that helps prepare images for the web, allows you to make animated gifs, and is handy for tweaking photos, PP 6 is terrific freeware that does the job.

Visit Homepage: Freeserifsoftware.com
 

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