PhotoImpact offers a suite of tools for Web graphics creation, image editing, photo correction and enhancement, plus plenty of extras for special effects and creative exploration. It comes complete with a GIF animator, Web component designer, image slicer and optimizer, image browser and organizer, photo album database, print layout component, screen capture tool, automation and batch conversion features, and Web page creation tools.
A big part of PhotoImpact's appeal is the vast number of presets and templates that allow the user to begin creating customized designs with little knowledge of complicated techniques. The EasyPalette is the heart of PhotoImpact and it includes hundreds (if not thousands) of predefined drag-and-drop effects, styles, objects, textures, and shapes. Any of the presets can be customized, refined, and saved for future use in the EasyPalette.
If you're thinking that PhotoImpact is just for Web graphics, think again. PhotoImpact has plenty of tools for photo retouching, correction, drawing, painting, special effects, and creative expression.
The more I play with PhotoImpact, the more blown away I am by all that it offers. Following are just a few of the features that make it stand out.
The EasyPalette - This palette provides visual thumbnail previews of all the galleries and libraries containing preset effects, animations, brushes, styles, fills, shapes, objects, templates and more. You can instantly apply the effects by drag & drop or by double-clicking on a thumbnail. For more options, you can right click on a thumbnail to modify its properties before applying it to an object. Custom objects and effects can be added to the EasyPalette by drag-and-drop. The EasyPalette is also where you access the layer manager for organizing and manipulating independent objects in a document.
Batch Processing - PhotoImpact's Quick Command Panel allows you to record a series of actions as tasks that can be played back later as a single command or applied to a series of images for batch editing.
Vector Drawing Tools - Although it's still a bitmap-based program, PhotoImpact has several vector-based drawing tools for creating shapes, paths, and curves. In addition to preset shapes, you can draw your own shapes with the spline and bezier tools, or modify existing shapes by manipulating nodes and handles. Custom shapes can be added to the EasyPalette for reuse later. Both text and path objects can be warped into various shapes and applied to a path so the text or object flows along the path.
Special Effects - PhotoImpact contains over 80 native effects and also supports most Photoshop-compatible plug-in filters. There are so many native effects, however, that you'll rarely find a need to purchase third-party plug-ins. These include painting effects, lighting effects, texture creators, particle effects, frames and borders, and camera lens filter effects. Many effects can also be animated.
