Amazon.com Review

Kai's Photo Soap 2 is a new genre of graphics application, designed to meet the needs of those in the process of building a library of digital images. With the proliferation of digital photo cameras comes the ability to shoot pictures indiscriminately, so the release of this product couldn't come at a better time. For the digital film buff, there's the initial investment in the camera, but the pictures are free. As long as you have space on your computer's hard drive, you can save an almost unlimited number of photos. The inherent problem with this kind of freedom is the sheer volume of pictures that can quickly accumulate, the issue that Photo Soap addresses.

Photo Soap is several tools combined: a catalog builder, a retoucher, a compositing application, and an album maker.

With the organizing tools, one can sort and view a collection of photos by date, size, content, name, and color. A favorite feature is the "lightbox," which lets you view your photos as if they are traditional mounted slides on a light box.

The retouching tools are basic but useful, and the compositing and layering abilities are fun for building collages. The album maker is designed to make your photos into digital photo albums that you can share with others. For those without a computer who want to view your albums, Photo Soap can print album pages with headers, text, and captions.

Like all of Kai's tools, Photo Soap has a nonstandard interface, and if you're used to a conventional Mac or Windows toolbar, icon set, window, or menu system, this interface is a little hard to get used to. The interface is well planned though, and whatever the quick reference card doesn't cover can be found in the online manual.

Photo Soap is a handy tool, and if your hard drive is quickly filling up with folders full of JPG images from that handy digital camera, Soap is a great companion to help get organized. --Mike Caputo ... Read more

Reviews (3)

Garbage
Won't run on Windows XP, even with the patch, & in compatability mode. NO support from ScanSoft. I'd give it negative stars if I could.

Great image editing program
Kai's photo Soap is a great product to use to touch up your scanned images, digital photos and especially restoring old photographs. When using this software, it gives you great control as to touching up, clone painting. The tools you work with feel just like you were using a paint brush, eraser, pencil, whatever you are using. It is especially good to use when you are working with an old photograph that is very badly scratched. You can zoom in and clone paint from another source in the photo and once you're done you would never know there was a scratch there.

Kai's Photo Soap - A Great Photography Program
Kai's Photo Soap 2 shows how to perfect your picture! You can edit it because of common problems (red eye, scratches, fading, etc.) or create your own unique picture by cloning and more! Also, you can make a calendar and organize a digital photo album. By Kai's Photo Soap, its definitely worth it! ... Read more

Reviews (1)

Family Scrapbook -- not what you think it is
When the software package says "Import & Store Family Photos! Keep an electronic scrapbook for your children!" they are NOT talking about making a scrapbook to cover events in their lives. I was looking for a software package that would allow me to design scrapbook pages around my digital camera photos. This is NOT the kind of scrapbooking they are targeting. Perhaps what the software is meant to do ("track school and medical records, record children's activities and achievements"), it does well -- I don't know because I have no use for that type of software. Too bad the writeup at Amazon or the company's link didn't EXPLAIN exactly what this software is supposed to do. So beware....if you want a creative software package to design your electronic scrapbook -- look elsewhere...because you WILL NOT find it in this software title. ... Read more

Amazon.com Review

Tired of digging through your wallet, looking for pictures of loved onesto show off at office picnics? Lose all those pictures cluttering your walletand store them on your Palm device with the simple, powerful PhotoSuite MobileEdition 1.0. Installation is quick and easy and the browsing software takes uponly 100 KB of memory in the handheld. This is essential as pictures averagearound 50 KB (more for color) and, for most of us, every bit of memorycounts.

The desktop interface is slick and very easy to negotiate, using an intuitivedrag-and-drop system for viewing, importing, and exporting files. Most popularimage file formats are accepted, including JPG, GIF, and BMP. Video files (AVI,ASF, QuickTime, and more) are also viewable at a full 30 frames per second--ifthe device has enough free memory to store them, an unlikely prospect for allbut the smallest chips or most memory-enhanced gadgets.

The image quality is surprisingly clear, with 16-color grayscale the norm formost devices (the Palm VII only supports four-color grayscale and the Palm IIIcoffers 256-color). If an image is too large to display on the Palm's screen,unseen portions can easily be brought into the window with the stylus. Users caneasily beam image files and albums between handhelds, though some larger filesmight take a couple of tries.

Those who use their PDAs as virtual billfolds will love adding their snapshotcollections to their receipts and to-do lists with PhotoSuite Mobile Edition1.0. --Rob Lightner ... Read more

Amazon.com Review

Mixed-media professionals such as photographers, Web designers, andgraphic designers will not be disappointed in Adobe's latest incarnation ofPhotoshop. In this release, Adobe aims hard at addressing the issues of filemanagement, easy photo retouching, and smarter output for the Web. While Adobemanages to successfully address these issues, it also remains true to its photoediting roots. New and improved features and tools such as a painting option andan enhanced brush palette allow Photoshop to build on its reputation as theleading tool for image manipulators. New-school designers of wirelessapplications will smile when they discover that Photoshop 7.0 offers support forWBMP-formatted graphics.

Photoshop 7.0's new file management system comes in the form of a WindowsExplorer-like file browser that allows users to easily sort and locate theirimages within various projects. Users can now organize projects by name, date,resolution, and a number of additional parameters.

The enhanced brush palette allows users to create custom brushes and save themas presets that can be accessed from the Tools options bar. Users can easilyvary different aspects of the brush by changing the hue, opacity, or flow of thebrushes for pastels, oils, and charcoal. Photoshop 7.0 also introduces a newHealing Brush and Patch Tool. With these tools, users can easily "heal" theirimages by removing scratches, blemishes, and other imperfections whilepreserving shading, lighting, and texture attributes.

Adobe has taken great strides in revamping Photoshop 7.0 to be more Web-readythan ever before. With the help of its companion software Image Ready, users cannow easily create rollovers and complex navigation bars by using the newRollovers palette. Additional Web-ready features include enhanced Web exportfunctions that allow designers to preview images designed for PDAs and mobilephones in the WBMP format. Users can easily create a slide show of their imagesand post online using the new Web Gallery. People concerned about posting theirimages online can secure their images with the new password protection featurebefore sharing them.

Adobe has finally introduced a long overdue spell checker with wickedmultilingual spell-checking capabilities. A new search and replace featureallows users to search and replace across different layers in the same document.

While Photoshop 7.0 introduces an impressive array of features that allowphotographers, Web designers, and graphic designers to work more effectivelywith Web and wireless devices, it also remains the leading tool for anyoneserious about digital imaging. No other software package provides users with theability to create such high-quality images. --Rich Ting ... Read more

Reviews (19)

GOOD STUFF, BUT WITH A BIG FLAW
"Adobe Photoshop 7.0 Upgrade" may not offer the kind of price many people would like to see, but there are lots of interesting features. This Upgrade runs fast, and on any Windows OS that is not earlier than '98. Also, both the image-editing tools and the file browser have been enhanced. If you are a photographer, a Web designer, or as the case may be, just interested in digital imaging, the improved colour and pattern simulating tools will make your work easier.
However, you will be disappointed to discover that this 'Photoshop 7.0' delivers a good job only when you work with 8-bit colour. Support for 16-bit colour is almost non-existent! Based on this, I don't regard it as a must-have Upgrade for anyone running 'Photoshop 6'; but that doesn't mean that it is worthless.

Adobe Photoshop 7.0 Upgrade
Photoshop remains my favorite painting program. I'm a Photoshop 6.0 veteran, been using it since it came out, and I've learned my way around pretty well.

As an upgrade, I give 7.0 four stars. Why? There's just not that much more for that extra star. I was expecting a jump in features like the one between versions 5.5 and 6.0. Pretty much, they give you a new tool for repairing photos (this is great and worth it if you're interested in digital photography, of course: but for a web designer, it's useless), a few upgrades, and a prettier interface. As a web designer, I didn't find a whole lot more that's useful, so for the fellow web designers out there, it might not be worth it at all. But for the digital photographer with the extra money, grab it. That brush will probably be very useful to you.

As a new program, without a previous installation of Photoshop, FIVE STARS. GET IT NOW. I can't stress this enough. Photoshop will be worth it if you're looking to do this professionally; it is THE graphic design program out there right now. If you're just a home user that wants to fix up a photo or two, I don't think it's worth the $600+ just for that.

FILE INFO PROBLEMS
I AM A FREELANCE PHOTOG, 90% 0F MY STUFF IS WITH REUTERS. IN PHOTOSHOP 7.0 WHICH I OWN, THERE IS A PROBLEM IN THE CATAGORY SECTION IN FILE INFO. THE SUPPLMENTIAL CATS. DONT SHOW UP ON THE DESKS PICTURES IM SENDING TO THEM??? I OPEN THE PICTURE IN PHOTOSHOP, GO TO FILE INFO, THEN TO CATAGORYS AND THE SUPPS ARE THERE BUT THE DESK IS SAYING THEY ARENT???? GUYS USING PHOTOSHOP 6.0 ARE NOT HAVING ANY PROBLEMS AT ALL.I WAS TOLD TO GO TO SIX OR IS THERE AN UPGRADE FOR THE 7.0 I BOUGHT AND IT MIGHT GET RID OF THE PROBLEM?? NOW I HAVE TO SPEND $119.00 TO BUY 6.0 TO GET RID OF THE PROBLEM. HAVE YOU HEARD OF ANY GLITCHES ON 7.0?
H E L P, JON WAY

Great piece of software, nice update.
Although this update is not as big as the one from 5.5 to 6.0, it is still worth buying. Actually the healing brush/healing patch tool itself is worth the price of the upgrade. When you think of it, how many of us digital photographers would gladly pay that price for a plug-in that helps us fix blemishes, scratches and wrinkles in a couple seconds?

Another nice addition is the file browser. See all your pictures at a glance, rotate them, classify them, rate them, etc. You can also view all the metadata (data added by your digital camera), such as date taken, exposure, color profile, and others.

Adobe also reworked (OK... fixed) Contact Sheet, Web Gallery, and Picture Package. Those actually work now, and they'll do exactly what you want them to. I agree it should have been done right in the first place, but I'm just too happy they are usable now.

Photoshop 7.0 also lets you save your workspace. You can now place all your tabs and windows just the way you like them, and save the positions. I have 3 or 4 different workspaces I toggle through, depending on what I'm working on. This is a huge time saver. Once again, this could have been done before, but I'm glad it finally found its way to Photoshop.

Conclusion: the healing tool itself is worth the price. Think of the rest as a bonus. :)

Fi ve Stars Adobe Photoshop 7
For the past 3 years, I have been using Adobe Photoshop 2- which I must say, gave me a lot of satisfaction. Very simple to use, of course, but also provides the user with rapid results. The essential functions are there and if you use them properly many aspects of writing a page are taken care of.
With Photoshop 7, new dimensions are achieved. If you already know Adobe 2.0, it is very easy to become familiar with 7.0. Also, the precision and accuracy of the various functions reach a higher level and the additional possibilities leave more flexibility to individual creativity. This powerful software is becoming for me a must in all digital works and I cannot give it less than five stars. Michel Doret ... Read more

Amazon.com Review

Streamline 4.0 is an excellent bridge between the worlds of freehanddrawing and resolution-independent graphics. At its heart, the software isbasically a conversion utility, a tool for importing bitmapped (raster) imagesand exporting them as vector-based line art. But it's a disservice to theapplication to downplay what is so simply stated.

The value of Streamline becomes apparent after the first conversion--it quickensthe heart to see a hand-drawn, bitmapped image imported into a program likeAdobe Illustrator, where one can tweak the curve and width of any line, andscale it up until it fills a billboard.

The process starts with a drawing or image being scanned in or photographed witha digital camera and saved out from a program like Adobe Photoshop. It is thenopened in Streamline (it works with many file types, including nativePhotoshop), where the image is converted to vector lines.

The options for conversion are numerous: control point density, smoothness, linewidth, stroke or fill, curve smoothing. Additionally, areas of the originalimage can be selectively converted, with each area using different conversionsettings--some for smoother, thicker lines, some for rougher, more edgy lines,and variations thereof. Also, Streamline 4.0 now features a "convert to"command, for converting a roughly drawn shape into a standard shape; forexample, a crude egg shape on a cocktail napkin could be converted to a perfectcircle, or four rough strokes into a smooth, even rectangle. Streamline 4.0 alsosupports converting colors to vector-based areas of color. One can specify thenumber of colors to use and which color palette would best match.

Adobe-standard keyboard shortcuts improve one's efficiency with the application,and being able to drag and drop across applications is a handy feature thatanyone can grow to love.

Freehand drawing on a computer is not as easy or straightforward as takingpencil to paper--a natural quality is lacking, a texture more felt than seen.But graphics software offers features not found in "real-life" art, like theability to scale an image up and down without losing the sharpness of a line.For any serious digital artist, Streamline is a must-have. It is one of thosetools that is used the least, but appreciated the most. --Mike Caputo--Thistext refers to the Mac version ofthis software. ... Read more

Features

• Connect your DV camcorder to your PC through IEEE 1394 (Firewire)
• Convert your DV movies into compressed MPEG (up to 100:1) to use less hard disk space
• Edit your DV movies, add voice narrations, CD music and MP3 audio clips
• Burn your DV movies onto CD-ROM and play them back on home DVD players
• Output edited videos or record them back to DV tape

Amazon.com Product Description

3D-Album allows you to take photos from a digital camera, scanner, or the Internet and combine them with music files, voiceover, and text. You can then add them to over 70 animated 3-D presentation styles. 3D-Album comes with 23 presentation styles, and 50 more can be downloaded for free. You can display your photos in spinning puzzle cubes, on flipping graduation hats, or even on an artist's easel.

Click on the "Organize" button to select your photo folder. You'll see thumbnails that you can arrange in the order you want. Click on the musical-note icon to add a folder containing one or more music files. Choose your presentation style. Click on the "Build" button and select one of the options. You can build a standalone application to be copied to a CD, an application to be e-mailed, or an application to be linked to your Web site. ... Read more

Reviews (27)

Superstar Software
I have over 1000 pictures of Family History and this is my pet project, to put them into scrapbooks.3D-Album has made turned my scrapbook collection into an exciting storytelling experience and it does 99 percent of the work for you.
The program comes with about two dozen built-in presentation styles, but new ones are available from the 3d Album Web site nearly every week. And I'm talking about some very creative ways of displaying a single photo or an entire album. you can add text, background music, voiceovers, or just about anything.
There are Endless Possibilities...and a demonstration and tutorial disc came with the software too. It is not possible to recommend this program too highly. It does more, and better, than anything software I've ever seen. And it is easy and fun to use.

Excellent product for showing pictures
I love 3D-Album. Absolutely wonder and I am very happy I bought this product. There are many slideshow products out there however 3D-Album is out of the others. It is very easy, very functional, and with excellent result!

I like the feature to combine albums in different styles. An opening style provides an amazing animation at the beginning of the show. Nice transition between two albums, brilliant special effects, and great graphics with super quality.

3D-Album is particularly great for picture show on TV. I would suggest people who bought 3D-Album also get their DVD capture software. Enabling anti-aliasing effect during capture creates very good images. It also mixes the sound and music very well.

The company's website provides piles of new 3-D presentation themes that you can add to the software for free.

They have first-rate customer support. Last week, I downloaded a new style from their website and find the image in the style is flipped. I emailed them about the problem and they fixed it within an hour.

How do i get music onto the flip album?
Very nice program, I am enjoying using it but I would like to know how to add music from my hard drive or a cd? Do I need to buy a MP3 player to add music? Also, can the flip album be copied onto a picture cd? thanks. eddie

Photo resolution (sharpness) degraded by software
This software has promise. There will be a new version (around $150 retail coming out) that fixes the current problems with this version. Many of the displays are fun (although some are juvenile and others make photos difficult to view).

The 3-D animation comes at a price; if you are satisfied with image quality that is about 85% of what you started with in your photos, you will love this software. Make sure that image degradation is alright with you prior to buying the software. A way around this problem is to choose an animation display that does not move the photos around very much, and also choose one that creates a small image size. In those instances the photo will be sharp. My expectations were that the photos would be displayed at the same size and with the same resolution as existed when previewed with Windows or in a software editor. Unfortunately, with my high-end PC and monitor, the results were not even close to what I was looking for which was a faithful rendition of what appears in non-animated photo display software products. And yes, my Open GL and monitor are set to the correct setting per my numerous e-mails back and forth to their excellent customer support representative.

If your expectations are moderate or you aren't concerned with an absolutely sharp image when weighed against the ease of album creation and distribution, this software is for you, especially at this price. Since, as I've mentioned, my expectations were different, I am disappointed with 3D-album's performance.

I am beggining to like it
At first glance, I found 3D Album difficult to use and unpractical, but now that I am discovering its pros I am beggining to like it. Picture quality and 3D presentations are spectacular! Maybe I'll go to 5 stars once I learn to use it 100%. ... Read more

Features

• Use your voice to dictate, edit, and correct text
• 160,000 word vocabulary; G4 processors optimization
• Audio edit documents with Text-to-Speech feature
• Easily transfer documents into other text-based programs
• Great for creating letters, stories, reports, memos, and email

Features

• The redesigned user interface makes accessing all the cool options easier than ever, for faster creations
• Brighten your images, remove red-eye, add special effects and text -- there's no limit to your options
• Add text anywhere to a photo, and adjust the font size, style or color with just a click
• Draw from a library of clip-art to enhance your photos and add that extra touch

Reviews (2)

Well designed and fun photo software
This is a great program for home use. I have tried Adobe Elements and PhotoImpact Pro 8.5and found Arcsoft PhotoImpression 5 far superior in both ease of use and features. Editing is limited but adequate for most homeusers. If you also buy Arcsoft PhotoStudio, it adds all the editing features offered by Adobe Elements and PhotoImpact Pro. Ease of use and fun features, such as great clip art and a well organized photo album, make it the best home photo software I have used. Arcsoft also offers additional software, such as funhouse, which are great add ons.

Limited
It's disappointing to spend money on software and later come to realize it has the same suite of features as does many free image-editing websites. Yes, PhotoImpression can rotate a picture. The latest feature? It can remove red-eye! (Again, common features you can find for free on any image-editing website). My OS also had some quirks after installation. After uninstalling PhotoImpression, the quirks went away. I decided to pawn off the software but eventually had to give it away.

I bought this product because it had a reputation of being a "poor man's" PhotoShop that nevertheless came with a robust suite of features. Believe me, you're far better off spending a little more and getting what you really want--a robust application with a complete set of features. It'll save you time, money (and your OS) in the future. ... Read more

Reviews (3)

Better than a lot of comparably priced packages!
Sure, we aren't talking stock photography from Getty Images or Corbis here, but for the price you are paying you shouldn't be under that sort of illusion.

What you do get is a package of more photos than you will ever use in your lifetime of more things than you ever imagined you would want to use in an ad or flyer.

With the work I do as a graphic designer for a corporation I constantly need to have images to put in print media. While I grant that the images provided are not large, they are provided in a high resolution format, and are perfect for creating composite pieces, powerpoint graphics, online graphics and smaller print media. Sure, I'm not going to use them in a major ad campaign - but by using these for the smaller works I free up my budget so that I have the money to use the big stock photography suppliers when I NEED fantastic crisp images.

Worth buying as a suppliment - definitely. Should you rely on this as your only source of photographs - of course not.

Good for basic objects
Don't buy this product if you are looking for professional photographic results. Many of the objects are repeated and the photographs are not usable. I use it to produce pictures for preschoolers. They don't mine out of focus pictures. I do regret buying this product.

Poor Quality Graphics
Not worth the money...Poor quality graphics, some looked chopped on the edges.... ... Read more

Amazon.com Review

VideoWave 4 works with a variety of video formats, offering outputoptions for VHS, DV, CD, and streaming over the Web. The interface is smart, andthe workflow beautifully simple. Each task (such as editing, effects, capture,text, transitions, and output) is completed in a separate mode window readilyaccessed via the Mode Selector, a strip to the left of the working frame.Captured clips, stills, and sounds are stored in the library and are thenselected and adjusted in the appropriate Mode window, where attributes andcommands are invoked via drop-down menus. The modified clip is then dragged anddropped onto the StoryLine, a filmstrip at the top of the window, where yourvideo project is assembled. Transitions such as wipes and fades can then beadded between clips.

VideoWave 4 is about as easy as digital video can get--but it's not painless.You should make sure your PC is up to the task: a compatible capture card, aquick processor, and a large-capacity second hard drive. It's also essentialthat it's a fast drive, either UltraDMA 100 or SCSI-2, as anything less willdrop frames during capture or playback. VideoWave 4 comes with a short manualthat will get you working, but doesn't go into much depth. Consequently, anInternet connection is recommended, not only to take advantage of the Web outputoptions, but also for the inevitable troubleshooting, which can be easily donethrough the MGI Web site. VideoWave 4 is a powerful and elegant homevideo-editing solution. --John Cranmer ... Read more

Reviews (26)

big upset
I wish I had looked at more of the reviews before purchasing this, I was deeply upset with this product and hope others will read these reviews before purchasing. Wish I could give a better software suggestion but I'm still looking myself.

excelent software
videowave 4 is about my favorite software next to After effects and photoshop .But it is an underapreciated product.I believe that it is because only recently have people been getting PC's powerful enough to run it correctly.I had some problems at first but after uping my RAM to 512 mg and a capture drive its perfect.this program is easy to use and you can do basicaly anything you see in hollywood TV done within this program.it even has a blue screen key to ad special effects shots.its simply has to be run on a fast computer like any other editing program. it is an entry level program of course but I have used Adobe premiere and a mac with Final Cut Pro and I must say I would rather use this than any of those for the most so far even though those have there place. You can do alot with it Artisticaly It is like photoshop with layers of effects and you get a full preview before rendering and it renders fast so you can have a video done instead of a hassle.The only weekness is no quicktime support and the titler is a little amatuerish looking[do your titles in photoshop HINT HINT].With this videowave and a digital cam you have no excuse not to turn out the coolest movies you have had in your mind all those years

last shot at this one!
Had version 3, it would not not work no matter what I did. Finally I tried it one last time. I followed the hardware installation word for word. Turns out there were three not one, but three drivers to load USB, AUDIO, and VIDEO. I went thru the steps. Works great. I purchased this software with a Belkin analog video input. Really surprised at captured video it works great. I did not have to go out and buy a new digital video camera. Less than one hundred dollar investment.

Decent product with bugs and no support
The product appears appealing though simple. Although the documentation and tutorials are skimpy, with enough effort one can figure it out. The problem is it crashes every time I try to save my editing result. And there is no help in producing VCDs. The troubleshooting guide and online help are silent on the problems I am encountering. The company does not respond to email requests and requires payment for telephone help.

Beware Installation Routine
Great Product but beware the installation routine.

I'm running W98 SE and during installation the installer changed the file winaspi.dll without notice with an older version, causing loss of the digital audio stream capability of my system (bad if you want to edit DV videos).

After couple of hours I was able to restore everything. ... Read more

Amazon.com Review

Sharing your digital photos with friends and family doesn't have to mean crowding around the PC any more: DVD PictureShow makes it easy to burn thousands of photographs onto a DVD as a slideshow that plays back automatically. That means you can send a disc to your family and they can flip through your photos on TV. You can fit 99 slide shows of 99 images on a DVD disc, but if you only have a CD burner, you can still burn up to 1900 images onto a Video CD that will play in most DVD players.

There's nothing complicated about making a DVD with this package: it automatically resizes your photos and you don't need to worry about the TV settings. You've got plenty of control of every step: it's easy to pick the photos you want in each slideshow from thumbnails and you can even rotate a photo if it's in portrait mode. You can set how long each image is on screen for and add background music, and DVD PictureShow illustrates on screen just how much disc space you'll need.

There are lots of templates for laying out the DVD menu (which can also have background music) and you can use your own image for the background. You can preview individual slideshows or the whole disc and save the disc image to burn later in the Disc Image Recorder software. This is the kind of tool that you'd usually find as a wizard inside another software package, such as a video-editing application. But if you've already got an image-editing program and you don't need to work with video clips, DVD PictureShow is the simplest software around for making DVDs and video CDs of your favorite images. --Mary Branscombe, Amazon.co.uk ... Read more

Features

• Create and share digital photo slideshows on CD or DVD
• Create DVD-style menus to present your slideshows
• Easy wizard-based creation
• Add music to your slideshows
• Automatically detects your drive and burns discs that you can play on DVD home players

Reviews (4)

Buyer Beware
Don't be fooled by the online description of this product. The description is for Version 2.0. Amazon sent me Version 1.0 a VASTLY inferior product. Just check out the limited free ware version on Uleads web site. I'm heading to the post office tomorrow to return my copy.

Sad, Pathetic and too Simple
DVD Picture Show has to be the simplest slide shows shoftware out on the market. You may be thinking to yourselves, oh rapture this is for me! But you are sadly mistaken. The program is so simple that you cannot create a splendid slide show. Here are the problems you will face.

1)There are no transistional effects between slides. This is terrible concidering you want to add effects, variation and emotional emphasis to your presentations.

2) The duration of the pictuers on each slide is uniformed to the whole side show project. That means you are not free to add legneth to certain pictuers that you may have some deep emotional attachment to. This fallibility creates another and much more intense problem. You will not be able to adjust your pictuers to fit the rythym, duration, pictoral style accorrding to the music and most importantly you cannot create a strong theme to your piece. Now you are saying to yourself, I don't care about that. But once you start working with this program you will have a strong desier to do way more with it.

3) The box says you get to add music. Don't let that decieve you. True you get to add music to your slide show, but you only get to use one song per slide show and it has to be an MP3 file. Luckily, I know how to convert CD music to MP3 music, but probably you don't, and if you do I know for a fact you will loathe this program. When you have your song, you are not even allowed to adjust the duration of the song as a separate entity from the pictuers. This means the number and length of the pictuers are the only factors that chooses the length of the music. You have to plan your slideshow so perciously and meticulously so that your music doesn't stop at a very unusal part of the song. The music stops when your pictures stop showing.
True this is a simplistic program, and I can see how people can love this. But those who long to add some creativity in their slideshows will find themselves void of any creative opportunities. I am sure all of those whom have given great reviews soon found out that this program could offer way more.

Great Value for anyone who owns a digital camera or scanner
This program is great. Just snap your pictures with your digital camera or scan them in. You can do up to 30 slideshows on one disc and up to 36 pictures in each slideshow. Adding the pictures is super easy. You can add music to each show and a title and music to each menu. My pictures that were taken with a 2 megapixel camera were very sharp and colorful. The pictures that I took with a pocket VGA camera were even pretty good. The best part is that you don't have to have a DVD burner. I burned one off on a CD-R and it still has DVD quality. Just make sure your DVD player will accept CD-R's and CD-RW's or it has the "Compact Disc Digital Video" symbol on it. Also you may need to go into your DVD player menu and turn on the PSB setting. My wouldn't play unless I did. You may have made VCD movies before and the resolution is below VHS quality but the slideshows are DVD quality. If you don't want to print all your pictures because you need a nicer printer or your camera is only 1 MegaPixel try this program. I was way impressed.

IS THE BEST
IS THE BEST YOU KNOW BUY IT ! ... Read more

Features

• Easily produce professional-style DVDs
• Capture video directly from camcorder to DVD or CD
• Archive and share movies, photos, business presentations, and more
• Edit +RW and -RW DVDs again and again
• Create CD labels and case covers

Reviews (13)

Nice, but could be Much Nicer
First of all, this program is worth its price. It's straightforward, stable, and creates very nice DVDs -- once you get used to it.

Major gripe: It cannot accurately calculate file sizes. It may show that a certain DVD program will fit on a DVD after file conversion when it actually won't: it ends up creating files which are too big, ultimately giving you a notice saying "will not fit onto disk" after hours of transcoding.

Minor gripe: It will not let you set the default font type, size, and color for project menus, meaning that if you have 6 clips (titles) with 6 chapters each, you have to manually set the font and its properties individually 36 times, not including the top menu.

Don't let Movie Factory do your video encoding. What I do, and recommend, is using another program to edit and prepare each clip, including the encoding to DVD-ready MPEG. (I use Ulead Video Studio 7, and it does a great job.) Then import the MPEG files into Movie Factory and have it make the DVD. That's what works great for me.

It's a combination that's inexpensive and gives impressive results.

Stay Away
Take my word, stay away. This program has bugs.

It can create VCD on a CD-R with a CD-R drive.
You don't need a DVD burner to create movies you can view on your DVD player; A VCD is burned on a CD, you can only burn about an hower of video but you don't need a DVD burner. If you burn several short videos it is easy to create a custom interactive menu. This program doesn't do anything but burn videos, it doesn't burn music CD, it doesn't burn a data CD, it does what it does well and I'm glad I have it.

Don't waste your money
I wish there was an rating option of less than zero. After spending hours trying to make this piece of crap work and upgrading my DVD-RW to a SECOND ULEAD compatable device, I've given up trying to copy VHS tapes to DVD using this. If its not telling me my input device isn't compatable then its telling me it can't calculate the space. I went back to Sonic MYDVD and in about 30 seconds I'm copying VHS tapes. Its obvious the world of computer video software is in its infancy and there's bound to be problems but when you have vendors like ULEAD claiming that their products are all things simple, then the industry will have problems converting more people.

Good author/burning, basic menu/editing, pitiful transcoding
Ulead's Moviefactory 2.0 (MF2) is among the cheapest DVD authoring tools available. The same price group also includes Cyperlink's PowerProducer and Sonic's MyDVD. But MF2 has the best features and is the most reliable among the three. I've been using it to record TV programs and burn them onto DVDs, and the results looked very close to the original broadcast with no audio sync problems. It has worked perfectly with my DVD rewritable drive (Sony DRU500AX) and has not created a single unreadable disc. I've used several brands of discs: Memorex +R 1x and 4x, -RW 1x, and +RW 2.4x, Verbatim -R 4x, Ritek -R 4x, and also generic brands like Meritline -R 2x, Princo -RW 1x, and Leda -R 4x, and they have all been burned successfully. The readability of the burned discs is also what I would expect. The more compatible -R discs were playable on all my DVD players and drives, while the +R, -RW, and +RW discs were playable on only some of them. (The compatibility of recordable DVDs is a known issue in the industry.)

To use MF2's built-in capture tool, you need a video capture card. (Mine is an ancient Pinnacle Studio PCTV tuner/capture card with BT878 chipset, with generic WDM drivers for Windows ME). MF2 is able to capture MPEG files with DVD-, VCD- or SVCD-compliance. For DVD-compliant MPEG capturing, you can only choose among the preset bitrates: CBR or VBR, 4000, 6000, or 8000 Mbps. You can choose between MPEG Layer II or LPCM audio, but you can't set the audio bitrate. You can choose between interlaced or non-interlaced capturing. Since most TV broadcasts are interlaced, capturing at interlaced mode is preferred; but be sure to choose the correct field order, or jerky motion will result. You cannot adjust advanced settings such as GOP count, number of I-Frames and P-frames, etc. to improve your capture. There is, however, a "quality" setting to improve picture quality. Set it as high as you can, but without burdening the CPU so much that it would cause dropped frames. On my Intel P4 2.4MHz, while capturing at VBR 8000 Mbps with MPEG Layer II audio 384 Kbs (my preferred settings for high-quality captures), I could set quality up to 12 (max is 15) without dropping frames, with CPU utilization at about 85% during capture. It is a good idea to monitor CPU utilization (with a tool such as CPUIdle) during capture. If it is near or at 100%, dropped frames would be very likely. Also, any activity that would increase CPU utilization, even as minor as moving your mouse, should be avoided in order to achieve no dropped frames. Video capturing is the first and most important step in DVD creation. Without a video source with good quality and DVD compliance, it would be necessary to re-encode, or transcode, the MPEG source, which is a laborious and time-consuming process.

MF2's own transcoding ability, however, is horrendous (and PowerProducer and MyDVD are even worse). Transcoding is done automatically whenever a non-compliant source is detected, or you can force MF2 to transcode. The resulted video is often filled with skipped frames and audio sync problems, indicating MF2's inability to alter video resolution and resample audio bitrate reliably. When I need to transcode, I use an external tool like TMPGEnc, and pass the resulted MPEG file back to MF2 before authoring the DVD. The best way is, of course, to avoid having to transcode altogether by obtaining a high-quality, compliant source material.

Thankfully, MF2 can author and burn DVDs reliably. You can author and burn to disc directly, or you can author to hard disk first and burn it to disc later. You can also create an ISO image of the authored files, and later burn the DVD from the image file. MF2 can also reliably detect the burning speed of a disc.

MF2 lets you add chapter stops and design menus for your DVD, but they are for the most basic purposes only. Menu design is template-based, and there is no "free-form" design. Chapter stops are added after video capture, either manually or automatically at an adjustable time interval (some software can create chapter stops during capture, but not MF2). You are only limited to adding a main menu and a chapter menu on your DVD. You cannot create additional screens for your own special purposes. You can, however, create "slide shows" -- a series of static images. There are a lot of menu templates to choose from, with a variety of background graphics and button placements. You can also import your own background graphics and add background music for your menu screen. You can also omit the menus altogether (which I often do, because the menus created with MF2 surely aren't going to impress anybody).

There are certain advanced functions that MF2 and other products in its price range cannot do, such as adding multiple audio tracks, subtitle tracks, multi-angles, 5.1 audio tracks, AC-3 audio processing, and more sophisticated menu designs. Software with these features usually cost hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars. Software with advanced video editing tools cost even more.

And MF2 is also very basic in video editing. It doesn't let you combine two video clips into one, insert transition effects, nor manipulate the audio. About the only useful thing it lets you do is extract portions of a clip.

A trial version of MF2 is available at Ulead's web site. It is fully functional for 30 days, with a limit of 20 pictures per slide show. The full version has no such limit.

Ulead also released a patch for MF2 on 8/22/03, notably adding PAL capture ability and fixing a few bugs. ... Read more

Features

• Save yourself a boatload of time and trouble by picking up Forms Maker And Filler, and letting it handle the design part of your paperwork
• It's got all the tools you need to design and fill your own professional-looking forms for your home or office
• A simple tool bar makes building your own forms as simple as clicking with a mouse
• Select from a variety of colors to outline and fill
• Over 20 sample templates to choose from, with 250 pieces of clip art to enhance your designs

Reviews (5)

What a relief
I had already ordered Pinnacle Studio DV from Dell when I started reading all of the horrible reviews. I bought the program after seeing some DVDs that my boss made of his son's football games & he said he had no problems. When it arrived I decided to try it and hope for the best & I'm glad I did. I captured about 90 minutes of video that I had shot using a Sony TRV-350. The capture process when very smoothly. Editing confused me at first (I didn't want to read the manual) but I caught on quickly and edited the video down to about 30 minutes of scenes that I wanted to burn to DVD. The rendering process did take a while: 30 to 45 minutes but when it was done my dvd drive spit out a completed dvd with the titles and transitions that I added and it looked great when I played it in by DVD player. I had no problems at all during the entire process including installation. I did follow Pinnacle's recommendations and bought a separate hard drive for capturing and I made sure no other applications were running in XP. I am very pleased with the product. I do have a new system: Dell 4600, 2.6ghz P4, 512 RAM, 40 GB internal, 80GB Western Digital firewire external hardrive (I used the card that came with Pinnacle for the firewire connection as the Dell 4600 didn' have one - the Pinnacle card comes with two connections one of which you must use for your digital camcorder). I am very pleased with this product.

Great when it works, Can be really frustrating
I bought this software over a year ago to edit video from my Sony Digital 8 camera.

Installation:
It took me close to 3 months to setup because of issues between Windows ME and the included FireWire card. I actually had to hack the Microsoft drivers .INF file to get the card to work properly on my system.

User Interface
The software is amazing easy to use. The user interface is very intuitive.

To capture, hookup your Digital camcorder to the Firewire card with the included cable. You just say you want to record and up to 15 minutes of video is transfered at a time. This is due to a limit in the size of AVI files.

The system is capable of automatically sensing scene breaks, so when it captures, it automatically organizes scenes.

For editing, it just have to arrange the scenes. You can also shorten the scenes through again a very good UI.

The software has 3 voice tracks. You can easily add music from MP3s or CDs to your video. You can also do voiceovers ( I haven't tried this yet ).

If you are making DVDs, you can add chapters and menus. The UI for doing this is pretty good as well.

You can also add stills. I've made many videos which are combination of video and stills pictues from a digital camera

The software comes with many transitions. You can do fads and other cool effects.

You can output your movie to DVD, S-VCD, VCD, RealNetworks, Microsoft Media Player Format, or MPEG ( No Quicktime support ).

Now the bad: The software has been very unreliable, at times, I lost hours of work. Anyone who looks at the message boards will see that the user base of this software is generally unhappy. I seem to finally have a patch that has made the software reasonable reliable. I can honestly say that I love the software but have never been so frustrated with the qauality of a piece of software before. When it works its really good, but it doesn't always work.

Because of the unreliability of the software, I would not recommend it to a computer novice.

Sarcastic customer service and flaky card
I tried to pair the card in this package with the new Maxtor 5000DV. The Pinnacle card toasts the Maxtor drive every time. Maxtor customer service can replicate my error and has been very helpful. Pinnacle customer service has been sarcastic, irresponsible, and completely unhelpful.

The Pinnacle software only offers minor improvements over my existing software, so I'm out [$$$] and have a worthless Pinnacle package sitting in the closet.

Don't buy from Pinnacle until they get their customer service reps up to snuff!

Best program for home edition
Its easy and simple to use, dont have to especifie many entries like in adobe premiere, you only have to be a little clever and that's that, incredible easy

Poor quality hardware and non-responsive customer support
It's been about two weeks since I first received my Studio DV V8. Installation was fairly straight forward. I notice the quality of the IEEE-1394 PCI card was more on the low cost side and the IEEE-1394 6-pin/4-pin cable fit very loosely into my Sony DV. When I start the capture, computer lock-up and I have to cycle the power to get out of it.

- There are no 800 numbers for phone tech support and tech support hours are 10-7 EST M-F; which can't be utilized by me.
- I had logged this problem with them twice via web support in the last two weeks and had not heard anything from them.

(I will update the review if I ever get an answer back from them.) ... Read more

Features

• Get more use out of your scanner - scan multiple photos at once
• Optimize each original photo to make it look its best
• Built-in color balancing tools and one-click filters for superior quality scans and importing
• Resize and change your photo's resolution, and make them perfect for using in print or on the Web
• Crop and rotate your photos to edit them down so they're just the right size

Features

• Includes iTunes, iPhoto, iMovie, iDVD, and GarageBand music application
• Use iLife to have more fun with digital media
• Easily create professional-quality slideshows, music, movies, and DVDs
• Seamless integration--iLife applications work together better than ever before
• Single installer that updates all existing iLife applications

Reviews (3)

Crashes constantly
This is a huge step back for Apple's iApps, particularly iPhoto, which is an absolute disaster in this release. We typically cannot launch iPhoto without crashing unless we trash three catalog files. Importing more than once a day is impossible - the app says it cannot access .../iPhoto Library/month/date the second time you try to import.

Add to that the continued game of keep-away with iDVD, which will not work with external DVD burners. If you bought anything less than the highest-end Macs, or models like the Cube or iBook that have never had built-in DVD burners as an option, well, too darn bad! Kind of obviates the coolness of FireWire when peripherals are deliberately not supported by Apple.

Crashing and losing user data is NEVER acceptable. Apple, more than anyone, is supposed to know this. The company should be absolutely ashamed of this pathetic product, and should not offer it for sale until they work out the bugs and stop being such jerks about DVD burning.

great product but lousy license
The the 10.3 Family Pack and the iLife Family Pack license have exactly the same language -

"as long as those computers are located in the same household and used by persons who occupy that same household".

For those who respect intellectual property and read their licenses carefully, this means that the 10.3 Family Pack cannot be installed on a Powerbook which then is taken outside the same household nor on another Mac located at another of your personal residences. Apple has confirmed that this is the correct interpretation of their license language.

All Apple had to do with both Family Pack licenses is change "located in the same household and used by" to"located in the same household OR used by".

Unfortunately the lawyers cannot seem to agree with that simple change so don't waste your money on the Family Pack unless you can comply with the license or choose to ignore it.

Superb product but lousy license
The iLife Family Pack license has exactly the same language as the Panther family pack -

"as long as those computers are located in the same household and used by persons who occupy that same household".

For those who respect intellectual property and read their licenses carefully, this means that the Family Pack iLife cannot be installed on a Powerbook which then is taken outside the same household nor on another Mac located at another of your personal residences. Apple has confirmed that this is the correct interpretation of their license language.

All Apple had to do with both Family Pack licenses is change
"located in the same household and used by" to
"located in the same household OR used by".

Unfortunately the lawyers cannot seem to agree with that simple change so don't waste your money on the Family Pack unless you can comply with the license or choose to ignore it. ... Read more

Reviews (1)

Poor technical support for a program with many bugs
Purchased program at full cost. Identified flaw and after trying to correct it myself, I called technical support. They acknowledged that the bug that I identified (Not able to use numbers)had been identified as a problem on some other discs. Instead of sending me a debugged disc, they wasted hours making me retrain another user x2. they were supposed to have me send files so that they could analyze them, the files were never sent . Program often crashes computer. Instead of trying to help technical support was wasting hours of my time trying to figure out the bugs, I am very angry about their rudeness and insensitivity. I still have not had the problem resolved and have lost countless hours of productivity. ... Read more