Editing:
RAW Conversion - HDR - Noise Control - Color/profiling tools - Curves - Masks - Express Fix mode and Wizards - Full featured Text Tools

Album/Browser:
Slide shows - DVD support - Web publishing & graphics & animations

Value for the money.

The interface is inconsistent. This should not stop a potential user from giving this program a good test drive via trial version. Documentation could be better as to how certain features work. The documenation is only a bit of rewrite away from being quite acceptable.


Overall rating would probably be a 5 if it weren't for the interface 'features'.

ULEAD Photo Impact 12 with the bundled Impact Album program is a worthy contender for your photo editing needs. The startup Welcome screen guides the user from file browsing to Express Fix to dropping the user directly into Full Edit capability.

The program offers a wide variety of auto-adjustments and standardized 'fixes'.

Photo Impact offers photo enhancements ranging from framing options to adding moons and lightning to your photos. There are moving animation and slideshow and display capabilities that until recently was the realm of dedicated software.

There are a many advanced and professional oriented features. Some worth noting include:

HDR (high dynamic range) processing. I haven't seen any software for any cost close to this that offers this level of functionality in HDR. There are some powerful challengers (both in cost and capability) that let you do this, but either there is little or no interface or the cost is significant in having this ease of use. This was a big surprise as I was just looking for a field program for use on a notebook. This is fast and powerful enough to be able to do HDR work in the field.

Curves, levels, and sophisticated color adjustment tools also abound.

There are tools for Noise Reduction including some brushes and spot tools that work as well or better than anything on the market. Powerful stuff and I tested with some noisy film scans and marginal digital files.

There are masks and object manipulation tools.

One draw for any user is the well implemented and integrated RAW converter. Alone may be worth the purchase price if you are seeking an alternative RAW tool.

There is a usual set of workflow tools with batch operations a loadable parameters and color management.

It may sound like a big winner for ULEAD. The downside is the interface. It first appears to be a feature rich and customizable environment that lends itself to ease of use. Maybe. There are a lot of right-clicks required to get to some of the controls for various tools that I found annoying. Many functions and tools are available only in part of the menus or on certain toolbars. Some tools are buried until you find a 'magic' icon that does not draw you to it intuitively. Simply I found some tools hard to locate and still do after quite a bit of use. There is a fair amount of ability to customize the toolbars that I, admittedly, have not tried to exploit which could ‘fix’ much of this I would hope.

Feature rich, well integrated with browser, album integration and tagging, slide shows, DVD support (not tested at this writing), and a long list of capabilities. Interface and usability, though customizable, is quirky and inconsistently implemented. Some features are intuitive and some are not.

One more thing - you get some of the most desired tools for photo editing and manipulation for about $50 along with the Album. I can deal with quirky for that kind of money in an alternative to the multi-thousand dollar implementation that are all to commonplace for hard/software that I know I am going to be replacing sooner rather than later.

Customer Service

Not used other than online store.

Similar Products Used:

Adobe Photoshop Elements through 5.0
Picture Window Pro 3.5 and 4.0

Note: Picture Window Pro and ULEAD Photo Impact 12 really compete more on features and capability with Adobe's full blown version of Photoshop but at a fraction of the total cost.