PhotoImpact 6.0

As a standard image editor, PhotoImpact offers an impressive range of capabilities. You'll get a good range of drawing tools and photo retouching abilities. The tool excels in letting you add digital effects to scanned content. In testing, we were able to handle basic photo retouching easily, as well as experiment with a wide range of graphics special effects and filters. We liked the support for creating text effects here, a must for Web page graphics. (The product bundles with hooks to Digimarc's digital watermarking so you can add watermarks in your image files before distributing over the Internet.)

Get control of prepackaged artwork using the convenient style gallery feature, which makes it easy to preview and make use of the bundled photos, clipart, and textures in your own creations. Generally, we found the interface here to be easy to use, with many basic features conveniently placed for beginners, and plenty of advanced functionality to explore for expert users willing to go a little further.

When it comes to the Internet, this new release of PhotoImpact really shines. First, the product lets you create custom Web graphics (like original graphics buttons) easily. You can optimize the size of Web graphics for faster downloads, and the support here for creating GIF animations is good. When you are satisfied with your artwork, the product makes it a cinch to export it to HTML. A wizard offers the ability to create virtual photo albums and slideshows with just a click of the mouse, a feature that will be appreciated by the more casual user. We also liked the product's ability to import existing Web pages. (The product can read over 30 types of graphics files, making it a flexible performer.)

In all, PhotoImpact 6.0 is a well-designed graphics software package that will let most anyone be productive with photos and original graphics on the Internet. --Rich Dragan

Amazon.com Product Description
PhotoImpact 6 is an image editor that addresses both image editing and Web-page creation. Edit your images and lay out professional Web graphics in real time, then optimize and output them as complete Web pages. PhotoImpact 6 features a full array of imaging and painting tools, vector 2-D and 3-D graphics, over 60 exclusive special effects and filters, visual Web-page layout, and one-click HTML output.

Things that one might want to get with this? One is a pressure sensitive pad with a stylus to take full advantage of it's retouching capabilities. You will also need a powerful CPU, I'd say at least a gig, and plenty of memory. Remember, graphics can take up a lot of space, so a large hard drive is nice too.

If you use it, you'll love it. If you love it, you'll want to update to the lates version.

Doug Lester


Biggest Bang for the Buck   August 16, 2002
 2 out of 2 found this review helpful

I really hate to spend a lot of money for anything and I shope around. I bought this product because I thought it had the best features for the price. I wanted to make sure it had a gif animator and it did.

I will have to admit that this product is definitely not for novices and there is a learning curve. I would think this product is of professional grade. There are some great home edition products for novices like the photo editors that come bundled when you purchase a digital camera or when you buy digital prints on a CD, etc.

We had a pile of pictures taken through the years of our children and I wanted to make a collage out of them. I scanned the pictures in and created a 20 X 30 collage out of them using this product. I uploaded the collage to Ofoto (Amazon's Photo site - the best I found!!) and had a 20 X 30 print made out of it. It came out just great!!

If you're patient and willing to learn the concepts of this product than it is great and the sky is the limit of what you can do with it. You'll never use all features of this product.

I am only giving it fours stars just to draw attention to my review to say that it is a complex product. I am sure that people who gave low marks really did not want to take the time to read the manual and/or understand the concepts.


Does everything   June 21, 2002
 2 out of 3 found this review helpful

Previously, I have used more limited U-lead products bundled with my scanner. I was satisfied with their performance, but felt the need for more capabilities to edit photos and drawings for my educational websites.

The new program, Photoimpact, more than justifies the purchase. In particular, its capability to optimize images for inclusion in websites makes it a "Must-have" for the website author. My ownly negative is that it takes a while to load. But I can tolerate that in view of the time I save editing images.


I LOVE my PhotoImpact!   April 28, 2002
 3 out of 3 found this review helpful

...I've used PhotoImpact back before it was called that (and didn't know what I was using, I just knew I liked it better than some others I had used). I didn't learn what I had been using was PhotoImpact untill I got PhotoImpact4. LOL I've tried Corel, Print Artist (althoug Print Artist isn't an imaging editing program, I do use it, too), PaintShop , MGI, PhotoDeluxe, the JASC program, and various others that come with this printer, or that printer or this scanner and that. I've never used Photo Shop, don't think I want to, way to expensive, and from what I have heard, hard. I've never had any formal training with any graphic program, and I really like PhotoImpact better than any of the others, you can just do so much more with it. The rage today is scrapbooking. I haven't actually gotten into that, at least the way most do it. Takes tooooo much time and hubby gets a bit antsy with all that stuff in the living room or dining room or kitchen, scattered around and I just don't do it well. But, I have been doing my "scrapbooking" on the computer with my PhotoImpact. They turn out WONDERFUL! I print up two of my pages each time, one for me and one for my mom, and put them in sheet protectors and insert into a binder. After I started working where I am now employed, I took some pictures and printed them up and posted them on the bulletin board and the walls in the hall and people just love them and think they turned out so wonderful, and they DID! Having a very nice printer helps, too....