Test Drive | Help for hard drive laden with photos

FlipAlbum Suite
E-Book Systems. Windows. $79.95.

Photoshop Elements 2.0
Adobe. Windows and Macintosh. $99.

PictureIt Digital Image Pro 7
Microsoft. Windows. $109.

PhotoImpact 8
Ulead. Windows. $89.95 for CD, $79.95 for download.

Photo Center
Data Becker. Windows. $49.95.

The advent of large hard drives, scanners and digital cameras has encouraged photographers of all stripes to store their pictures in their computers.

In some cases - well, probably in many cases - this parade of pictures to the computer has turned the hard drive into the equivalent of the shoe box that once served as the repository for photos - only worse, given the greater capacity of an 80-gigabyte hard drive.

FlipAlbum, though, offers a reasonable and fairly painless chance to organize the chaos.

Once the software is on the hard drive, the organizational process begins with the creation of an album. If you get into the spirit of things, you can create several albums to organize the photos by year, by events, whatever.

Once the album has been created, moving photos into it is a matter of a sparse number of mouse clicks.

And once an album is complete, it can be used to exhibit the photos in a variety of ways, including as a slide show.

There are actually three versions of FlipAlbum.

The standard version, which goes for $29.95, includes only the software's organizational utilities and tools for transferring an album to a Web site.

FlipAlbum Suite, used for this review, also includes tools for putting albums on CDs, which can then be distributed. The recipients do not need software to view the CDs' contents; they need only pop the disk into their CD drives.

An album burned to a CD can be shown on a TV if it is used in a DVD player manufactured in the last year and capable of supporting video CDs and writable and rewritable CDs.

For those who want to distribute photographs they do not want pirated, there is FlipAlbum Professional at $149.95. It includes image encryption, will create password-protected CDs, and will add watermarks to images.

Adobe, Microsoft and Ulead have issued new versions of their photo-editing software, enhanced by new options.

Adobe's Photoshop Elements still stands out as the premier program that gifted amateurs and even professional photographers will love.

The first version encompassed many key parts of Adobe's $600 Photoshop, a favorite among graphics professionals. Version 2 now also includes a Quick Fix function for adjusting brightness, contrast, color; even better how-to guides, including a do-this-for-me option; and a much-improved browser for finding and viewing photo files from within Elements.

There is also a good glossary, a utility for uploading pictures to a photo-printing service, and a 240-page manual.

PictureIt is probably the way to go if you want editing tools but also are big on utilities for creating graphics-based projects.

PictureIt now has tools for adjusting the lighting in a photo, more filters for special effects, and some better interfaces.

All in all, its editing capabilities are not as extensive or sophisticated as those in Elements.

And while PictureIt is easy to use, some of its tools can leave you puzzled and wondering where to go next.

PictureIt also can be used to create business cards, albums, calendars and magazine covers, among other things. Doing so will not pose too great a challenge.

PictureIt is accompanied by a 273-page manual.

PhotoImpact has a massive number of tools for editing photos, but they are organized into a complicated and downright intimidating interface.

There is an automated editor to help with basic functions, as well as a 273-page manual.

They are not enough, though, to make this otherwise powerful program an accommodating one.

What Data Becker's Photo Center has mostly going for it is its price.

It has the tools required for touching and cleaning up photographs, about 250 filters and special effects, and a 90-page manual.

But the serious photographer or aspiring darkroom editor will be better off looking to Elements or PictureIt.

On the Web

http://www.flipalbum.com/

http://www.adobe.com/

http://www.microsoft.com/

http://www.ulead.com/

http://www.databecker.com/