I've been using Paint Shop Pro for several years, but wanted to try Photo Express 4.0 for its red eye removal and printing capabilities.I take mainly snapshots, and so need to remove a lot of red eye! While Photo Express's red eye removal tool is neat and works fine, it is quite clumsy going back to thumbnail view after editing a photo! You have to click the "mode" button then click "Browse", each time! If it used a standard MDI interface, like Paint Shop Pro does, the browse window would just be there when you closed the photo window.
Another gripe: the thumbnails are not stored on disk after they're created (like Paint Shop Pro does). Consequently, it has to recreate them each time you visit the directory, which can take awhile.
These two problems are bad enough that I'm going to return the program.
I had said in one of my reviews a while back that I did most of my heavy-duty work in either Photoshop or Photo Impact, but I was searching for a simple editing program at a reasonable cost that didn't take a whole lot of time to learn or to use. This just could be the one. It beats Picture It Publishing Platinum 2001 hands down and beats Photo Deluxe 4.0 as well. I've long been a fan of Ulead products, and this one is no exception. It's a larger program than what I've become accustomed to from Ulead. This one's two CD's--one for the program and one for the content. There's tons of templates, clip art, sample photos, etc. that are available without disc swapping which is a nice touch. There isn't much you can't do in this program. The tools are all great, and another nice extra is that this will support graphics tablets and will also take Photoshop plug-ins. Not bad for an editing program under $50.
The format has changed almost completely from Photo Express 3.0. I'll reserve judgement on this though since I've only had this for about a week. Everything takes time to get used to. One big change is there's no "album" anymore. When you click on "get picture", a browser opens up and you go to the files that you want to use. Or you can import from a scanner or a digital camera or photo CD. Not having the album thing is nice in the respect that you don't have to continually add photos to an album so you can see the thumbnails. When you open the file of pictures you want to use, all the pictures open as thumbnails in the browser window. Easy and convenient!
Another great thing about this program is the e-mail. You can e-mail right from within the program and if you send in the "smart send" format, the program will automatically take large files and render them in a more manageable format for e-mailing.
Also, this is the first Ulead program that I can honestly say has printing capabilities I can use, like, and live with. The printing end of things has never been one of the things I've bragged about with Ulead programs until this one.
The one thing I didn't like right from the beginning is the nonsense with being able to change the cosmetics of the program. Background for the thumbnails and some of the other parts can have the skins changed to one of several different styles and/or colors. Personally, I could live without all that. Ulead even makes more skins available to download for free from their website. I'd rather see them put the effort into something more functional--additional templates, pictures, plug-ins, etc. Something that's useable, not different colors.
To make a long story short, other than the cosmetic thing, this is a winner. It's easy, complete, functional, and flexible. Don't hesitate on this one if you're looking for a different image editing program and you're looking to keep it simple.
