Microsoft Digital Image Suite 2006 Complete package

Author's product rating:   

Instructions / Help	Excellent
Ease of use	Very easy
Ease of Installation	Good - quick to install
Value For Money	Satisfactory

Advantages:	Changes the way you view photos for ever, Panoramic Stitching .
Disadvantages:	Not cheap !

Recommend to potential buyers:

yes

Full review

-::: INTRO:::-

A few weeks ago I was watching 'The Gadget Show' on channel five. They had a section in the show where the presenter compared 3 different photo editing software packages; Adobe Photoshop Elements, Picasa2 and Microsoft Digital Image Suite (MDIS from hereon.) The show concluded that overall the Microsoft product was the winner. There were a few functions that I saw demonstrated on the programme that I thought were really impressive, so I went out and bought myself a copy.

The software can be split into three general areas. First the digital image library, second, the photo editor, and then lastly the photo story

-::: DIGITAL IMAGE LIBRARY :::-

If you're anything like me, your photo collection is well into the thousands. In fact, in the summer of 2004 I took 743 photos! In MDIS, you can change the size of the thumbnails simply by using the slider bar, so if a folder has several hundred photos, you can adjust the slider to view all the thumbnails without having to scroll through several pages. Then when you hover over a thumbnail you get a nice big hover window that shows you more detail of that photo.

I was always happy with the way I organised and viewed my photos, that is until I discovered MDIS. The software lets you view either by folder, by date or by label. I had all my photos in folders by date. But then I tried adding a few labels. I made a label under the friends tag, called Nathan (one of my best friends), then I simply clicked on all the photos that had Nathan in. I then created a label under the Places tag and called it Beijing. Again, I simply clicked on all the photos from last year's trip to China. Your photos may need more than one tag, for example, Nathan will be in some of the photos I took in Egypt, where he had a birthday. Friend: Nathan, Places: Egypt, Events: Birthday.

I have now tagged up all my thousands of photos (this does take a lot of patience, however, it's not as big a job as you'd think, because MDIS makes it so easy for you!) and I love it. Select as many or as few tags as you want to filter the photos that will appear in your results. I've taken hundreds of pictures of my dog over the years, the problem before was that they were in at least 10 different folders amongst hundreds of photos, finding just the pictures of my dog would have been a nightmare, but not anymore - my black beauty is now just one click away! You can also flag the pictures you want to print out, or give your photos a star rating, so you can just select the best to show your friends.

-::: PHOTO EDITOR :::-

MDIS is a very powerful photo editor with lots of options, many of which the average user (like me) will never use. Most people I imagine would use the auto fixes, which produce extremely good results. Color (American), Exposure, Contrast and Levels all have auto fixes, where MDIS analyses the photo and works out what changes would make it look better. I've included a before and after photo at the bottom to show how good it is at changing the photos automatically. You also have full control over these functions if you wanted to manually change them.

Other useful features include the red eye removal tool - just click on the pupils and it will take out all traces of red. The smart erase tool is brilliant - is there something in your photo that spoils it? Maybe your son is wearing an offensive T-Shirt? Simple, just select smart erase and draw around the offensive object. MDIS then takes colour and texture from around the object and gets rid of it. All the usuals are also included: resize, crop, rotate, flip. You can add a whole host of effects, or add a border, add text or go as far as cutting a person out of one photo and pasting him into another photo. The smart select tool is great for this. You draw a rough line around an object, and smart select will accurately select right to the edge of the object.

The one thing I was most looking forward to was the panoramic stitching. Me and Nathan had taken a lot of photos that needed this stitching. It's simplicity itself: select all the photos required for the panorama - depending on how many you have selected, this process can take a long time. The first one I did was made up of 14 photos and it took about 20 minutes to stitch together, but the result was amazing! It blends the edge of each photo and matches up the images EXACTLY! I've studied some of the pictures long and hard, and cannot believe how perfect they are. This feature alone is worth the price of the software. Check out a picture of Red Square - Moscow (http://www.hebawom.toucansurf.com/Red%20Square%202.jpg)

-::: PHOTO STORY :::-

This is a great program. It lets you select a group of photos that you want to show to people, and takes you through the creation process of making your own movie out of the photos. You start by deciding how each photo will be displayed; it can pan across the photo or zoom in or zoom out. It then lets you decide how the transitions between each photo will look. However, leaving it on automatic is fine since it does a great job. You can then add captions, and select a music track or multiple tracks. And finally it asks you to add an audio commentary. It then outputs it to a video file. Its great for mobile devices and DVD players.

Download Photo Story as a standalone product for free:
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/digitalphotography/photostory/default.mspx

-::: AVAILABILITY AND COST ::-

Brand new it costs about 45 pounds, from shops like amazon, but you can get a second hand copy off ebay with unused product code for around 15 pounds.

http://www.microsoft.com/products/imaging/ProductDetails.aspx?pid=003&active_tab=Share