It's about time people stopped treating PhotoPlus as a simple photo editing application. While it's certainly true that it can perform all kinds of editing and effects on photo images, there's a lot more to it than this. PhotoPlus 8 adds a host of new features, to make the program equally suited to preparing all kinds of bitmap-based images. It can handle vector shapes and text, too, so in many cases it can produce complete illustrations.

Existing facilities include full layer handling, so you can define parts of your overall illustration on separate layers, which remain independent of all others. This makes it easy to compile montages built up from separate photographic images and PhotoPlus 8 includes a resource CD with 1,000 Photo-Objects, ideal for use like this. Photo-Objects are photographic clips which have been knocked out against transparent backgrounds.

Other shapes can be added by stamping and spraying Picture Brushes and by using vector QuickShapes, which remain editable and can be given all kinds of fills and transparency effects. Version 8 adds to this the facility to combine shapes to create cut-outs, frames and contours.

The new bezier curve tool goes further than this, enabling you to create any open or filled vector shape from scratch. Once created, each segment is still editable, so you can go back and make adjustments using conventional handles at each curve node. Text can be treated as shapes, too and is fully editable, even once you've distorted it, perhaps by adding perspective.

There are several new 3D features. Serif has introduced 'depth maps', so you can add 3D texturing to virtually any fill, as well as using predefined fills which have their own in-built depth maps. You can add patterns, glow effects and bevels, too, very useful when creating Web buttons.

As well as the normal lasso and shape selection tools, PhotoPlus 8 provides a 'paint to select' function, where any section of an image you paint becomes selected and is added to the selection mask. You can use the same add, subtract, intersect and exclude functions that are available when combining shapes. They provide a very flexible way of creating masks.

The Deform Mesh tool enables you to define any free-form section of an image, place a grid over it and drag each node in the grid to deform its contents. This is great for distortion effects, similar to those pioneered in Kai's Power Goo.

Verdict
Serif PhotoPlus 8 is a fully-featured photo-editing package, but with enough vector-based features to make it versatile in all kinds of illustration and Web-design work. It's a key rival to Paint Shop Pro.

Company: Serif

Contact: 0800 376 7070

Tags: image editing serif serif products compact disc brushes new features photograph graphics