Mention photo editing software down the pub and most of those 'in the know' will tell you how good they are with Photoshop or Paint Shop Pro.

These are both fine programs, but there's another less well-known candidate they could benefit from trying - version nine of Serif's PhotoPlus has just been released. Serif's photo-manipulation software has come of age in this release, with most of the core features of its main rivals and a few which are more extensive or better implemented.

Take the warp tools, for example. PhotoPlus provides two of these: Mesh Warp and Elastic Warp. Mesh Warp places a mesh, or grid, over a picture element and you can drag any of the nodes where the grid lines cross to distort the picture.

In addition, though, each node has handles, as in a vector graphics program, so you can change the shape of the curves between the nodes, giving you much more precise control of the warp effect. Elastic Warp, which should be used sparingly, takes any area of your image and stretches it in a cartoon-like fashion.

If you're the type of person who likes to play around with effect filters, you'll have a field day here. Each of the many filters available, including nearly a dozen artistic ones, appears in a dialogue including either your current image or a sample image and showing what the effect will look like when applied. The artistic filters convert your photographs into the styles of specific artists like Van Gogh and Munch, or schools like Impressionist or Expressionist.

The other main area of improvement in PhotoPlus's feature set, compared with the previous version, is its compatibility with other applications. For a start, the program can now import and export Photoshop PSD files and includes support of Photoshop layers, converting them to and from its own effortlessly.

You can also create Acrobat PDF files directly from within PhotoPlus 9, though this feature is not as useful in a photo editor as it is in a multimedia application such as the program's DTP sibling, PagePlus.

Finally, Serif has improved the print layout options within PhotoPlus, so you can select a combination of images on a page which makes best use of expensive resources such as photo-quality paper. There are 17 layout templates for A4 paper alone, but you can also define your own and save them for repeated use.

Serif PhotoPlus 9 provides a useful set of extra features, including professional-level extensions like ICC colour profiles. Its new compatibility with Photoshop and its existing wide range of well-presented tools make it flexible and easy to use.