Whatever your view on its software, you have to at least admire Serif's business model. One of the few proponents of productivity software that isn't owned in some form by a larger US-based software company, Serif relies less on retail stores than many of its peers. Instead, it's willing to bank on word of mouth and the regular upgrades from its army of satisfied customers.

And PhotoPlus 11 isn't likely to disrupt that model in any way. Granted, it's perhaps not compelling enough to lure too many new customers in, but you don't get to version 11 if you're not doing something right.

In this case, where Serif is right on the money is with its respect for its users. From including a full, easy-to-follow manual through to the considerate in-program help and straightforward interface (which has been slightly and sensibly refined), PhotoPlus 11 gets off to a flying start.

Yet, as is increasingly the case, this easy and straightforward interface shields a program that actually has a decent chunk of power behind it, with a good mixture for both beginners and intermediate users (the more advanced are still much better heading off to see what Adobe has to offer).

The prize for the novice is the QuickFix Studio, which is a toolbox of simple tasks that can correct the majority of the common issues with a digital photograph through a mouse click or two. You're hand-held through the program by on-screen advice, and while it's not quite as friendly and refined as that found in Paint Shop Pro Photo XI, it easily gives something like PhotoImpact 12 a run for its money.

The same applies for the series of effective filters built in to PhotoPlus (and their inclusion follows the trend of similar applications in this price field), as there's real potential to add interesting and, at times, downright useless but amusing effects to your images. Factor in, too, that Serif has been doing this for many years, and has cleverly evolved its product from a poor pretender to an application of real power, and there's much to impress.

Incidentally, it's also easy to navigate through several images with the tabbed browsing approach, and for further organisation of your photos the decent AlbumPlus application is included. For the more advanced user there are plenty of tools hiding behind the friendly exterior, from cutting out and fine tuning tools through to a wide variety of output formats (PDF included).

If we had a grumble though, it's that there's no killer reason to upgrade from the last version. PhotoPlus is a very good image editing application and it has lots of functionality packed in. But while added features such as cropping to common photo sizes are desirable, they're not essential. That quibble aside, Serif earns its annual approval with another fine version of its application. Photoshop Elements 5, though, is edging ahead for our money.

A quality image editing application with obvious heritage behind it. We'd prefer a few more new additions come version 12, though.