Photo Explosion 4 (review)

Today I’m being adventurous with my dinner and have made a stew experimenting with a number of spices and ingredients. I added chopped tomatoes, cumin, coriander, Garlic, stock cube a sprinkle of 5 spice and sprinkle of herbs de prevence. So far it seems to have worked and tastes really nice. So why mention this at the start of a review? Well this was the best way I could think of describing photo explosion 4 for the PC. It has so many ingredients that you may think there might be a few too many which would spoil the flavour of the software.

I’m pleased to say this isn’t the case and although at first a little daunting the components work well together and compliment each other. If there is something you want to do with a photo then this software in most instances has you covered. First of all you have a powerful photo editor and when I say powerful I really mean it as it has many features you’d see in software 5 times it’s price. You can work with layers, masks and also change colour, brightness and contrast. It’s easy to turn a photo into black and white and then take an isolated part of the photo and either re colour or choose a different colour and paint over it. If you’re feeling artistic you have a whole host of natural media to work with like charcoal, pens, pencils and spray cans. Oh and a whole host of effect brushes such as clouds, animals and leaves. Hey, just forget the photo’s and start an artistic masterpiece from scratch. If you’re not really the artistic type but want to impress others there’s the instant artist option which will change a photo to look as though it’s been created by hand in paint, oil or one of the many artistic styles. There’s also a sophisticated extraction tool so you can place people in different locations etc. Oh and did I mention you can even create animations using the software too.

Happy with all your photo’s? yes? Then it’s on to the photo project studio where you can design cards, calendars, labels, scrapbooks. The list goes on and on and you can quickly drop your photo’s into set templates and print. Or you can start a design from scratch and design just about anything you can think of. The templates of course are very much photo themed and will require you to drop in a photo or 2 but you can alter and tweak them a fair bit and add additional elements such as text and shapes etc. The designs are great and varied so I’m sure you’ll be pleased with the end results. I know that you can easily lose track of time when playing with this software but all the time enjoying using it.

Ok, next up we have the panorama creation software. This software is really cool as it will cut and stitch individual photo’s to make one big one. Say if you take about 20 shots of a landscape pointing the camera in different directions (of course still standing in the same spot). One click and you see the magic take place and your photo’s become one massive photo. I was really impressed with the way this worked and the flexibility in tweaking the end result. To keep track of all your photo’s on your computer you have a photo organising application called photo album. Here you can organise your photos and tag them so they are easy to find. If you ever wanted to morph a family member into a baboon or a friend into another friend (like you see on quite a few television shows and movies) you can with the included face morphing software. Finally there is a montage application that will create a photo using all of your other photo’s (yes I know .. It’s very arty but still cool).

I think I’ve mentioned everything as there is a lot to discover. Personally I think the software is great and exceptional value and most importantly in my opinion, fun to use. The only real downside to the whole experience is really a positive downside in that there is so much included it can feel a little daunting and at first you’re unsure what to start with but after a while (and reading the included PDF) you soon get to grips with what can be achieved. I’d recommend this software to anyone that a camera or likes to play with images of any kind.

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