Software Review of:
Photo Expert 

Open the box — and Glory Be, there is a real paper manual. These folks are on my good side already. I’ll say now that working with the manual and what appears on the screen was easy. I had no problem, well not much, in installing and using this photo manipulation program.

Installing involved inserting the first, of two CDs and following instructions. The start screen contains buttons that take you to the four key work areas; “get photos”, “organize”, “edit” and “projects”. A fifth work area “output” shows up later. Also an exit button, one to an overview and tutorial , and one to helpful web sites. The book says it will work on Windows 95 and 98 and NT4.0, although I had no problem on my Windows Me O/S. Each work area has navigation bars, tool bars, status bars, and task bars., all defined in the manual.

Getting a picture seemed like a good place to start so I went to “getting pictures”.

On the left of that screen is a list of sources for pictures; “My Computer”, “KodakPhotoNet Online”, “Camera or Scanner” or “setup Camera or Scanner”. Because of unrelated problems I could not go directly from my digital camera or my scanner into Photo Expert. However I had no problem with putting pictures from both sources into my hard drive then into Photo Expert Also on the left is a list of albums and a button to create new albums. And also an icon for the recycle bin. Pictures are placed in the highlighted album as thumbnails. Double clicking a thumbnail brings up an enlarged picture in the edit work area. Single clicking a thumbnail in any area activates the toolbar for using clipboard, printing, adding information and sound, or sending to recycle.

So now there is an album that I started and one that was loaded with the program. So lets organize.

We can add, select, rename albums, or move pictures between albums. We can lock an album with a password. We can add information and sound (if you have a microphone and sound card).
We have organized pictures now so lets play with them in the edit work area. Remember double click any thumbnail to enter the edit area. To the left of the enlarged photos are the five possibilities.

• Trim and position: 

crop, rotate, flip, and change size and resolution.
• Color and Enhance: 

fix scanned pictures, adjust contrast and brightness and sharpen or smooth, adjust color by adding or subtracting red, green and blue. When adjusting color or brightness/contrast, the image is split vertically into “before and after” sections.
• Retouch: 

removes red eye, clone tool to paint a portion of an image to another location on the same image. Also in retouch area of the picture may be lightened or darkened.
• Creating cutouts: 

makes cutouts of various shapes. The cutout does not remove part of the picture; instead a copy is place in the media bar.

In the Projects work area, you can make 700 project templates (I did not count them) to create colanders, certificates, greeting cards, etc. Or you can create your own. At this time you will need the second CD —  remember there were two in the box. You can use clip art , add text, make multiple page projects, and add sound.

Output work area is available from any work area. On the left side are icons for Desktop, Slide show, E-mail, Save and Print.

Summation
I think that this program will accomplish anything short of the high end graphic jobs such as Adobe Photoshop (I had a tech tell me he had been using Adobe for several years and was still learning it. That is way beyond what this snap-shot-shooter can use.) I have a very comfortable feeling that the manual and screen information will coach me through the possibilities inherent in the software and that I will not have to spend a lot of time relearning it when I’ve let it lay dormant for a while.

The Sierra Home Web site for Photo Expert is www.sierrahome.com. List price for the package is $39.95.