Another slick program from our friends at ArcSoft, PhotoImpression allows you to edit images using the same tools as you would with any photo-editing program.

You can finish editing your image at that point. . . or let the fun begin:

You can select from 43 Frames and 24 Edges to surround your image. Utilizing Frames would be an excellent way to create a unique personalized scrapbook for someone.

Using the Cookie Cutter tool, you can put your image in one of 26 unique shape (Fig. 2).

Produce a personalized Calendar using any one of 10 calendar templates.

Make Trading Cards (selecting one of 10 sports cards) to feature your subject (Fig 2).

Insert your photo in the Role Play category (some examples are a Wanted Poster, a baby New Year greeting, a bagpiper).

Sports category features 15 different sports to insert your photo (Fig 2)

The Time Warp category offers 10 black and white photos in which you add a color photo to replace the face in the B&W photo.

The Surreal category offers 10 highly unusual scenes in insert a photo.

Finally, over 40 neat greeting card templates are offered to personalize with a photo (Fig 2).

With a selected image in the PhotoImpression window (Fig. 1), by clicking the Edit button, you are presented five options to modify your photo: Crop/resize, Retouch, Text, Enhance, Effects.

The Retouch toolbar offers a multitude of tools to modify any image to satisfy your creative juices: Paint brush, Pen, Airbrush, Eraser, Clone, Smudge, Red eye removal, Blur, Sharpen, Darken Lighten, Eyedropper, Bucket fill, Pattern fill, Gradient fill, Brush pallet, Color pallet (Fig. 3).

The Enhance toolbar allows you to adjust: Brightness/contrast, Hue/saturation, Blur, Sharpen, Tone, Negative and Equalization (Fig 3).

The Effects toolbar presents you with 36 thumbnails, each representing an effect to be applied to your image (Fig 3).

Using a photo of granddaughter Amber, I first cropped the photo to just include her head and shoulders. I then produce a soccer playing card (Fig. 2), an old windup clock with her face placed behind the hands, a water skiing poster, a heart cutout featuring her face and a Greeting Card proclaiming how awesome she is.

Since this copy of PhotoImpression was a review copy, there was no instruction manual included with the package; nor is there a Help button at the top of the PhotoImpression screen. A PDF instruction manual is available to be downloaded from the ArcSoft Website (see below).

Even without a manual, each step of editing, enhancing, adding effects to a image was intuitive and quickly accomplished. In other words, this software is nice and easy to use.

Some might put this program in a “novelty photo editing” category but I think the novelty (putting a face in a huge variety of templates) is only a part of the program. There are plenty of serious digital image editing tools to satisfy most any home PC user.

Requirements for the program: Win98, Me, 2000, XP; 275 MB free HD space; 64 MB RAM.

ArcSoft software is found at most PC retail stores. You can buy PhotoImpression online at the ArcSoft Website. Cost for the package is $49.99 or if you have a prior version of PhotoImpression, the upgrade is $29.99. Undecided about the cost? You can download a trial version by going to: The download section of the Arcsoft Website. Try it. I think you’ll like it.