PhotoELF is for the Professional or Home user and is listed as a "Digital Photo Printing and Editing Software" (the two main features). But, it is really more. With this one software package, you should not need any other product to View, Organize, Edit, and Print your Digital Photos. I believe having the word "Printing" first and the descriptive statement, "The Professional Choice for Printing Digital Photos" skews ones thinking toward printing, and does not do justice to the entire program.

Whether you are new to digital photography or a seasoned professional, PhotoELF Software will make working with Digital Photos easy and fun. PhotoELF is not just considered THE BEST photo printing software program on the market, it is also a complete photo viewing, organizing and editing software package, with hundreds of features - red eye removal, image format conversion, creating photo albums (for CD storage), slide show capability, and batch taskings (to name a few).

View Mode
Here you have a fast photo viewer to look at photos wherever they reside (hard rive, CD, floppy, etc.). The status bar reports the properties of the image being viewed. Photos can automatically fit your window or be at the optional 100% level. Also, you can view sample printing layouts and photo album print pages, plus view slide shows with adjustable dwell time. You can do optional thumbnail viewing of folders, as well.

Organize Mode
The digital photo organizer allows you to have the standard Windows features of copy, cut, delete, paste and new folder functions, and can calculate the size, in bytes, of selected files. You can create your own custom print page templates, or use the standard "Auto Organize" features. It also allows you to rename hundreds of photos and/or set READ ONLY or READ/WRITE on hundreds of photos, in about 1 second. In addition you can specify user selected "Fast Open Folders;" 1 click file copy in Manage Mode; and rotate, resize or convert formats in Batch (many images at once) Mode. Here you can also organize photos for albums or to burn onto disks to play on JPG Ready DVD Players. (Most DVD Players today will play home burned CD's of JPG photos as a Slide Show.)

Edit Mode
PhotoELF allows you to edit and enhance photos, rotate, crop, and remove red eye. It also allows you to add text and captions to photos, text to the print page, and fun masks and shapes to your photos before printing!

With the PhotoELF Image Editor you can view 17 popular image formats (including BMP, ICO, FPX, JPG, PCX, PCT, PSD, TIF) and save images as one of 60 different image formats. You can also Resize and adjust contrast, brightness, color saturation and sharpness, gamma and despeckle. The crop function is particularly clever. Instead of making you select the part of the image you want to crop, the program generates a selection area that you can adjust either manually or with buttons. Also, you can adjust quality by converting an image into formats from 8 bit gray scale to 24 bit color. When you change the quality of an image, the image editor lets you preview it to see how much space the revised image will take up. Scanner support and calendar creation are also possible. Using "Advanced Cropping," you can crop to an exact size or ratio, and slice a photo into equal sizes to create huge posters for printing. With the JPG Compressor Utility, you can save a JPG to any file size for better handling or storage. You can also adjust photo position and size on a page for viewing or printing, and prepare "Contact Sheets" Proof sheets with filenames under each picture. You also have available a transparent paint palette. Photos may also be clicked, dragged, sized and edited right on the print page itself.

Batch Operations
PhotoELF also allows the following Batch features: Rotate, Rename, Resize, Convert Photo File Formats, JPG (JPEG) Compression, Set DPI, Brightness, Contrast, Color Saturation, Hue, Printing, Cropping, change Read-Only and Read/Write. If you work with many photos, some of these features can be a great time saver.

Printing
PhotoELF allows photo quality printing of almost any size (including the popular standards of 8 x 10, 5 x 7, 4 x 6, 3 x 4, and wallet size)! Printing can be on any size and quality of paper, although photo quality paper should be preferred for finished products. You can use the photo printing templates provided or create your own templates. Then you can print up to 144 photos (same or different) on 1 Page, batch print individual photos or a folder of photos (2 to a page, 4 to a page, or as many as you wish up to 144, or a folder of pictures onto many pages), make duplicates, and/or save paper by printing a full page of photos. PhotoELF should work with all Printers, including the Olympus P400, Hewlett Packard, Epson, Canon, Lexmark, Compaq, and Xerox.

Note 1: Professional Digital Camera software batch operations are a necessity when working with many digital photos. PhotoELF will batch print hundreds of photos, as many to a page as you wish up to 144. All you need to do is select all of the photos in any folder and then go to: Batch Printing from the Edit Menu. The batch printing window will then appear and all you have to do is select either a pre defined template, or a template that you have created. You can then send the batch print job to the printer, or run it through a preview first, before printing. PhotoELF Offers more Batch Functions then any other software program on the market, and should certainly be the professional's choice.

Note 2: Many Professionals use PhotoELF "Photo Printing Software" to print their customers pictures on the Olympus P400 "Die Sub" Printer or the Kodak 8500. While both printers are a bit expensive (about $700) they produce Photo Lab Print Results that will not fade and can even get wet without running.

Other Features
Create Albums ready for burning to a CD that will Autorun when the CD is inserted; Create web browser based photo albums using the HTML Photo Album Wizard; view Photo Albums with any Web Browser ON or OFF Line; create slide show options (sequential or random); and add music to photo albums - MP3 and WAV files. PhotoELF is not just for Digital Cameras! PhotoELF should work with any pictures, on any digital medium (regular CD, Kodak CD, Film Processing Store storage, Digital Camera, Scanner, etc.), and in almost any format (BMP, EMF, FPX, IFF, JPG, PCT, PCX, PNG, PSD, TIF, WMF and more).

System Requirements The only information provided was that PhotoELF is designed for Windows 95, 98, ME, 2000, NT and XP. Since it is compatible with Windows 95, it should run on almost any machine that most folks currently have.

Get Your Copy Why take my word about PhotoELF when you can find out for yourself? I said I believe it is a "sleeper program," but maybe not for long (one site reported 5,613 downloads during the 4 weeks after listing the program). If you try it, you may help "spread the word" and awaken this "sleeper" (which will please the developer). Remember, "Try Before you Buy!" is always a good idea. Download the free trial (6.78 MB) of what could be "The Best" photo printing and editing software package around and give the fully functioning program a "Try" for about 2 weeks. (If you need it, "Help," as reported on the web site is at . If you don't feel the program is for you, an Uninstaller has been included.) If you like how PhotoELF works, you may return to the PhotoELF site and purchase it for only $24.95 US.

For more information, please e-mail PhotoElf.com or visit PhotoElf.com or Landofcom Software. You also can contact the "PhotoELF Family" (Rick & Dana Kuntz) at their office: Landofcom Software, 17845 211th Ave., Big Lake, MN 55309 USA; (763) 263-2989; or by email.