PhotoPlus 10

Serif PhotoPlus 10 Studio Pack is a budget image editor aimed squarely at those who don’t have the cash, or the need, for Photoshop. At under £60, it’s cheap enough to buy on a whim, but you soon discover that PhotoPlus 10 is actually a fully-featured photo app, and one that even rivals Adobe’s Photoshop Elements. 

The thing with PhotoPlus is that it’s not exactly well known, and it’s already got the disadvantage of its main competitor having the biggest image-editing brand in the world on its box. But, with great features such as Shadow/ Highlight, the ability to manipulate Channels, Layer Effects, a Filter Gallery, a Live Histogram and some nifty layer management tools (no prizes for guessing where Serif got these ideas from), it’s a pretty comprehensive tool that looks and feels very much like Photoshop – right down to its tabbed interface. 

Batch processing in PhotoPlus, and the ability to import RAW images makes it an appealing tool, but its new features are a little overshadowed by Photoshop Elements’ instant fix, 16-bit support, better filter effects, iPhoto-like slideshow features and the Spot Healing Brush. PhotoPlus 10 is undoubtedly a competent and comprehensive image-editing tool, but one that is only aimed at those who need a very cheap solution to fixing their photos. It’s a shame there’s no PhotoPlus demo available on the web, because it really is just a matter of personal preference.