RH, 2007-08-13 06:28:10

Most practical and useful graphics tool I have (and I have several). Not as versatile as Adobe Photoshop, but MUCH more useful in ordinary everyday manipulation of bitmap images. Superb user interface, logical and intuitive (most of the time), and easly understood. Unless you`re trying to do bizarre, exotic and ridiculously "fashionable" tricks with images, this is probably the best tool money can buy. Rock-solid, almost entirely bug-free (it sometimes gags on some files, or hiccups and freezes -- but only very rarely). Microsoft Photo Editor is similar, but more limited (though IceView 4.x, which I use, lacks MSPE`s ability to individually and separately adjust the different colors). Haven`t figured out how to manipulate animated GIFs (though I can view them OK) with this program. Allows edit or copy-and-paste of selected areas, using several shapes of lassos: rectangle, rounded-rectangle, ellipse, and freehand. Any selected area can have the following: adjust brightness, contrast, hue and saturation, gamma correction, and various special effects, like soften, sharpen, negative, posterize, solarize, histogram contrast, stretch intensity, intensity detect, oilify, add noise/graininess, emboss, etc., etc. etc. Rotate (any number of degrees), resize, crop, etc. Slideshow. Let`s you preset the size of the images in the sideshow, and lots of other nice things. Some features are more trouble than worth, but the vast majority are as straightforward as you could reasonably ask for -- without using buttons, toolbars or toolboxes. If you touch-type, and want to go faster than a mouse will allow, much of your work can be done from the keyboard alone (I`ve done hours of work at a time without using the mouse!.