Hi David,
I've never tried PhotoPlus. I just looked at the site and it looks pretty
good. I like how it has correction layers like PhotoShop (PhotoImpact and
DIP don't have those features). I may purchase a copy of this and give it a
try. One thing I particularly like about DIP is that it is very easy to
use. You can make typical corrections with photos without really knowing
much about what you are doing. If you are a professional then you will
probably want something like PhotoShop, PhotoImpact, or perhaps PhotoPlus,
but for people like my wife and kids the DIP package works great. The
corrections made in DIP are intuitive and seem to print really nicely.
And... it is way better than PictureIt!
I didn't see any interesting text creation in PhotoPlus' feature list. I
really like some of the things you can do with PhotoImpact (3D, backgrounds,
text on path shapes, etc.) and I haven't seen that kind of functionality in
any other photo program. The text is mostly good for website development,
but you can make some great looking text with shadows, shapes, etc. in
almost no time and save it to just about any format you might want. I do
wish that PhotoImpact and DIP had correction layers so that we didn't have
to save a copy of the file to store the changes and resort to the original
at a later time. PhotoShop does the best at this that I've seen, but it is
kind of pricey. PhotoShop's little sister (PhotoShop Elements) has layers,
but not for correction. Still, PhotoShop Elements 2.0 is pretty nice for
the price as well.
I don't think I'll ever just have one program that I use for everything.
It's too bad we can't just throw them all up and have one great one come
down, but it seems that for now it will be pretty easy to identify "must
haves" in several different programs. Fortunately they are all pretty easy
to use so it isn't difficult to switch between them.
My two Twinkies...
Tom
