First Look: Microsoft Offers Easy Image Management
Digital Image Suite 2006 lets you organize and edit your photos, but it lacks the power of its competitors.Paul Jasper, special to PC World
Organizing and editing your ever-growing collection of digital photos can be a daunting prospect. Microsoft's Digital Image Suite 2006, which will be available on July 5, aims to make the process easier. The application leads you through the tasks of labeling and sorting your photos, correcting colors and composition, and producing slide shows you can burn to CD. The $100 package is an upgrade from Digital Image Suite 10, but users of that version may notice little that is new.
Library lets you view your photo collection as groups of thumbnail images.
At the heart of the product is Digital Image Suite 2006 Library, which lets you view your collection as groups of thumbnail images. Library indexes your images automatically and allows you to categorize photos, using keywords and flags. In this latest version of the suite, it also lets you define multiple levels of keywords. And if you use your digital camera to shoot short video sequences, Library now lets you organize these along with your still photos.
Easy Editing
As the name implies, the Digital Image Suite 2006 Editor allows you to edit images. As in previous versions, you can work on only one image at a time, so you can't try different edits side-by-side. A set of Auto Fix commands lets you easily make basic changes, while more complex tasks require only a few steps.
Editor lets you crop your images, among other fixes.
The 2006 version adds an Intuitive Crop function that analyzes your photo's composition and suggests the best way to frame your subjects. You're free to adjust the suggested crop area by dragging with your mouse. A new command lets you transform color photos to black-and-white images, applying a variety of preset filters and contrast controls to mimic the characteristics of monochrome film.
Editor also gains support for RAW format images from Canon and Nikon's advanced digital cameras. However, it applies a default conversion when you open an image, unlike a professional photo editor, such as Adobe Photoshop, which allows you to customize the conversion to get the most from your unprocessed image.
Digital Image Suite 2006 also bundles Photo Story 3.1, a popular free download from Microsoft's Web site. With Photo Story, you can easily combine photos with voice narration (if you have a microphone), background music, and transition effects to produce professional-looking slide shows. The latest version makes it quick to burn a VCD-format CD that you can play back in many home DVD players.
Digital Image Studio 2006 isn't a dramatic improvement over the previous version, and it lacks the power and variety of some of its competitors, including Adobe's Photoshop Elements and Corel's Paint Shop Pro Studio. Still, it is easy to use and includes a few unique features, such as its Intuitive Cropping tool. This alone is enough to make it a competent image suite well-suited for amateur photographers who are ready to step up from the basic applications that came with their cameras.