INBOX:If you've ever taken the kinds of photos I take, you'll be familiar with bad framing, red-eye and an angle that makes the photo look like it was taken on the set of the 1960s Batman TV show, ie crooked.
Luckily there are a number of image editors around today designed to come to our photographic aid. And they are a lot more affordable now than in days gone by when to utter the words "image manipulation" would send financial directors sprinting in all directions.
Adobe Photoshop Elements 5.0 (€102) is the cut-down version of the well-known Photoshop programme, but retains many of its big brother's most powerful features. The range of tools and filters is comprehensive and covers the majority of scenarios for photo surgery.
It has a great interface and the handy Organiser and Editor workspaces mean switching between managing photos and enhancing them is pretty seamless. Aside from the advanced features, the mainstays such as red-eye removal, cropping and straightening are straightforward. This is a very serious contender in the photo manipulation stakes.
A pricier option (at €133) is Corel's PaintShop Pro, although it admittedly has all the tools the average snapper would need. The interface is easy enough to master, if harder on the eye than some, but the tools it provides will do the job.
Its One Step Photo Fix command sounds like a good idea - looking at all the elements of a photo to try to fix the obvious mistakes - but it's not 100 per cent accurate and shouldn't be relied on. Then again, it's cheaper than the full-blown professional Photoshop package, packs many of the same features and is possibly simpler to master.
Microsoft's Digital Image Suite XI (€103) is actually two packages put together. The Library organises the images while the Editor edits them. Novice users will like the ability to produce simple corrections like red-eye, cropping and straightening easily, but many will find this a frustratingly limiting package if they are looking for more advanced options.
Serif Photoplus 11.0 (€88) is a long-established image-editor and will be familiar to many PC users. It's QuickFix Studio is able to address common photo problems, including brightness and contrast, with ease.
The comprehensive help section has a very welcome "hand-holding" feel to it. Perhaps one of the most useful features is the ability to crop a whole set of photos to the most common sizes.
Lastly, if you are an Apple Mac user there are several image-manipulation options to choose from. Handily, however, one of the best is free.
iPhoto comes bundled with all Macs and includes simple red-eye reduction, cropping and image rotation for the wonkiest of photos.
