BabyMaker promises to create realistic photos showing what your offspring will look like. You're supposed to input two photos (the program asks for passport-style photos, but really any head shot will do), then presto--you've got your baby of the future.

Normally I wouldn't spend much time with a program like this... but Luxand makes such extravagant claims for BabyMaker ("The science of fortune telling is brought to perfection with BabyMaker" and the like) that I couldn't resist putting the program to the test. The upshot? BabyMaker is certainly amusing, but it's far from "perfection."

I tried out BabyMaker with some celebrity match-ups and had a grand time creating hybrids (San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom plus Oprah Winfrey; Jackie Chan plus Lucy Liu; Ricky Martin plus my cat, Max). None of these were even remotely realistic, however--though I can't fault the program for leaving out Max's whiskers. One big problem is that the software allows you to select from Scandinavian white, African black, and something in the middle for race; there's no selection for Asian couples. Jackie and Lucy ended up with a creepy-looking lily white Caucasian baby with black eyes.

For the ultimate test I selected a real celebrity family, blending photos of Michael Douglas and Catherine Zeta Jones and comparing the results to a photo of their real daughter. As you'll see in the screenshot linked to this review, the result was nowhere near reality.

BabyMaker is a fun toy, but it certainly can't give you a peek into the future. This shareware is free for unlimited use, though it does put watermarks onto the resulting baby image.

--Kim Saccio-Kent