Picture Perfect

Almost every photograph can benefit from a quick fix. If your company's CEO has bags under his eyes, you can make him look more alert before you pop his image onto the Web site. If an overexposed photograph makes your home's paint job appear washed out, you can tweak its brightness before you print the real estate brochure.

Thanks to photo-editing software, you don't have to hire a graphic designer to make simple changes to a photo; now you can fine-tune images to your liking. But the range of features each tool offers (and the quality of the finished product) can vary widely, and there's no fair way to compare the simplest applications with office-oriented tools. So we looked at nine programs--from basic packages designed for non­graphics pros who occasionally need to touch up digital photos, to high-end designer tools with additional features that cost far more--and we awarded two Best Buys: one for the top basic-level tool, and another for the program that offers practically every feature an intermediate user would want, for a great price.

Each application underwent the same testing. Here we categorize each program by how well it performed the tests, how much hand-holding it does, and how much control it offers. We classify seven products as basic-level tools: They offer a simple, friendly interface and wizards to guide users through a touch-up process, but they may not be able to perform some tasks. The other two--Jasc's Paint Shop Pro 5 and Ulead's PhotoImpact 4.2--are intermediate packages; they're designed for experienced image manipulators who would rather have a finer level of manual control than wizard-based automation.

If you need (and can afford) more than these packages provide, take a look at "Kings of the Hill: Pro-Level Tools" for evaluations of three advanced utilities that are appropriate for graphic designers.