WebRazor Pro 2.0

SmartSaver Pro 2 is a utility for opening graphics files and optimizing them for use on the Web, specifying compression ratio, color palette, format, etc. It can export to GIF, PNG, and JPG formats, and it can handle batch conversions. Our favorite aspect of this feature: it can be used as a stand-alone application or as an export plug-in for Photoshop. Smartsaver Pro can import just about any graphics file format available and does a good job compressing and indexing graphics.

GIF Animator 4 imports graphical images and can layer and save them as animated GIFs, giving the animator full control over timing of frames, movement, and sequence. Additionally, users can enter text in the program, as well as transitions and special effects. Too bad the GIF file format doesn't support sound; GIF Animator would make a handy little video editor.

Photo Explorer catalogs and manages all those graphics files. Basically a browsing and disk maintenance tool, Photo Explorer can scan a selected directory for any graphics file it is capable of displaying (which is almost everything) and show a thumbnail of it. We found this to work very well and very fast, even on folders containing large images. Photo Explorer can also export an HTML file containing a table of thumbnail images, with links to the original file. This feature alone is a major time-saver, and worth the price of admission.

Lastly, there is Cool 3D 2.5, Ulead's 3-D graphics and animation tool for creating 3-D text. Cool 3D, while not the most feature-laden of 3-D applications, is fast, easy to use, and produces very clean output. It features an enormous amount of presets for textures, lighting, and animation and can even create some particle effects, such as burning letters. Words and shapes can be distorted, twisted, glowed, burned, and otherwise manipulated in 3-D space, and results appear very quickly within the real-time preview window. --Mike Caputo