Rating: 
Summary: Don't expect any support for this Product in the USA!
Review: After installing Photo Impact 8 on my home computer on January 6, 2003 the product would not work with my EPSON scanner. I repeatedly emailed, telephoned and faxed their technical support group asking for assistance. I received several emails from their Taiwan (corporate location) technical support people and at their request I reinstalled both the device driver for the scanner and the software but neither solution worked. I telephoned their customer service number on January 13, 2003 per Taiwan's request and talked to one of their US customer service representatives who promised to relay my message to the technical support people in their Torrance, CA office; he also suggested I fax my issues/problems to them which I did. I never received any assistance via telephone, fax or email from their office in the USA. I will never buy anything Ulead sells ever again!
Rating:
Summary: Don't expect any support for this Product in the USA!
Review: After installing Photo Impact 8 on my home computer on January 6, 2003 the product would not work with my EPSON scanner. I repeatedly emailed, telephoned and faxed their technical support group asking for assistance. I received several emails from their Taiwan (corporate location) technical support people and at their request I reinstalled both the device driver for the scanner and the software but neither solution worked. I telephoned their customer service number on January 13, 2003 per Taiwan's request and talked to one of their US customer service representatives who promised to relay my message to the technical support people in their Torrance, CA office; he also suggested I fax my issues/problems to them which I did. I never received any assistance via telephone, fax or email from their office in the USA. I will never buy anything Ulead sells ever again!
Rating: 
Summary: Fine for home photos
Review: After researching several photo editing programs, this seemed to be rated the highest in my price range and by the number of options included. The program works reasonably well. I don't usually read instruction manuals and figured out most of the functions on my own. It locks up occasionally (on WinXP), but works fine after closing it out and re-opening. The number of added special effects are great (including lightning, meteor showers, etc.)
Rating:
Summary: Fine for home photos
Review: After researching several photo editing programs, this seemed to be rated the highest in my price range and by the number of options included. The program works reasonably well. I don't usually read instruction manuals and figured out most of the functions on my own. It locks up occasionally (on WinXP), but works fine after closing it out and re-opening. The number of added special effects are great (including lightning, meteor showers, etc.)
Rating: 
Summary: Very good product if it didn't crash so much
Review: After trying Photoshop Elements 2.0, Paint Shop Pro 7.04, and PhotoImpact 8, I decided to go with PhotoImpact. It offers the best range of features for the money. The program is easy to use, but my biggest issue is the fact that the program constantly crashes due to a C++ runtime error. Telephone technical support is a toll-call. Email technical support comes from overseas. I've emailed them a number of times regarding the program crashes; however, it seems to take them a long time to respond. Overall, a very nice product if it didn't crash so much.
Rating: 
Summary: Wait for the patch release
Review: As a happy PhotoImpact 7 user, I was excited to hear about the release of version 8. It included several of the features that I would have picked to add were anyone to ask, including: crop tool shielding, the new levels tool, selection on objects, and the enhancements in lasso selection. I wanted to get the box, but it did not appear in stores, and was not initially available from ulead.com, so I bought and downloaded the upgrade. That's the good news. The bad news started when I tried to run the upgrade install. It crashed, and Windows 2000 blue-screened when I rebooted. I was finally able to get the machine to boot. A call to technical support provided a link to an install that I was able to successfully install. Unfortunately, the machine returned to blue-screening on reboot and I could not convince it to do otherwise. The remedy was to reformat C:, upgrade to Windows XP, and reinstall. The other bad news came in the product itself. PhotoImpact 7 has the nice feature of activating a crop when you press -- a feature that I came to use all the time. I tried this with version 8, and nothing happened. I checked my settings and didn't find anything. I looked in the on-line help and the manual -- both still say that you can press to perform a crop. I submitted a support request on-line and was advised to reinstall. I called technical support, and though they hadn't heard of it, we discovered together that using to perform a crop is not supported in version 8.That is not too much of a problem (CTRL-R is an excellent alternative). My next issue is why I say wait for the patch. If you use PhotoImpact on large images, you will find that Unsharp Mask (USM) is too slow to be usable. With a 2.4 Meg image (my Nikon D100 routinely creates 3 Meg images) on a 1Ghz PIII with 512 Meg of memory, USM took 12 seconds to come up, and up to 25 seconds to respond to changes in the settings. Additionally, you will find that your keystrokes are not echoed if you type into the settings boxes. The competition (I own three ~$100 photo editors) have no problems with this task. I submitted an on-line support request and was advised to reinstall (sound familiar), so I called technical support. Together (again) we discovered that it really is slow compared to version 7. The bottom line is that if you work on large images and use Unsharp Mask, wait for the patch. This has made me glad that I have Photoshop Elements and Paint Shop Pro in my software collection and has caused me to take a very serious look at Photoshop 7, which, by the way, is instantaneous doing Unsharp Mask on very large images. The cost of truly professional software doesn't seem so high anymore.
Rating:
Summary: A Ram Hog that crashes alot is complicated...
Review: I bought this because people on this site and CNET gave it such a good review. I installed it on my W98. (the specs say it will work)It said it needed a minimum of 64MB of RAM, but it really needs more, and if I didn't shut down just about everything I had loaded on my computer it wouldn't load, or lock on loading. I am pretty savvy when it comes to computers and I find this program very complicated. It took me several tries just to get out red-eye! I put it on my laptop which has more RAM and XP OS and it works fine, but it still is very complicated to use. I do not recommend it for the inexperienced, and those who are you might want to upgrade to a more user friendly program-it would be worth the money!
Rating: 
Summary: PhotoImpact - Professional Level Tools, at a Bargain Price
Review: I have recently installed Ulead Systems killer imaging app, PhotoImpact 8. I'm always pleased when PI releases, but this one is a digital photographer's delight. You may go to Uleads website to read all about the new features, but suffice it to say, whether editing photos, creating new art from scratch, or making a complete webpage, PI handles it all.
They've changed the text tool so that you actually edit right in the graphic, which I really like. All I have to do is choose the tool, set my font, size, color, then click my text entry point and type away. Need to change the text already placed? Easy. Just click on the text, and shift-E to enter editing mode. There is a new text rotation tool as well, which allows you to rotate individual letters for special needs..
Already with one of the best set of native filters in the business, the programmers haven't sat on their pixels in producing the latest version. They have a Texture filter which you may use to upload your own textures, a Duotuone Filter which gives you almost limitless control over your graphics, a star filter, spot filter, edge preserving blur, diffuse glow for enhancing those delicate photos of your family, and a host of others. These filters are designes to work well right out of the carton for the novice, but the controls may be tweaked to appease the most demanding of artists.
Additionally, the slice tools have been improved, paint brushes enlarged for ease of working with larger images, and the undos have been increased to 200, something we can all appreciate.
PhotoImpact also includes the following applications in the boxed edition: 1. Uleads Gif Animator, the best gif animator on the market today, IMO.
2. Album, an image cataloguing program.
3. PhotoExplorer which allows your to view your images, make slide shows, and thumbnails at the click of a button. You may save the slide shows to CD or DVD as well, if you wish.
And did I mention that the toolbars and panels are completely editable, that you may record, play, export and import your own macros right in PI's quick command panel? Additionally, you may store selections on a graphic, so you can have the exact selection you need for that perfect graphic. Nothing could be more versatile.
In short, whether you're just learning about photo tweaking or you're a seasoned pro looking for something to increase your productivity, check out PhotoImpact 8. It can do nearly anything that "other" app can do, and if you choose PI, you'll still have about 500 bucks left over. I know I'm glad I use it.
Rating:
Summary: TERRIBLE, TERRIBLE CUSTOMER SERVICE
Review: I love the product.....I really do. But, forget any assemblance of customer service, and I mean ANY!!!
I sent in for their "rebate" 11-8-02 and I waited the 8-10 weeks. Ah,... the fun begins. I emailed their site twice, called the rebate center they had listed on their site, who told me they were the wrong rebate center & I had to call Uleads NON-TOLL FREE number in California, not Phoenix. The FIRST call I timed at being on hold for 24 minutes.....never speaking with anyone. Played the old "Press Number" game. Then the SECOND time I called, I only had to wait for 16 minutes, only to be told " hold please, I'll transfer you to that department"... then I get a recording to leave my name, number etc.... One week has gone by, and no call. I've emailed 2 more times ( have yet to get a response by the way, so today, I call again, for the THIRD TIME, put on hold for 17 minutes, to be "transfered" to the same extension as before, asking to leave my name, phone number, etc..........same a before. I did. AGAIN.
I've given up on this "[$$] rebate, and as far as I'm concerned, they should call it "CUSTOMER "NON-SERVICE". I can understand them not spending the money calling me back, but to IGNORE emails is something else, ESPECIALLY when they state....."your email message will be responded to within 48 hours" yea, RIGHT. They have a good product,( I'm running it on Windows 98) but that's about it. If you have a technical problem, best of luck to you.......you'll need it, along with a cheap,long distance phone rate.
Rating:
Summary: By Far the Best $$$ish Image Editor
Review: I recently received the assignment from my boss to evaluate the various digital photography/image editing programs in the ~$$$ price range. Included were: - Adobe Photoshop Elements 2.0
- Microsoft Digital Image Pro 9.0
- Ulead PhotoImpact 8.0
- Jasc Paintshop Pro 9.0 My review centered around three criteria: image mainpulation, advanced design and photo effects, and suitability for making web graphics. I spent a total of 16 hours on the various programs performing a pretty intensive evaluation in order to determine which product to select for our business. (We needed to purchase a large site license and so there was a lot of $$$ at stake.) I will tell you that, much to my surprise, PhotoImpact came out on top - not just overall but in each of the three areas individually, as well. I say "to my surprise" because it's definitely the underdog. It doesn't have the kind of sensationalism that the other seem to have, and you don't see it advertised all that much. But it's definitely the champ. I found PhotoImpact and Paintshop Pro the easiest to use when it came to digital photography features. (Photoshop Elements was far too difficult for business use, and Digital Image Pro far too simplistic, in my opinion.) But PhotoImpact takes the cake in this area because its drag-and-drop orientation is very straightforward. When it comes to the higher-end design features, PhotoImpact was the clear winner. It supports Adobe's plug-in architecture, so all of the cool filters you can get for Photoshop (and elements, for that matter) are compatible with PhotoImpact. But PhotoImpact gives you a much greater degree of control over customizability than Photoshop Elements, the no. 2 contended in this second area, in my opinion. Once again, it's very easy to create some spectacular effects: There's built-in sophisticated vector drawing (which none of the other evaluated products have), as well as 3D text with some outstanding effects. And, lastly, in the area of web graphics, PhotoImpact came in tops with Paintshop Pro following second. PhotoImpact has a great system for compressing GIFs, plus it includes a GIF animation application that's really sweet. Anyway, I hope this helps all you image editing shoppers. Wish I had seen this sort of review upfront; it would have made the decision much easier for me,
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