In spite of most of the comments above, I decided to try this one. Had no problem registering, got an email to confirm that my email address is a real one they can send lots of stuff to, then got another one with the license key. Installed software and noted that it said a reboot is required, although the program started anyway. I tried (in the footsteps of Peter Blaise) to view a color photo in B&W, but the program crashed as soon as I double-clicked a photo to open. Ok, time to reboot. That seemed to complete the installation. When I started the program again, a pop-up asked me for the registration key. Entered, done. Program worked very well after that. I particularly like the adjustment boxes below the pic. Select one, like B&W or Mood, or many others, and it contains a slider to adjust how much of that effect to apply. Very fast and simple. I was able to quickly enhance several pics (people, places, game screen shots). I like that you can click on the eye icon to see the original picture, then release it to get back to the adjusted view.
What needs to be improved: No tool tip text. I assumed the eye icon was for red-eye removal (a similar icon is used for that purpose in many other programs). Nope, don’t know what anything does without accessing and wading through the on-line manual / tutorial videos, or click and see what happens. Detailed online help is needed for complex tasks and understanding the intended flow of the program, but tool tips are so much faster!
There’s no way to block out a subfolder and its contents from loading into the catalog. My main picture folder has lots of pictures to catalog, and many subfolders, some of which are quite large. I don’t want those large folders slowing down my navigation to other pictures. Also, their idea of organizing seems to be to throw everything into one large virtual folder. It took a while to figure out how to select one folder at a time. But, there’s no way to pick a folder and not its subfolders. So, to be efficient with this software I need to reorganize how my pics are stored. That has a big ripple through my disk backups and how all my other programs are “trained” to look in that top level folder.
Also, there’s no UNDO button anywhere. Instead you need to open the Image menu, open the Adjustments sub menu and find something called “Reset Adjustments”. Or remember to press Ctrl-Shift-R. I still don’t know if I need to specifically save any adjustments I made, or do I need to be careful when trying things out to ALWAYS remember to reset the adjustments so as to avoid any permanent changes to the picture. I have no easy way to remember that this program behaves differently from most others, and what needs to done whenever I use it. Maybe if it was my only photo ajustment program, but I have many of them. Standards are there for a reason, and when programmers try to get cute and develop unusual ways to accomplish the usual things, it just gets confusing and frustrating. Maybe I should make a program that lets me create a text box to describe such things, and then, anytime I run a program it will display my text if it exists for that program. “Mr.Dave, remember to use Shift-Ctrl-R to reset any changes”. Anyway, I like the program overall. It does a few different things than Picassa, but Picassa is so much faster and easier to control.