MAGIX Xtreme Photo Designer 6

If you want a software to help you modify your photos but you consider Adobe PhotoShop to be too expensive and Windows Paint to scarce in features, you might try 'MAGIX Xtreme Foto Designer'.

This is much more complex than 'MS Paint' and it's also free. It's features are fewer than in PhotoShop, but they are very nice and I was impressed by them. Among its many features there was one which really attracted my attention. This feature is 'Effects Browser' and it contains a huge list of predefined effects which transformed further more my work in progress into a piece of art. The most important thing is that almost all its features are listed on its main interface making them very accessible.

While scaling objects, if you press the 'Shift' key, they will be scaled keeping the aspect ratio. If you have multiple pictures on which you want to apply the same filters you can use batch processing. Another interesting feature is the one helping you to capture the screen. Besides the usual settings for a feature like this you can set the number of screenshots so it will take multiple screenshots, one after the other. The 'panorama' is another interesting feature. If you have multiple pictures which are slightly overlapped you can create a wonderful panorama.

The user interface is easy to use and intuitive. It looks like a professional software besides acting like one.

Pluses: It's free and it works very good.

Drawbacks / flaws:

In conclusion: I'm very happy to see that you can find good software for free. Give it a try because it's worth it.

version reviewed: 6