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Multimedia tools are nothing new to Corel, a company now responsible for titles in the Ulead family and Video Studio Pro. But the particular combination of features in Corel Digital Studio 2010 (Windows) is something new. Or rather, a it's a fresh take on Corel's existing technology.
The software suite marries editing and project creation tools for photos and videos, giving the application interfaces a tinted look and rounded corners that share the philosophy of Apple's iPhoto and iMovie. Corel's goal was to provide an entry-level media manipulation package for home users that is also appealing to look at and natural to get around, and the company has largely succeeded.
Corel Digital Studio 2010 is comprised of main four applications: the photo studio, video studio, DVD burning app, and WinDVD, Corel's video player. (There's also a desktop gadget with its shortcut buttons to each of the four programs.) With them you can open media from just about anywhere, edit videos and photos, and fashion a whole lot of fun photo and video projects. The video studio, known formally as Corel VideoStudio 2010, has a built-in movie maker that looks good and is approachable for novices looking to get their feet wet. There are a few templates (but a few more wouldn't hurt), for automatically creating videos out of video clips or photos, or both of them together--you'll have an opportunity to tweak transitions and other details later.
The photo app harbors a creation workshop for collages, cards, calendars, and photo books, all of which you can print from your home computer or order from Corel online, if you'd like to turn your digital media into physical form. As with the movie maker, there are templates for getting started (the same ones, in fact.) The limited templates may get old pretty soon.
The other options for releasing photos and videos from your desktop include burning them to disk (with Corel DVD Factory 2010), e-mailing them, copying them to a number of devices, including the iPhone and Sony PSP, and uploading them automatically to Flickr, Facebook, and YouTube. We had some trouble uploading to Flickr in our initial tests, but according to Corel, the bug we encountered is unusual.
Corel Digital Studio has a few other rough spots. We've mentioned the premade project templates, which could be more numerous. We feel the same way about the number of effects in the photo editor--there are a meager four. The software could run a little faster, and there are a few tweaks we'd make to some of the tools; for instance, if you could adjust aspects like saturation and brightness by typing a value into a blank field in addition to the current method, where you set it with a slider bar.
Each application's tool set in Corel Digital Studio 2010 is much beefier than your basic freeware apps like Google's photo manager, Picasa, and Microsoft's recent Windows Live Movie Maker. Compare the features with other multimedia suites in its price class, and the $99.99 studio falls in the middle. Part of that is intentional. By slimming down the feature offerings, casual consumers won't get lost in a morass of menus. Make the product too simple, though, and nobody will buy it. Corel has struck a fair compromise that will give the company's home user audience plenty to do to, both in terms of editing media and in terms of ultimately sharing that media with others.
(Credit:
Corel)
In the end, Corel's new multimedia studio doesn't introduce any groundbreaking capabilities to the field. Comparable software suites, like Roxio Creator 2010 and Apple's iMovie/iPhoto combo, have the sharing features, automated movie makers, photo book and calendar creators, and then some. Roxio Creator 2010 also has several more audio tools, extra copying options (like to TiVo), and express burning you can jump-start from the desktop or even automatically from the DVD drive. iPhoto and iMovie include sundries such as detecting recurring faces in photos, and more advanced video editing options that take the audio track into account.
At this point, it may seem that we're a lot further away from proclaiming that Corel has largely succeeded in its mission to create a solid, user-friendly multimedia app than we were at the beginning of this review. However, we're still of that original opinion. Those folks seeking more advanced tools, like that separate audio track and finer tuning, should seek a different media suite that's more consciously geared to enthusiasts or professionals. What Corel Digital Studio 2010 offers is a navigable, eye-pleasing design for people who want one place to go that gives them beyond-the-basics tools without opening too many cans of worms. (The package is an especially fair price if you were planning to buy DVD-playing software for your computer anyway--don't forget that it includes WinDVD 2010.)
There's much more to explore in Corel's quadra-app suite, and some system requirements that you should be aware of before you download even the trial. For details, tune into the First Look video above, slide on over to the photo gallery, or read our hands-on review. If you'd like to test it for yourself, Corel Digital Studio 2010 is free-to-try for 30 days.
When all you want to do is shrink or expand an image to a specific size, launching an image-editing application like Adobe Photoshop Elements, or even GIMP, FastStone, or Paint.NET is overkill. The program has to load. Then you have to browse for the image. That's precisely when a specialized application like VSO Image Resizer becomes the instrument you reach for.
Unburdened by all those powerful effects engines, this fairly bare-bones resizer loads quickly and does you the favor of popping open an image-selection browser for choosing one or more files from a given folder. Bam! That's one unavoidable step out of the way. OK, so the nag screen does slow you down each time you open the app. The program really is free for individual use as advertised, but everyone's suspected of being a business customer who is repeatedly and quietly shirking the publisher's requirement to purchase a license.
After selecting your image, you'll type in the resolution--the dimensions in pixels or percentages that you'd like your reproportioned image to take--or choose some presets from a drop-down list. Desktop, iPod photo, and HDTV are among the suggestions.
This program serves you best when you're fulfilling a pixel requirement.
(Credit: CNET Networks)I recommend clicking "More" to get at useful controls for safeguarding the aspect ratio and quality, and adding a few color-changing effects like sepia tone and grayscale. Choosing the output destination and whether to resize the original or create a copy are actions you can take from either mode.
The resizing operation will be over before you blink. Don't expect to see a preview image or an image editor open for manual tweaking. You won't bestow upon the image a new name, either. It's just not that type of touchy-feely program. When it's done, it closes. This no-nonsense approach may be too toughened for your taste if visual scaling is what you're after. In that case, you'd do better with the Web app Resizr.
As another drawback, VSO Image Resizer's autoclosing makes it a pain to use for frequent or sequential resizing since you'll have to launch the app anew for each request. However, much of the fuss can be avoided by using Launchy to open the app. On balance, VSO Image Resizer is a speedy, no-fuss solution for one-off resizers who know what they want.
High Quality Photo Resizer is lightweight image editor replete with options, but it also suffers from some snags that might an update be worth the wait.
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Photoshop Elements 6 is a good tool for those addicted to Adobe. It streamlines Photoshop's toolset for photograph editing and organizing, but like its antecedent, it's got some unwieldy bulk and it could be simplified even further. Is it worth upgrading?
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Corel Painter Essentials 4, available for both Windows and Mac, combines the resources of a Photoshop with the carte blanche of a art studio program, but without the attitude of either. The end result is something that's more appropriate for people looking to either paint or artistically tweak their photos and to have fun doing it.
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