Bix Photo Book

As digital photography has grown in popularity, so, too, have digital means of displaying photographs. Bix Photo Book is an easy way to duplicate the experience of flipping through a physical photo album without having to print and mount your photos.

The program's interface consists of an animated photo album displayed on what looks like a hardwood floor. To populate the album with images, simply select any image in the desired folder, and all images in the folder will be included. From there, the album is fairly customizable; users can specify the color of the pages and the background image, and there are 16 different effects that can be applied to the images (although you can only use one effect at a time). Bix Photo Book also offers a variety of different angles from which the album can be viewed, allowing users to zoom in and out and even specify the direction from which the light shines on the album. The album can be exported as an AVI movie to be shared with others. An online Help file is brief but adequate. Overall, we found Bix Photo Book easy to use, but some users may want to further customize their albums by controlling the layout of the images or adding text, actions that Bix Photo Book doesn't support.

Bix Photo Book is free to try, but the trial version only lets users view the first three pages of the album. The program installs a desktop icon without asking and leaves a folder and Start menu icon behind upon removal; users must also install Directx if they don't already have it. We recommend this program to all users.