PhotoScape

PhotoScape is intended to perform various operations in which photographs are involved. These include viewing, printing, composing and editing.

In my opinion, the interface needs a redesign mostly because some users may feel somewhat confused at the first time. Unfortunately, the visual elements in the interface become disorganized when you change the dimensions of the window.

The program is actually very versatile. The idea of using tabs is definitely a good one and helps a lot when you want to go straight to a given feature. In this regard, the Viewer tab allows browsing folders and shows previews of your images as thumbnails. The Editor tab supports basic operations, such as cropping and resizing. Additionally, it lets you apply effects, some of which, like fake tilt-shift, graduated tint and reflection, are very interesting and hard to find in other tools. Besides, it includes such tools as red-eye correction, mole removal and clone stamp, among others. There’s also the Batch Editor tab that allows applying changes to multiple photos. Likewise, you can open the Animated GIF tab to create animations by combining various pictures in a sequence. Other tabs called Page and Combine are intended to create photo collages while the Print tab lets you organize various images in a single page before sending them to printer.

Along with the features already mentioned, this tool also supports some others, which are only accessible from the welcome menu. The Raw Converter can make a picture readable by most applications by converting it from your camera’s native format to JPG. In addition, there’s a screen capturing feature as well as another option that can split a photograph into parts. Finally, it’s also good that the application supports batch renaming.

All in all, PhotoScape cannot compete with the industry leaders. However, it’s okay for most everyday operations a photographer carries out. It has the advantage of providing plenty of useful features at no cost. Yet, it would be nice that its developers consider a redesign of its interface in the future versions.