Photo Review Reviews section

Kodak EasyShare W1020 Digital Photo Frame

7 Rating

An 800 x 480-pixel, 20.3-centimetre, wi-fi-enabled digital photo frame with a 16:9 widescreen display that is bright with natural-looking colours.In theory it’s a great concept: build a photo frame for displaying digital pictures and equip it with a wireless interface that allows users to connect to the internet and view shots from online galleries. Add in the ability to display shots and video clips and/or play MP3 music files stored on a USB stick or camera memory cards and you’d think you were on a winner. In essence, that’s what Kodak is offering in its new wi-fi-enabled EasyShare W1020 digital photo frame. But the actual product leaves a lot to be desired. The W1020 is something of a Curate’s egg: parts of it are excellent. So let’s deal with those aspects before looking into areas in which the device failed to deliver on its promises.

Iomega eGo 160GB Portable Hard Drive

9 Rating

An elegant-looking, well-designed portable backup device for photographers who travel with a notebook computer.Small, stylish-looking and easy to use, Iomega’s eGo 160GB portable hard drive will be a useful addition to many photographers’ kits. Small enough to slip in a camera or laptop bag, it can be used for moving large files from one place to another, backing-up files and folders or housing a media library. Available in two colours (red and silver) its anodised aluminium casing is curved like a hip flask and has steel end caps.

Iomega Rev 35GB Removable USB Drive

8 Rating

A portable storage system with removable hard disks for backups, drive imaging and general data storage.Developed by the inventor of the Zip and Jaz disks and drives, Iomega’s Rev disks and drives are based on a similar concept of having a drive that remains connected to a computer plus removable storage disks. The Rev system is offered in two capacities: 35GB and 70GB The capacities of both are expandable through bundled data compression software. In this review we focus on the 35GB USB system.

Digital Foci Photo Safe II (PST-251)

8 Rating

A pocketable, battery-powered backup device for storing image and video files.Digital Foci’s Photo Safe II provides a choice of 250GB and 500GB of portable image storage in a compact format that will be ideal for travellers. Small and light enough to slip into a trouser pocket or the accessories pouch in a camera bag, it is battery-driven and supports all popular image file and video formats – including raw files from most camera manufacturers. Three covered card slots enable it to accept all popular memory cards and an Auto Copy button provides one-touch copying of the contents of a connected card.

Zoner Photo Studio 13 Free

8.5 Rating

A basic image editor with an attractive interface and good facilities for online image sharing. Zoner Software in the Czech Republic has been developing imaging software since 1993. It was the first to introduce support GPS (Global Positioning System) location data and 3D picture making and these features are included in its latest offering, Zoner Photo Studio 13. The application is available in three ‘editions’ : Pro, Home and Free.

Canon M80 Media Storage Device

A well-built portable storage device for image and video files that also has music playback capabilities.Portable image storage devices have been around for a few years. Based on notebook PC hard disk drives, they offer high storage capacities and have card slots for quick transfer of image files. Some have LCD screens for viewing stored images; some support playback of music and video files. All represent good value when compared with the cost of buying the same capacity in memory cards. At $1099 for 80GB, Canon’s M80 sits in the ‘prestige’ end of the market.

Xara Photo & Graphic Designer 7

8.5 Rating

A useful application that combines image editing, drawing tools, web graphics, Flash animation and desktop publishing.Xara Photo & Graphic Designer 7 is an update to an application that has been popular in Europe and North America because it combines a suite of useful functions at an affordable price. Providing integrated bitmap and vector handling, it enables users to edit image files, create publications for printing (cards, calendars and photo books for example), develop Flash photo galleries or multi-page websites and produce simple animations for exporting as GIFs, SWF or AVI video files.

Adobe Photoshop Elements 9

9 Rating

The latest version of a popular and accomplished image editor for photo enthusiasts.Adobe’s Photoshop Elements is now in its ninth edition and each version has provided incremental improvements on its predecessor. In Photoshop Elements 9, Mac users gain access to the Organiser cataloguing function, which Windows users have had since Elements 8, while users on both platforms benefit from additional functions and special effects.

Adobe Photoshop Elements 10

8.5 Rating

The latest version of Adobe’s popular consumer image editing application. Adobe’s Photoshop Elements has been a popular image editor since it was introduced in April 2001 because it offered many of the features of the professional application (Photoshop) at roughly one sixth of the cost. Version 10, which was released in September 2011, maintains the key elements of the previous versions but updates or fine-tunes some of them and adds the ability to share images and video clips via popular social networks.