If you liked Photo/Graphic Edges from Auto F/X, you will simply love version 4. This program has it all for the most interesting, innovative and diverse application you can get to do very, very creative things with artwork on your web pages, publications or just about anything else you happen to be doing.
   Well, this is something. Just take a normal, everyday picture, and "edge" it. This was what Photo/Graphic Edges (PGE4) in its original version did. As soon as I saw this, however, I notices something was vastly different. The difference being the little red boxes you see surrounding the artwork.
   What are they? They are the answer to the one aggrivating thing about Photo/Graphic Edges: it was pretty difficult to position an edge just so. Here, interactively and visually, you can rotate, size and move the edge around. My personal opinion? This one option makes PGE4 well worth the upgrade.
   PGE4's bells have whistles. But this feature, plus the on-line catalog of different edges available, makes this program so easy to use that it is almost mind-boggling.
   Auto F/X documents its software with beautiful catalogs in full color which show all the edges, patterns and lights available. Yet, having these things right here on the screen as you work, rather than having to look them up, is a real boon to anyone who needs to concentrate on the creativity rather than hunt up the documentation.
   But let's talk about the bells and whistles.
 
   This little bar, which runs across the bottom of the PGE4 window, gives you a huge range of things you can do to artwork after you've already jazzed it up with an edge or two. Especially interesting, because it is different, is distort. What that does is distort the edge. Using this one simple command means you can change the edge you are using – making an absolutely infinite variety of edges.
   I suppose we don't have to really explain stuff like glow, bevel, carve, grain and shadow. But the truth is it is easier to apply these effects to your edge (or to your artwork) with PGE4 than to go back into your art program such as Photoshop and create masks and do the same sort of thing. 
   Take this nice little red glow, for instance. Notice how good it looks and how well it integrates with the edge effect? While there are some outstanding programs out these that can do glows, the work you'd have to do to set your mask to make the glow work would be very time-consuming. With PGE4, of course, its done for you.
   And by-the-bye, you are not limited to just one of these effects, you can combine any and all of them. Of course, there is such a thing as too much of a good thing. But we're not trying to tell you how to do art.
   A word about the "Effect Log" option in the bar. This is, in effect, an undo ability similar to the new undo in Photoshop 5: it can undo different things and leave others alone! It gives you a lot of opportunity to experiment with different things and, truthfully, there are so many options in PGE4, it is a pleasure to do that, unless you're on deadline.
   Since we're mentioning this dreaded issue, PGE4 saved our life the other day. We'd simply forgotten about a project when the client called to ask about it. He wanted something snazzy and, of course, snazzy takes time. Well, not with PGE4. Would you believe a montage of images each with unique edges in less than two hours from scanner to finished project?
   Do you wonder why I love PGE4. So will you!

   Link to the Auto F/X web site.