PhotoImpact 4 ought to get better publicity. Its an excellent program (maybe the best program) for creating web graphics.
   With all the stuff out there to do thus and so with graphics for the web, PhotoImpact stands above just about anything we've seen. No, we still perfer PhotoShop for print graphics – although this could be just a matter of familiarity, please read the box at the right – but when we want to do something for the web, PhotoImpact 4 gets the call.
   Look at my buddy here. He's a hot dude. Thanks to PhotoImpact 4, we can tell you that without saying it. What is nifty about this effect is that it was so easy to do. Total time, about one minute.
   We know, we know. It looks corny. But, using the same effect, take a look at:
  Pretty cool, huh?
   Well, there are a whole lot of different effects like these that are really not more than just a click away. And there are text effects as well that, all in all, are pretty startling.
   PhotoImpact 4 can also create all sorts of buttons, backgrounds, color schemes (it comes with a huge number of integrated schemes for web pages which you can use as is or modify (or just use as the basis for your own ideas). The nice thing about this is that you can not only do just about anything you want, but you can make them look extremely professional. With ease.
   Just to give you an idea of how all of this works, take a gander at this little gem from the filters menu:   Interested in creating buttons, backgrounds, boxes (you name it) with patterns? Just start here. This one, single, set of templates will give you more different patterns than you can shake a stick at. And there are plenty more.
   One of the things which has always bothered me about stuff like this is that once you do get something you like, you have to figure out what it is you did so you can duplicate it. Well, not with PhotoImpact. You just save it as your own pattern. Then you can apply it to other things with the click of a mouse. See how we say that you can achieve professional results very quickly?
   You can do all of the things you can do in any other top-of-the-line graphics program – burn, dodge, smooth, mask, clone and so on – and several things you cannot, like kaleidoscopes, light highlights, drop shadows and many, many more. You can make any text appear in 3D. Now that's cool.
   Finally, you can use any photoShop-compliant filter in PhotoImpact 4. So you don't have to switch back and forth to be able to access your favorite filters from Eye Candy, Chroma Graphics, Auto f/x and Kai's Power Tools, to name a few. Like we said, this is a full-fledged graphics solution.
   PhotoImpact 4 has built-in compression for GIF, JPG and PNG formats and it will compress antimated GIFs as well. Want to hear the best? It will batch convert and compress files. Saves a ton of time!
   If anyone is old enough to remember the old Jerry Lewis-Dean Martin comedies they will also recall that Jerry used to have a saying that fits my impression of PhotoImpact 4 to a "T":
   "I like it, I like it, I like it."
   You will, too.

   Link to PhotoImpact's web site.

   We think it is only fair to point out that one of the biggest drawbacks in doing reviews of new products is that you get used to one product and the way that product behaves.
   Because of that, your learning curve for performing the same operations in a new program is greater than it would be if you had no experience with a particular type of program.
   We feel it is important we point this out because the review on this page of PhotoImpact 4 primarily focuses on neat stuff it does webwise. When we've delved into many of the things we do in other programs with which we are more familiar, it "seems harder" to do, not because it necessarily is, but because we are used to doing things a certain way.

   Text effects can be achieved with another filter set. But you can also apply all sorts of bevels, bump maps, colors and gradients to text as well. We did the following "Fan Club" graphic in about 30 seconds. We liked it – especially since it was so easy to do:

   Ulead makes its particle and text effects available as PhotoShop plug-ins. However, it is almost less expensive to buy PhotoImpact 4 than to purchase these two plug-ins separately.