*uk/B001CZJG7K-us/B001EUG3BU

The recent purchase of Xara by Magix has seen both companies continue to develop their own products for the benefit of the user. However this purchase has also allowed Magix access to the technology behind Xara’s graphics software. One result of this can be seen with Magix’s Xtreme Photo & Graphic Designer 2 title which not only includes the technology but also the name of Xara’s Xtreme product.

Xtreme PhotoStory on CD&DVD Deluxe 7 is the rather long title of Magix's latest software for burning photos to optical media so that they can be viewed on a television.  Various options are available from PhotoStory's installation routine.  These options include either accepting or changing the three different default locations used to store the program; templates and files; plus user files.

As always there are a series of different products (six I understand) but here let's concentrate first on Photoshop CS4. Content Aware is an amazing feature - if it works as shown - in the one slide I have seen, the scenario four people running along a beach spaced out in the original, this is then altered to fit a column and although the image has a lot less width and more height all are still shown more or less in situ.

Everything I'm telling you about today was the result of a meeting around a month ago with Mike Lampietro of Adobe a demo and some slides, as and when the new versions are available which I am told is likely to be around the end of September I will try various things for myself in separate reviews.

While most companies involved in the development of graphics software tend to concentrate on a traditional approach to market their wares, even though they might also have a web-based store, Xara is an exception in that the company adopts a total web orientated strategy. If you want to purchase a Xara product, such as the company's Xtreme Pro 4.

What do you do while waiting for one of today's large applications to install itself?  This question sprang to mind recently while I waited for a Corel product to complete its installation process.  I found myself reminiscing about the time when the company set about encouraging the uptake of CD media by offering the current version of its graphics software at a cheaper price if you purchased the CD rather than floppy version.

When reviewing hardware I usually start with the dimensions and I suppose the equivalent for software are it's system requirements. Windows XP (Service Pack 2) or Windows Vista (either 32bit or 64bit). After that it's 512MB of Ram, 430MB of hard disc space, a 1024x768 or greater display, a mouse or tablet and a DVD drive. There are four main applications in the box all with the X4 suffix, CorelDRAW, Corel PhotoPaint, Corel PowerTrace and Corel Capture.

Digital photographs do have a tendency to be rather large in size.  You only have to look at the ever increasing megapixel ratings of the latest cameras, and even the new crop of mobile phones, to see the reason for the demands that digital photos put on certain activities.  Digital images can quickly devour storage space and are hardly the sleekest when it comes to being sent via the Web even for those of us with access to a fast Broadband connection.

For those who fall into the rather limited budget category and wish to stick with the kudos of an Adobe branded product then Adobe Photoshop Elements is the obvious route to take.  Adobe Photoshop Elements 6 is the first version of the product to be released since the launch of Windows Vista and comes with some additional features.

When taking delivery of a new scanner or multi-function device you will often find that some bonus software will be provided and this will include OCR (Optical Character Recognition) functionality.  In many cases the OCR capability will be provided by a copy of FineReader Sprint.  This is a basic edition of ABBYY's flagship FineReader product which currently stands at version 9 in its Professional guise.

Website X5 is available either as the Evolution or Compact version.  Both titles offer WYSIWYG (What you see is what you get) functionality but the latter version does not provide access to the HTML code that is created by the software.  This review is based on the Compact version which is aimed at the home user.

I first came across Nero - like most people - when a tied copy was provided with a CD-ROM drive, certainly no DVD's about then. Of course you get to know how to get it to do what you want, you then get a new PC and you need to learn a new product because this one supports another software product. So you have a choice learn another product of bite the bullet and buy a copy of Nero.

I found it took 10 minutes + a reboot to install of a reasonable fast XP system. It took 1040MB of space. Now the PC I put it on is around a year old and not my main work machine so I was more than a little surprised when I allowed it to create thumbnails of the images it found 19,000 items and took 23 minutes to do so. At that point it wanted to do the red eye correction and I then decided to opt out.

It was a long time ago that I learned roman numerals but I'm fairly certain that XI should be followed by XII and not X2, do I assume that next year will be X3 as they did with Corel Graphics just to avoid the number that goes between 12 and 14. First the all important amount of space on your hard disc. I found 940MB taken by the 13 minute install on a reasonably fast PC. This needs to be XP or Vista.

Where "X" use to mark the spot on treasure maps and the like, it is now taking on the role of favoured numeral used by the marketing fraternity to add a touch of style to the version number of certain products.  Serif is following this trend with its latest batch of upgraded titles including DrawPlus X2.

Meeting up with an old acquaintance can sometimes be a cultural shock as happened with my first view of the latest version of Corel's Paint Shop Pro Photo product.  Now up to X2 (surely if you are following the Roman numeral sequence then this should be XII), has been given a new set of clothes with a graphite grey coloured interface.  If this new colour for the interface is not to your taste then you can revert to the familiar old style colour scheme.

Digital content, whether still images, video or audio based, continues to grow and take over our hard disks.  While you could opt to delete less popular items to ease the storage pressure and release space for newer content, there is another alternative that could be considered.  This would involve transferring data to optical media using software such as that available with MediaNow CD & DVD Burning Suite.

Talking heads have been around for quite a while.  Whether representing celebrity faces, animals or any types of inanimate objects you care to think of, these computer generated animated images have infiltrated the fields of entertainment and marketing with the ability to amuse and grab the attention of consumers.

Continuing with its policy of supplying software in flip-top boxes, Nero's latest edition of its flagship product, namely Nero 8, is now with us.  Arriving with the promise to "Create and Manage Your Digital Life", Nero 8 has upped its demands with regards to required system specifications to handle the various applications that make up this suite of software.