Ulead Pick a Photo 01-05 Creativity Applications

Most digital cameras come with panorama software for turning several photos into one wide-screen picture but the bundled applications don't tend to have as many controls and export options. As with many Ulead programs, you don't get menus; instead there's a three-button toolbar across the screen with separate controls for starting a project, adjusting the alignment of the images and saving the final image.

Cool 360 uses information about your camera lens to get the best result when it stitches images together; there's a long list of cameras but if yours isn't included you can fill in the details. The automatic alignment is pretty good and, as well as dragging the images into position, you can change the rotation and perspective of individual images and adjust the hue, saturation, brightness and contrast if the exposure has come out differently on different images. The main drawback is that you can't zoom in on the images to see fine details, though you can get a preview in the viewer.

Working on a project may sound a little grand for your holiday snaps but it means you can save your panorama as a JPEG and go back later to turn it into a screen saver or have Cool 360 automatically make a Web page with the image in. If you do make a Web page, beware as Cool 360 doesn't reduce the image in size, it just tells the browser to show it at a smaller size, which means the download takes just as long. If you're making a 360-degree wrap-around image you can export it embedded into a viewer application or put it on a Web page to use with the browser plug-in. Cool 360 is a simple program to use and, if you have good pictures to start with, you can get excellent results. --Mary Branscombe

This is one of the simplest DVD authoring tools, not because it doesn't have enough tools (it has all you need for simple DVDs) but because it's very easy to use, guiding you through the process step by step. You start by gathering the content you want on the DVD: you can add existing movie clips (including AVI, MOV, QuickTime and MPEG formats), capture video from a camcorder or import video that's already in DVD format. There are simple editing features so you don't have include a whole video; you can set the start and end points for each clip. You can also replace the video sound with your own audio, split one video into multiple chapters, or join two clips together.

DVD Movie Factory 2 can now create slideshows of still images too, with background music. You get useful tools, like buttons to rotate images if they're the wrong way round, and you can add a whole directory of images and then choose the order to show them in. If your photos need more editing, there's a version of Photo Express on the CD. More detailed commands are on pop-up menus, hidden behind colourful icons so if you want you can choose the video quality, customise the navigation or turn off the anti-flicker filter, but you get good results on the default settings.

If you don't have a large hard drive, you don't need to fill it up with captured video files; Disc-Direct lets you pick a menu template and transfer the video straight from your camcorder to the DVD. There are plenty of good-looking menu templates so you can just type in your titles and burn the disc, but if you want more options you can pick your own background picture, choose some background music and customise the menu by picking position, number and size of the buttons (from around 50 layouts) and changing the style of the controls and the frame around each button. You can also choose which frame you use for the button images. It's simpler than drawing the layout from scratch and gives you lots of options for the look you want.

If you split a video clip into chapters, you get a sub menu for the chapters; if you're choosing your own background image you can decide if you want it on one menu or on all of them, but if you're picking from the templates you choose that for each menu individually. When you finish the menu the DVD player lets you see how your menu will work, and you can go back a stage at any point to change things; you can even edit video clips you've already burned onto CD to trim out sections you don't want. If you're not ready to burn a DVD, you can save an image to burn later, or save the whole project, and you can copy DVDs you've already created.

There are plenty of new features in this version and it's easier to use as well as being more powerful. The friendly new interface makes it more obvious what you can do and how to do it; if you want a simple way to create good-looking DVDs from video clips that don't need much editing, DVD Movie Factory 2 is ideal. ––Mary Branscombe

The disadvantage of digital cameras is that you don't have a handful of photos to pass around the room. Unless you want to print your pictures out yourself, show them to friends and family means crowding round the PC, but if you've got a DVD player you can see your photos on TV instead by creating a Video CD.

DVD Picture Show Digital Camera Suite includes everything you need. Download photos from your digital camera, organise them in Photo Explorer 7 Pro, then create a video CD or DVD with DVD Picture Show and add a finishing touch with a custom label in Photo Express 4. These are separate programs, but they all have a Switch menu for loading the other programs.

Photo Explorer is a good way to organise your digital photos, which you'll need to do once the pictures start to build up, although it does need a lot of memory to cope with large folders of pictures. You can do simple editing of your photos in Photo Explorer, correcting red eye, brightness and contrast, colour and focus, or for more options you can turn to the tools in Photo Express, which also lets you add text to photos and warp it into interesting shapes. Photo Express has a lot of tools and templates for turning your photos into projects with borders and backgrounds.

DVD Picture Show takes you through creating DVDs and video CDs of your photos, step by step. It automatically resizes your photos to fit on TV screens but you get plenty of options for picking pictures in the thumbnail view, rotating any that are the wrong way round, choosing how long each image is on screen for and setting background music. You can also pick a template for the on-screen menu. This is one of the simplest tools for making DVDs and video CDs of your favourite images, and bundling it with the other tools means you'll be able to make the most of your images first. --Mary Branscombe