With the ever increasing use of Digital cameras and need to manage your digital photo collection it’s becoming increasingly important to have a good photo-video management and editing suite. Although there are many free tools available on the Internet, Corel’s Digital Studio tries to distinguish itself by offering various new features.
Corel Digital Studio 2010 comprises of four major software applications, viz, Paint Shop Photo, Corel Video Studio, Corel DVD Factory and Corel WinDVD. Once the software is installed, a nice Corel gadget resides with other Vista gadgets that lets you seamlessly move from one application to another, providing a centralised access.
The user interface of each application is pretty decent and makes it easy for first time users to use the software without having to refer the user’s guide.
Paint Shop Photo Express
The Paint Shop Photo application acts as your photo manager. It allows you to tag your photos with pre-defined tags like Family, Travel, Pets and more. You can even define your own tags. Paint Shop Photo, besides managing your photos also provides some basic image editing functions like Crop, Red-eye removal tool, rotate and quick-fix. The more tools option on the right-side of the interface brings up a menu that lets you perform enhancements of the photos. You can add Effects like Sepia tone, B&W tone and more. Also Edges, Frames and Picture Tubes can be applied to the photos. Picture Tubes are nothing but clipart that can be incorporated on the photos. They can also be resized with the stepless slider.
Besides these basic editing functions and enhancement features, Paint Shop Photo also lets you create Photobook, Card, Collage, Calendar, Slideshow and Backup disc from the photos in the Media Tray.
The application was very slow in response and at times we kept staring at the busy icon. We tested the suite on Intel Pentium Core 2 Duo notebook, with 2GB RAM, 160GB HDD running Windows Vista Business Edition.
We created a Photobook using the application. Although the process to create the photobook is pretty easy, the application lacks control and customisability. The layout of the photobook page is also fixed, hence you may face issues if you have a landscape photo to fit on to a portrait photo layout. The same issue of layout was also faced during the creation of Calendars.
Once your photo product is ready you can save it as a PDF or a JPEG. Print it directly to the attached printer, order it online to a photo finisher or a lab or share the same via email or on sites like Facebook, Flickr etc. Photobook can also be saved in Silverlight format to view it in the browser.
Video Studio
Corel Video Studio lets you import movie files from your PC, TV Tuner Card, Mobile phone, Video disc, camcorder –tape/disc/memory, webcam and other storage devices. Once a video file is imported, you can create the movie. You can specify the output format, that is, Standard (4:3) or Widescreen (16:9) and Standard definition or High definition. You can even create movies from the photos. You can add titles, sound track and even Voice-over to the movies. Transitions can also be added or edited if required. The output of the movie file can be saved as a video file, copied to portable media player, shared online on Facebook, YouTube or Flickr and can also be burnt on the disc.
However, to our dismay, we could not transfer the movie file to the attached portable media player, Creative Zen. Overall, we found Video Studio a good solution for novice users who do not want to spend much time on creating movies from the videos shot.
DVD Factory
As the name suggests, Corel DVD Factory lets you create DVDs from the media collection. You can create a Video Disc, Backup Disc or an Audio Disc. It also allows you to copy the created media files to iPod/iPhone, Sony PSP, Mobile Phone, MP3 Player, Data storage device or to a disc.
There are also options for burning to DVD video or to the hi-def AVCHD format.
WinDVD
The familiar DVD player app, WinDVD is also included in the Digital Studio bundle. WinDVD supports playback of video files directly from DVDs or from files stored on the PC. The playback was smooth and fine in full-screen mode. You can capture from the video already playing and these files are saved as .gif. Bookmarking is also possible in the playing video that lets you flag a certain frame so that you can return to the clip. WinDVD 2010 supports AVCHD video, however, it cannot play Blu-ray discs.
To conclude, Corel Digital Studio 2010 is a mediocre suite that excels in certain areas and lacks in others. The suite is created considering the average PC user in mind who wants a solution to handle his multimedia content without much of a fuss. You accept sluggish performance and lack of customisation options if the tool is offered for free but when you’re asked to pay your hard earned money, you too expect some control over the software.
Its available in India for Rs. 5,500 plus taxes.
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