Serif PhotoPlus Starter Edition

Serif's PhotoPlus Starter Edition is a freeware image editing and photo enhancement suite that competes with Photoshop and similar tools. Although PhotoPlus Starter Edition lacks some of the dedicated tools of the pro version, it still does a lot, including adjusting, resizing, retouching, and modifying digital photos and other images.

Pros

A lot for freeware: PhotoPlus Starter Edition has most of the pro tool's main features, such as layers, histogram, effects, and a full tool palette.

Help is there: Perhaps more importantly, the freeware has nearly all the onscreen and background help, tips, instructions, and examples as the pro tool.

Capabilities: The freeware lacks some of the pro tool's features but not all its capabilities. For instance, the freeware omits the Filter Gallery but still packs an impressive menu of filters under Effects.

Cons

Major features missing: PhotoPlus Starter Edition lacks the pro version's PhotoFix, Cutout Studio, Filter Gallery, and Organizer features, though you might not miss them.

Requires registration: You must register PhotoPlus Starter Edition to use it. Registration is free and enables technical assistance, but it asks for your name, phone number, and street address, or you can register by phone.

Bottom Line

PhotoPlus Starter Edition is impressive freeware that does more than enough to satisfy most users' needs. The overly intrusive registration process may deter some potential users, which is a shame since PhotoPlus Starter Edition is well worth the effort.