PhotoDeluxe was designed to be a a consumer-level photo manipulation program from Adobe Software. It essentially is a stripped down version of Photoshop from the same company that is the professional level industry standard. The truth is, however, most average picture takers don't need all the stuff the pros do. PhotoDeluxe allows users to rotate photos, crop them, tone them, change the colors and add some special effects.
The Basics
Whether a photo is shot on a digital camera or scanned from a print or negative, the file that is created can be manipulated, essentially cleaned up digitally the same way photographers used to work with enlargers. Opening a photo in PhotoDeluxe allows the user to straighten crooked shots, sharpen the image, crop out unwanted sections and lighten or darken the photo. All of this is accomplished with basic menus. It also has some automatic features to do the basic things most people need, such as setting the light and dark levels.
Advantages
PhotoDeluxe has one particularly useful feature its big brother Photoshop does not. This is red eye elimination or reduction. When photos are shot in low light with flash, people's eyes tend to show up as bright red. While this problem can be eliminated in Photoshop through some tedious work, PhotoDeluxe has an automatic red eye reducer. Especially for amateur photographers, this is very useful. The program also was inexpensive and shipped with many scanners and some digital cameras, which meant it was useful immediately. Because it doesn't have a lot of extras, PhotoDeluxe also is quick to learn and use.
