Tesco Photorestyle, a photo imaging and picture creation software, costs just £10, making us wonder how well this budget ‘supermarket’ product would really perform.
Installing the software was quick and easy, taking a couple of minutes. Before any photo-editing begins, mandatory online registration is required. However, this gives free unlimited email support, which is worth the minor inconvenience. The software also comes with two licenses, meaning you can register on both your home and work computer without breaking the licence agreement.
The Photorestyle program uses the same interface as Adobe Photoshop, and as such, supports Photoshop plug-ins.
Like all image-editing software, Photorestyle allows you to enlarge and shrink pictures without any distortion. There's layer-support too, which allows you to get creative with additional effects and editing.
The Lasso and Polyline tools also proved handy for isolating and cutting out parts of the picture we needed to work on. In fact they were so precise that with a bit of help from the blurring tool you can extract drunken uncles from wedding photos quite simply. The red eye reduction also tool also works well.
The duplicate tool works like Photoshop's clone brush, which allowed us to replicate any part of the picture. Background effects can be added to photos too, including a quirky Austin Powers spiral design.
However, we were disappointed with the precision when it came to the filter options which let us apply effects such as blurring and distortion to our image; the threshold levels all looked the same.
In addition to the image-editing side of things, Photorestyle also comes with Photoalbum slideshow application and Draw software, the latter being similar to Microsoft’s Paint program. We were impressed with the Photoalbum tool which lets you save you photos with text underneath and view them as a slide show.
Photorestyle isn't the most powerful image-editing software we've seen, but for £10 it represents astonishing value for money and will suit anyone looking to re-touch their snaps.
Also consider
Adobe Photoshop Elements 5 image-editing software
Provides a strong set of organising and editing tools suitable for photography enthusiasts, but it could prove to be a case of overkill for the average casual snapper
Ulead Photoimpact 12 photo editing
A little light on new features, but it's still a versatile photo editor for beginners
Corel Paint Shop Pro Photo XI
Probably the best image-editing program you can buy at this price and some would say at any price, but there's still room for improvement in features such as the text-handling abilities.
