I was first introduced to ACDSee by a friend about four years ago, when I believe it was a shareware product. I recall being very impressed with its speed and slick operation, where it had the distinction of being one of the fastest image viewers on the planet. Well it seems that ACD Systems have expanded their portfolio, because the product sent for review bears very little resemblance to the one I remember.

It still takes some beating on the speed front, though, because it reads the file ahead. So when you click on a picture it's already loading the next one. But what we have here is much more than that, it's a Swiss army knife of image manipulation, encompassing an image editor, photo album database, file viewer with slideshow facility. It even includes a program to turn your photos into an MTV style music video. Yikes.

So what used to fit on a floppy disk, (remember those .. funny flat plastic things?) is now supplied on four CDs, although I should mention that three of the CDs contain images and associated files from Corbis, and very nice they are too. Don't confuse them with the usual low resolution rubbish bundled with many graphic programs, these are sharp high-quality images that are probably worth the price of the product alone.

But wait; there's more! I forgot to mention one of the jewels in this photographic crown, the superb Photo Stitcher from RealViz. It's a plug-in accessed from the main browser window that will turn your images into a full 360 degree panorama, or if you've taken less pictures, a cinemascope style landscape. Of course you need to have taken the shots with this feature in mind but they don't need to be perfectly aligned, because the stitching algorithm will do that for you. It's not quite as quick as MGI's Photo Vista but I'd say the results are actually slightly better.

The image editor FotoCanvas has enough tools and filters to sort out most faults that occur while taking photographs. Things like red eye removal, straightening horizons, contrast and colour adjustments are easily dealt with. Its stablemate, FotoSlate, allows to you to print out the results as a calendar, or greetings card, or in any number of different page layouts. If you prefer to try something a little bolder then ACD Video Magic will transform your images or video clips into a self contained slide show (complete with music and transitions between each frame). It comes with lots of different templates, including one that simulates an old sepia tone film, complete with scratches and the occasional frame jump. It's quite fun to use as well. The main browser interface remains one of the nicest and easiest to use, for organising and archiving all forms of digital imagery.

You can create albums with contact sheets, burn your photos to CD or DVD, apply quick modifications and view the EXIF Metadata stored within images created by most digital cameras.

As you can see this is a very comprehensive package that's extremely good value and to be perfectly honest I've only scratched the surface. It works very well, too, and comes highly recommended.

Price: £39.99 Manufacturer: Guildsoft Website: www.guildsoft.co.uk Required Spec: Pentium PIII 500MHz or equivalent, 64Mb of RAM, 80Mb of free hard drive space, 16 bit video display, Windows 98 SE/ME/2000/XP