There was once a time when the average price for Atari software was about £30. Then along came Jack Tramiel. Hardware prices tumbled and in their wake software prices fell. Nowadays, with most programs costing around £10 anything for less than a fiver is regarded with suspicion.

So it was with some apprehension that I approached Smart Art, a graphics picture-drawing utility from P.F. Software that retails at £3.50. Could it really be any good for such a small amount?

Well, Smart Art certainly lacks the sophistication of the Atari Touch Tablet and its accompanying graphics cartridge, but that does cost well over ten times as much.

Included with the package is a demonstration picture - Mickey Mouse in magician's uniform in a scene reminiscent of Disney's Fantasia - which proves that it is possible with skill and practice to produce high quality graphic pictures with Smart Art.

On loading the program a cursor appears at the centre of the screen and a status display is at the bottom. Using a joystick the cursor can be moved around the 160 x 160 pixel graphics screen and a line or single pixel plotted.

Initially three colours and a background colour - useful for erasing - are available. Any of the three can be changed by selecting from Atari's large palette of colours.

To obtain more the colour registers can be changed part way down the screen and the new colour used for any drawing done below the level of the change.

Up to 80 colours can be displayed on the screen at once.

Four brush sizes are available that affect the size of plotted pixels and there is an airbrush mode that creates a textured drawing effect. I would have liked to see more brush modes incorporated to provide varied types of textured and shading effects.

As we all know, Atari Basic is lacking in all but the most elementary graphics commands. Smart Art includes some useful extra commands - circle, fill and box.

Box, as the name implies, draws rectangles. There are three brush speeds. The cursor can whip along at fast speed or slow down to enable more detailed work to be carried out.

Once you have drawn your multi-coloured masterpiece, the picture can be saved to tape and loaded again at another time. There is also a separate program to load a saved picture.

In the Smart Art instructions there is no explanation of how to incorporate a picture into your own programs. As the load program is short, written in Basic and easily listed, it should be possible to use this as the basis of a subroutine in your own program.

Then you could have your alien planet landscape as a background over which star fighters fly at great speed.

Smart Art is fun to use and for the price is certainly no rip-off.

There may be better programs on the market to aid Atari artists, but this one does unlock a lot of the Atari's hidden graphics potential denied to the Basic programmer with no knowledge of machine code.

Smart Art runs on any Atari home computer 16K and above. It is only available by mail order.