EXORCISE THOSE RED-EYED demons in your photos with two inexpensive photo-editing packages. Storm's EasyPhoto Reader and Adobe PhotoDeluxe enable you to make family snapshots look their best for sending on greeting cards or via e-mail.
Storm EasyPhoto Reader
Designed to capture photos as large as 5 x 7 inches at 600 dpi in color, this compact scanner comes with Storm's EasyPhoto 1.5 software at a street price of just $259. The scanner connects through your serial port, and the scanner driver automatically brightens dark areas as it scans your picture.
The EasyPhoto software, also sold separately for $59, compresses the pictures into JPEG format and creates a searchable catalog for them on your hard disk. Using easy-to-understand filters with before-and-after previews, you can adjust contrast on an overexposed picture, remove scratches, and clear up the red-eye effect caused by camera flash. EasyPhoto saves the scans as a digital slide show, which you can distribute with Storm's free viewer. 800-275-5734 or 415-961-6600.
Adobe PhotoDeluxe
If you already have a scanner -- or a digital camera -- you can acquire and touch up your photos in Adobe PhotoDeluxe, the $89 consumer-oriented cousin of Photoshop. You can fix photographic flaws such as red eye and scratches in PhotoDeluxe, as you can in EasyPhoto. PhotoDeluxe lacks a catalog, but it does provide the ability to run Photoshop-compatible filters such as Kai's Power Tools. It contains several painting and retouching brushes à la Photoshop, but for novices, one-click buttons replace the complex steps of adding drop shadows and other effects to images.
PhotoDeluxe also gives you step-by-step instructions for integrating the photos into printable greeting cards or calendars or digital slide shows. 800-888-6293 or 415-961-4400.
