Photo Explosion Deluxe 5 Review

Full review

Photo Explosion Deluxe 5 is full of features for creative photo projects. We looked at the software package to find out what exactly it has to offer beginners and more advanced photo editors.

Setup

Use this software with Windows 10, 8, 7, Vista and XP and a 2.2 GHz dual-core processor or faster. You need 1GB of RAM (quite a high amount compared to other programs) and 300MB of free disk space.

Importing

Import your photos from all your devices – digital cameras, mobile phones, scanners, camcorders, webcams, and photo CDs. The software supports RAW image files but there is no RAW studio in Photo Explosion, which makes this package not as suitable for professionals and advanced image editors as other packages.

Photo editing

Photo Explosion includes the basic features you need to make quick and easy edits to your pictures. You can crop, adjust contrast and brightness, straighten, and improve focus with a single click in the QuickFix Studio. Trim photos so you’ve got a new shape for the background, remove red eye, combine photos by cutting out and inserting new elements, and use paint tools to add accents to photos.

In addition, you have a number of effects to use over photos such as blurred background, sepia, and water color. Add text by typing in a box then applying it to the photo, with additional extras like special effects and perspective shifts. Whatever changes you make can be viewed in the preview window before you apply them to the image so you can easily try again if you need to undo changes.

Features

The most original and, for many people, valuable feature in the Photo Explosion package is the collection of frames, props, embellishments and clip art. You’ve got plenty of templates here for the easy customization of your pictures and to create different looks for different pictures. Some of them are very gimmicky but they produce entertaining pictures for family and friends. Scrapbooking buttons and add-ons allow you to turn batches of photos into scrapbooking craft projects.

Create line drawings and freehand embellishments with the drawing tools, and panoramas with the comprehensive stitch and align tools. You can also “morph” before and after shots to turn one photo into another, and share them online.

Photo Explosion Deluxe also comes with simple video editing features, although you are probably better off purchasing separate video editing software if you want to make a good job of video editing.

Photo Explosion Deluxe doesn’t have online storage attached to the program.

Organizing

As you import your images you organize them into onscreen albums and can add keywords and photo ratings to find different images more quickly. The tagging and organizational tools are not as extensive or as useful as other programs – no automatic tagging, and it is difficult to do more than a simple search, but they do help to give a clearer picture of your collection.

Sharing

Photo Explosion Deluxe gives you masses of ways to share your photos and image creations. The templates allow you to create everything from greetings cards to calendars, passport photos to scrapbooks, with print options from professional printers or you can print them at home. Easily email photo albums to friends, optimize photos for sending to cell phones, and create and post web albums to social media.

Ease of use

The interface is very easy to use – well laid out, with minimal fuss. You generally go through three steps when you work with photos; browse photos on your devices or computer, edit them, and then print or organize in projects. These steps are clearly marked and easy to understand. You don’t get much on-screen help in other aspects, however, but because there is a minimum of advanced features in Photo Explosion Deluxe this is not as necessary as with other software programs.

Help & support

Support is limited but you are unlikely to need much in the way of detailed troubleshooting with this package. You can email the support team or use the Knowledgebase for research. If you do need more extensive help, a paid phone support option is available Monday to Friday within business hours.

Overall

If photo editing means fun and easy embellishments, improvements and make-your-own photo craft projects, Photo Explosion Deluxe 5 is for you. Featuring a wide array of clip art and other templates, Photo Explosion is a well-priced software package for family use.