BrilliantPhoto Reviewer's Comments

Brilliant Photo by Brilliant Labs is an excellent program for organizing, sharing, and fixing photos. But, that's it. There are no tools to add to or enhance your photos. However, it is very easy to use and very good at what it's supposed to do.

Ease of Use:  

I was impressed by the overall appearance of the program immediately. The organization is simple and clean. They offer options along the way to save you time. The main tasks are listed in a column on the left for you to quickly find and access. The icons are easy to read. Overall, it's one of the best photo editing programs we've seen for ease-of-use.

Importing:  

Right after installation, you are asked if you want to browse specific places on your hard drive for images. This just speeds up the process of displaying thumbnails when the program opens. When the program starts, the first option is to Get Photos. It offeres 3 choices: From a disk, Folder or CD, From a Camera, or From your Email Inbox. The email inbox feature is one that I've never seen in any other application. When I selected to import from a camera, it immediately detected my SmartCard (digital camera data card). It also gave me the option to remove items after the import or to import new items only. As it imports photos it also displays some useful information like when it was last updated. You can also import from a scanner.

Editing:  

The editing capabilities are very basic but effective. You can fix the color, contrast, rotate, reduce backlighting or add a flash, crop, fix red-eye, touch up blemishes, and straighten a crooked photo. Most of these features is a one-click process where the computer decides what's best for you. You can also adjust the brightness, contrast, sharpness, vividness and hue manually. When you adjust these settings the results are shown in real time. In other words, you can see the effects it has on the full screen image as opposed to a separate thumbnail.

These features will accommodate you if all you want to do is organize, edit and share existing photos. This program lacks any features to add to or enhance your photos in any way. There are no filters, text, or anything else.

Sharing:  

With Brilliant Photo you can share your photos through email or print. When you email a photo it will attach it as a compressed jpg in your default email program. When you print a photo or photos, you can select from several templates and sizes. You can even include captions and/or the date and time.

Output Capabilities:  

There is only one format to save your photo in. Jpg. There are several pre-set compression settings to choose from. For only working with photos, this is probably the only format you need. It is the most widely supported by other applications and the web.

Organizing:  

Organizing photos couldn't be better. The file browser shows thumbnails of any images in a folder or digital camera. You can also scale the thumbnails easily and quickly without having to drilldown to properties. If you click on a thumbnail, it will display simplified information and EXIF (digital camera data) in a separate table or section of the same screen. You don't need to open a separate window. You can also add captions, keywords, rakings, and categories to your photos to organize them for fast search results. Another unique feature is that you can browse photos by clicking on a calendar date. Lastly, you can archive your photos to a CD.

Help/Support:  

The program is so easy to use it's hard to imagine that you would need additional help. However, if you do, there is built-in help that's easy to access and informative. You can search by topics or keywords and it's organized according to the main functions. Online there is a short Learning center and a support forum. If you need additional help, you can email their support staff and they promise to reply before the end of the next business day.

Summary:  

ThumbsPlus has packed a lot of functionality into this product for under $50. However, it is very hard to use. Perhaps in future versions they will fix some of these problems. As it is now though, I cannot recommend it.