PhotoFrame is a Photoshop plugin that helps you create digital frames for your digital images. When you think back to most any museum trip you've taken, the vast majority of the paintings are presented in a beautiful frame (which sometimes looks better than the image contained therein). Digital images presented on a computer or the web should be no different. With this new release, PhotoFrame has significantly advanced its usability and ease of finding "just the right frame." That's not to say it wasn't easy before; it was. But with each integration of newer versions, OnOne Software has done an even better job of removing the guessing about how each different frame might look with your image and making the final decision based on what you could see. Well, mostly. In this latest release, there are some wonderful improvements along with some strange glitches, all leading to a mostly great new release.

Funtastic Photos really is fun to use, and its capabilities are genuinely impressive in an application that costs only 35 bucks. Notwithstanding its user-friendliness, Funtastic Photos leverages powerful built-in OS X graphics technologies like the Quartz 2D graphics engine, Spotlight, and ImageIO Kit, and comes jam-packed with advanced photo editing features, such as non-destructive photo editing, which allows non-permanent adjustments that can then be altered or removed at any time

Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 2 is best by categorized as a Digital Processor. That is, from bringing images to your computer, cataloging them for later retrieval (and, if you want, backing them up to insure protection against accidental loss), enhancing and fine tuning your images, all the way to printing and/or digital distribution—one can do it all from Lightroom. However, one of the strongest reasons to use Lightroom is the opportunity for playing with images with no concern about how many versions and variations of the image you create without screwing up your original image. Despite a complex learning curve, there is much to like in Lightroom 2.

This version of the declared Photoshop challenger is vastly more polished and somewhat more capable than the Version 1.0 I reviewed here a year ago, and with some new features too, but still has a way to go to match the king of the hill, or even Photoshop Elements

At first glance, there's not much difference between Acrobat 9 and its predecessor, Acrobat 8. The program maintains its DGI format, meaning each document carries all of Acrobat's controls—independently. I protested this actively after the last release, but I apparently was a voice in the wilderness, and all my angst was for naught. I must move on. Fortunately, Acrobat 9 Pro has a lot to offer.

Jade is an easy-to-use image enhancement and batch processing tool that automatically and almost instantly corrects digital images. After using it, there's no mystery why versio 1.2 is a staff pick on Apple's download website. Jade is a tool you're going to want to have and will use

Expression Media is a DAM, or Digital Access Management program. That is, if you have two hundred or two hundred thousand images, you can use Expression Media to help organize, find, and manage your images. It can be used by the professional photographer or the amateur. If you do not have Photoshop or a similar image editing program, you can do rudimentary adjustments and alterations with Expression. Similarly, you can create contact sheets and web galleries. As you shall read, Expression has some great strengths and some surprising weaknesses.

PowerPoint has some very strong attributes and features. It's a good program with strong interactive ties with the rest of the Office suite. If you have Office, there is less of a driving need to get Keynote. If you are in a situation where you have to use PowerPoint, you will be able to create strong presentations. However, if you own both Keynote and PowerPoint, and you have the option of choice, I'd go for Keynote.

This combination standalone application and plug-in for Adobe Photoshop CS and Photoshop Elements streamlines and automates separating and extracting portions of digital images from their backgrounds including tricky objects like hair, latticework and branches

Bling! It is specifically-purposed image enhancement program that gives you the power to easily create professional-looking image layouts of items or products for publishing on the Web or on online auction sites like eBay and Craigslist

Now MacIntel native, and with even more Photoshop CS-style features, with version 6 Photoshop Elements is a better value than ever.If there's another graphics program that comes even close to offering as much raw image-editing power and versatility for 90 bucks, I can't imagine what it would be

I don't know about you, but I'm terrible at keeping horizons level in landscape shots or in pictures where one is usually intent on foreground objects and forgets to level the camera. Happily, Photoshop Elements 6 can fix this often shot-ruining flaw quite easily