VERDICT: Clean and efficient photo management and sharing let down by some surprisingly old-fashioned and underpowered editing.

If you want more than XP’s basic in-built image handling, Microsoft wants you to turn to its Digital Image Suite.

As with most of the higher-end solutions Digital Image is divided into two modules: for management and for editing. The Library takes care of the former and, like Google Picasa, offers a nice clean view of all imported images grouped into folders. You can also quickly view all images automatically grouped into the years, months and days on which they were taken (why no other package offers this is a mystery) and quickly add ratings, captions and flags. For finer hands-on control, Digital Image’s hierarchical label-based tagging is second only to Photoshop Elements’. A more powerful image downloader and ad hoc image handling via albums or trays would add to the experience, but the Digital Image Library is clean, simple and effective.

The Editor is caught between two stools: neither simple nor powerful

However it doesn’t offer any editing capabilities so to make your photos look their best you need to open them into the separate Editor application. The immediate disappointment here is that there is no dedicated workspace for quickly making the most common enhancements. Instead the Common Tasks Pane down the left-hand side offers access to a whole range of functionality from initial automatic fixes through to final framing. It’s not very focused or efficient and, with just three main lighting and colour adjustments, the global correction power on offer is disappointing. The range of retouching brushes is better and, with tools for handling selections, text, and shapes and a simple stacking system, you can create basic compositions. Other creative options look limited at first, but the catch-all Filters command provides access to some impressive artistic, brush-based effects.
For sharing, the Editor offers access to a wide range of print-based projects including collages, cards, labels and so on. It also offers a wizard and template-based dialog for handling multiple prints complete with interactive control, and you can email images directly. The same commands are available from the Library and this also offers the ability to copy images to CD/DVD for backup and distribution. Most impressive is the Photo Story feature which walks you through creating a professional onscreen slideshow complete with control over titles, effects, transitions, zooms and pans, narration and background music - Digital Image will even create a soundtrack for you. The results can be output to WMV file or directly to VCD for PC and TV-based playback. After this, it’s disappointing that there are no web output capabilities let alone integrated web upload, but Digital Image does partially compensate with its ability to synch flagged images and photo stories to Windows Media Player compatible mobile devices.
Microsoft Digital Image is a story of two halves: the Library is simple, attractive, efficient and surprisingly powerful; the Editor isn’t.

EASE OF USE 4/6
FEATURES 4/6
VALUE FOR MONEY 4/6
OVERALL 4/6