PhotoMix from fCoder Group is extremely easy-to-use digital scrapbooking software, due in part to a lack of advanced features. More photo editing tools and more clipart, borders and backgrounds would help PhotoMix to better compete with higher-rated products in our digital scrapbooking software reviews, but this is a safe choice if you just want to build and share a book in a hurry.
The software's strong suit is that it’s so easy to use, especially once you’ve gone through the Getting Started tutorial. The interface’s main screen and tools are well designed and intuitive. Also, most feature icons have brief descriptions that appear if you hold your mouse pointer over them, which will make PhotoMix easy to master.
The program offers most of the basic photo editing tools that you will find with almost every electronic scrapbooking software, but it lacks a few vital tools, namely image cropping and red-eye removal. Another notable omission is the lack of tools to add an audio track into your creations. You won’t be able to play music or narration in the background for effect. If multimedia creations are important to you, there are good options for that, but this software won’t be what you’re looking for.
This software lets you share finished scrapbooking layouts with friends and relatives by email, and fCoder also provides a website photo gallery where you can upload finished projects for others to see. You can save your finished layouts in multiple formats, including JPG, GIF and BMP. You can also pack several images together and send them as a ZIP file.
PhotoMix offers limited file-saving methods, meaning that while you can save a scrapbook as a single layout, you must separate completed projects by subject (i.e., by name or by year), create individual folders, then save the files in the correct folders.
fCoder Group equips PhotoMix with a brief but well-designed Getting Started tutorial. The software also offers a limited index search and a help section. Most of the text in the help section was useful and easy to understand, but we had a problem with the help instructions for the collage feature; the instructions were confusing and may have been from an earlier version of the software. PhotoMix also provides additional assistance by telephone and email.
PhotoMix by fCoder Group is a good fit for someone who wants digital scrapbooking software that offers simplicity more than feature power and variety. You won’t be able to create multimedia designs with a background audio track. The templates are not as sophisticated as other products in our digital scrapbooking software reviews, but they will still help you create quality digital pages that organize your memories.
