Powerful Combination of Image Organization and Sharing Solutions, the Best-in-Class Panorama Stitching and One-Click Editing Brings Pro-Quality Features to Consumer Photographers

NOTTINGHAM, UK and NASHUA, N.H. -- Dec. 15 -- Serif Ltd., a leading developer of professional and consumer-oriented desktop publishing, design and graphics software, today announced the release of Digital Photo Suite 2009. The feature-rich software suite makes it simple for everyone to organize, enhance and share their photos in new and fun ways. Combining the tagging and sorting features of Serif's new AlbumPlus X3 with the best-in-class image stitching of PanoramaPlus 3 and other one-click image editing tools, this package of products offers an unrivalled combination of features and value enabling everyone from novices to experienced photographers to take control of their growing digital photo collections.

With the option to assign tags to each image, AlbumPlus X3 streamlines the process of searching a personal image library. The software's integrated upload features enables users to post photos and slide shows directly to well-known social networking sites or emails. Also included in the suite, PanoramaPlus 3 provides unmatched image stitching to turn individual pictures into dynamic panoramas or QuickTime movies. In addition, the one-click enhancement tools included in Digital Photo Suite 2009 enables users to give portrait subjects a quick makeover by whitening teeth, applying a fake tan or removing red eye or even unwanted objects from the picture.

"Serif is delighted to announce the launch of Digital Photo Suite 2009, which offers photographers of any level of experience an affordable, fast and easy way to organize, fix, enhance and share their photos," said Gary Bates, Serif's managing director. "As the collections of images stored on our computers continue to increase, there's no better time to dive in and start managing and enhancing photos, especially if you've been put off by the complexity of other photo editors in the past."

Serif's Digital Photo Suite 2009 retails for $49.99 and is currently available for direct purchase through the Serif Web site at: http://www.serif.com/.

Easy Organization, Sharing and Print Projects

With the new AlbumPlus X3 at the heart of Digital Photo Suite 2009, images can be added to albums and tagged with keywords to organize them by theme, subject, location, color, event, star rating or date. Combined with multi-level sorting features, AlbumPlus X3 offers an efficient solution for organizing and quickly accessing large numbers of digital photos.

Photographers can quickly and easily upload images, slide shows or movies from personal libraries to popular sites like Flickr, YouTube and Facebook. Using Digital Photo Suite's integrated upload tools means that photo slide shows and movies (including transitions and music tracks) can be online and viewable in just minutes -- no need to convert formats or compress files individually.

AlbumPlus X3 also includes professionally designed print projects such as calendars, postcards, greetings cards and photo albums, which are ready to be customized by simply dragging and dropping photos straight into the design templates.

Seamless Panoramas and 360-Degree Movies

Digital Photo Suite also includes Serif's PanoramaPlus 3 which automatically stitches and crops selected photos into seamless panoramas which can be created from horizontal and vertical series of images so magnificent vistas can be viewed unobstructed. The powerful algorithms can also turn a series of images into a 360-degree QuickTime virtual reality movie.

Once a series of images has been stitched into a panorama, the software automatically crops the image to the optimal size, removing the leftover portions of the original images which fall outside the main composition and makes the panorama fit its fully-customizable frame. The final image can then be rotated and straightened to compensate for an uneven horizon and optimized for export as a 360 degree movie, a PDF or other compressed format.

Simple Editing Tools

Digital Photo Suite 2009 puts professional-quality image editing techniques in the hands of consumer photographers. First-time image editors can use the Makeover Studio, with its one-click editing tools and on-screen how-to's, to enhance portraits by whiten teeth, smoothing skin, painting away blemishes, brightening eyes, doing away with dark circles and improving skin tone with the fake tan applicator.

The QuickFix Studio provides a digital darkroom where novice photographers can quickly crop images to the desired shape to frame subjects, remove unwanted objects, straighten horizons, adjust brightness and contrast, control highlights and shadows, alter color cast or sharpen and remove red eye.

In addition, the Instant Artist feature can create stunning works of art from photos by turning digital photos into pencil sketches, stained glass, comic book drawings or watercolors or emulating famous styles including impressionist, Munchist, pointillist or expressionist paintings.

Additional Features

Additional features of Digital Photo Suite 2009 include:

• Flash Movies: Save slide shows as Flash movies for Web sites or as WMV video files

• Lossless Rotation; Display and use rotated images without compromising image quality

• Flexible Album Views: View images as albums, individually, as thumbnails on a calendar or by folder

• Back-up Albums: Back-up treasured images to disc or external drive for total peace of mind

• Optimize for Email: Resize images for transmission by email and for sending to mobile devices

• Stylish Video Discs: Create DVDs featuring customizable menus and animated backgrounds

• Screensavers & Wallpaper: Quickly set an image as the PC's desktop background or make a screensaver of favorite photos as a slide show or montage

About Serif

Serif develops and publishes the award-winning software range which includes PagePlus, PhotoPlus, DrawPlus, WebPlus, AlbumPlus, MoviePlus, PanoramaPlus and Digital Scrapbook Artist. Founded in 1987 with the aim to develop better value alternatives to high-end design and publishing packages, Serif has been repeatedly praised for its powerful yet easy-to-use software which enables businesses, educational establishments and ordinary PC users to achieve professional-quality results -- whatever their level of experience. With over 6 million customers worldwide and over 200 independent awards and accolades from respected industry publications, Serif has over 200 employees at its head office, development and European sales centre in Nottingham, UK and its North American sales operation in New Hampshire, U.S.