Cyberlink PhotoDirector 7 Ultra - Instant Download for Windows (1 Device)

The learning curve is not bad if one has had photo editing software in the past. I have windows 7 with a dual core processor, so that may be why things move pretty slow. But it will open my Nikon RAW files from a D810, which was my main objective. It also lets one adjust and fine tune the removal of a background SO MUCH easier than adobe elements 12.

When choosing between this and Photoshop & Lightroom it was real close, but ultimately not having to pay a subscription fee pushed me over to Cyberlink PhotoDirector. It has many of the same feat as Adobe, and I've found it fairly intuitive. Plus paying less than $50 for it made it a steal.

this program can do so much and I still have a lot to learn

Kind of steep learning curve, but does virtually everything to replace Picasa and more

Love this.It's easy to use and make my photos so much nicer.

hard to understand but good program

It is prob fine for someone who knows what there doing and I don't so that is the reason for a 3 rating I just found it very hard for me

PhotoDirector 7 Ultra is great! Many advanced features to keep you busy for a very long time. A great alternative from photoshop lightroom. The best thing about this is you can load the software on all your computers and there's no subscription needed. I'm very happy with this purchase!

After downloading and trialing nearly a dozen photo programs to replace Picasa (which is no longer supported by Google), PhotoDirector and Lightroom rose to the top. Note: I see a lot of one star reviews. These days, I wonder about anyone who purchases software without trialing it first to see if it works on their machine and if they like it. Life is too short - if the trial software doesn't work on your computer, uninstall it and move on.Anyway, on PhotoDirector, I found the UI to be slightly cluttered but much better than most of the others I tried (such as FastStone, ACDSee, GIMP, Zoner, etc.). Lightroom's interface is the best of breed IMO because you can customize the UI (remove unused functions). With PD you can't. But it is pretty intuitive. The program is also pretty powerful, allowing both simple non-destructive "adjustments" as well as deeper "edits" that are saved to a separate image file if you want to keep them. However, I found the auto edit function to produce inferior results to both Picasa and Lightroom. On the plus side, PD program runs pretty fast - faster than Lightroom in my experience - though nothing I've seen comes even close to the speed of Picasa.In the end, I decided to stick with Picasa for now because it is familiar to my wife (who does most of our photo editing / management), very simple, fast, produces great results and is free. Plus we have a lot invested in existing edits, albums, ratings and tags in Picasa that at present can't be transferred to other programs. I'm hoping in the future PD or Lightroom will introduce a capability to import Picasa albums, edits, etc. At that point, I would probably switch.But if I had to recommend a photo editing / management program, it would be PhotoDirector or Lightroom. PD is much cheaper but has a bit more cluttered UI, although its editing capabilities look stronger in some ways than Lightroom's. Plus I don't like LR's subscription model and yes, you can get LR without it, but I wonder for how long. All in all, I think PD is a great value. But do yourself a favor, download it as a trial program first.PS - if you are wondering about PhotoShop Elements, I tried it. It does not scale well to high DPI displays (tiny, tiny fonts) and I dislike how the organizer and editor exist in separate modules.

very hard to use