I am back again with another review of an ArcSoft product. This one is ArcSoft's PhotoPrinter Pro 2000, which allows you to print many pictures, large and small, or medium, if you please, onto one 8-1/2x11 page, thus making a collage. Requirements are Windows 95, 98 or NT, 32 MB RAM, 45 MB free space and CD drive. Cost is $30.

You can choose from many printing possibilities by picking from a wide selection of layout templates to meet your particular printing need. ArcSoft also provides you with all the tools necessary to making customized horizontal, vertical and multiple photo templates.

You can create a beautiful photo collage with ArcSoft's free style feature that allows you drag and move photos into any desired position on each page with having to use predefined photo templates, which is great for making collages. You can rotate, cut, paste, copy and adjust the size of each photo or overlap them for a different effect. They have an excellent selection of frames, and a variety of shapes that you can use to enhance your picture. You can also make your picture look like a pencil sketch, or an oil painting. You can put your picture into a star shaped frame, or change the look entirely by using different ’edges’ or ’borders’.

The application works great with digital cameras and scanners. You can acquire images from your collection or use the collection that comes with the application. It supports Avery products, so you can make mailing labels, disk labels, business cards, name tags, greeting cards, etc.

As far as I am concerned, this is a must have application for those people that want to play with their own pictures as well as the graphics that come with the application. If you want to make all the types of pictures that I already mentioned, but can't go ahead because a particular application's instructions are too complicated, then this is definitely a ”gotta have” for you. This application is intuitive, but if you want to read the manual and/or instructions, you will find that it is written in layman terms, easy to understand, and written for the technical Instruction Manual challenged/handicapped. The manual is available in PDF format on the ArcSoft site, www.arcsoft.com.