Back in 2003 we had the pleasure of reviewing an early release of LumaPix
FotoFusion. It was an unusual tool that enabled you to create photo montage's
from your digital pictures with relative ease and tremendous power. Since then
the product has evolved and comes in different versions, each aimed at a
different market: one for scrapbookers, one for the average consumer who likes
to take pictures and a version for professional photographers. It is this
latter one called FotoFusion
Extreme which this review will focus on.
One of the first things that you notice when you launch FotoFusion
Extreme is its different looking interface. I guess some would call it
very "Web 2.0" but I would simply say it is slick as hell. It's very
well organized. There are a lot of features and tools in this version. This
may make it seem a little overwhelming to the average user, but once you play
with it and click on a few buttons you get it and it begins to make sense.
I suppose one of the "wow" factors of FotoFusion
Extreme is the ability to import a variety of photos and have FotoFusion
Extreme automatically create a photo montage in seconds. The results
are quite impressive. Of course, using the tools and drag and drop interface,
you can zoom in or out on key parts of photos, re-arrange them by sliding and
clicking, and even layer them on another digital photo as I have in the sample
montage below. As you can see, the end results are nothing short of
astounding. Even an amateur photographer could print these off at home on
their inkjet or photo printer and knock people's socks off.
Of course, once you finalize your project, you can also email
the finished product so your friends or clients can preview the work. I played
around with this feature and easily emailed the photo montage to my wife for
review as seen below. I also saved it as a PDF file, and the resulting file
was crisp and vibrant and loaded fast. So while the goal here would be to
generate actual prints of your work, having the ability to preview the work
with others is very helpful, especially to a pro photographer who does not
want to waste time and money printing photos nobody wants.
FotoFusion
Extreme comes with several sample layout templates which you can use
for your own projects. But what makes this an ultra cool product is the way it
is integrated with the LumaPix web site. You can click on templates and
preview new ones available in the LumaPix store, buy them, and begin working
with them in seconds. If you get lost in the application and simply can't get
past a particular screen or feature, you can click and watch online tutorials
that will step you through the process of using FotoFusion
Extreme.
With another click, you can hop over to the forum and ask
support questions of the LumaPIx staff, share projects and ideas with other
users, and just make friends with other professional photographers. The
integration and ease of access to these support tools and knowledgebase shows
really good thinking on the part of the LumaPix developers.
LumaPix has become very popular among the digital scrapbookers
and recently struck a deal with QVC to sell their software on cable
television. This has resulted in thousands of new users and a surge of
interest in the company and its products. It's understandable. FotoFusion
Extreme is a dynamic and powerful digital photography tool, and if you
are collecting your own pictures on your hard drive, it's high time you did
something constructive, fun and cool with them. Click here
to learn more about FotoFusion
Extreme now.
FotoFusion
