ACD FotoSlate

Photos aren't just a way of keeping a fresh memory of loved ones, friends or ways to show off different locations you've traveled to on social networks. Everywhere you look, different posters and banners are defined by images that need to go through heavy post-processing. In this regard, ACD FotoSlate comes with a few tools so you can edit and print out photos for various purposes and under different designs.

You're offered to go through with a wizard to set up the type of project, template and images you want to process. It only takes a while and it's recommended to go with it, at least the first time, because it takes you through most of what the application has to offer in steps fitted with helpful descriptions.

The application comes with rich content for its libraries, both in terms of templates to work on, as well as other minor details, such as preset pages, frames or objects. One of the first steps is choosing your project type, which can be calendar, greeting card, contact sheet, paper saver or photo album.

By the time you reach the workspace, your images and frames are ready. All that's left is to simply drag the images over the exact position on the provided previews. You're free to add more images either through the open dialog or by placing them in the built-in browser.

Further snooping through the set of features you stumble upon two more counterparts that add a lot to flexibility. One of them is a page designer that gives you the possibility to create your own templates. Starting with page layout and orientation, you end up fully customizing templates with multiple image objects under various shapes like rectangles or stars, background images or one of the available textures, as well as captions you can fill in with a default text string.

The other counterpart is an image editor, which is most helpful considering you get to work with pictures for such a variety of output types. Although not packed with too many tools or effects, the ones at your disposal are more than enough. In other words, you can thoroughly go through color management, apply sepia, blur and sharpen effects, flip, crop or set the quality.

Pages are carefully defined so you can directly print them out and start assembling your project, either based on preset configurations or your own size specifications. As such, one of the main output methods is via a printer, with additional ones to save image files as BMP, JPG and TIF, or merge them into a PDF document.

Taking everything into consideration, we can say that ACD FotoSlate is a fun and practical image processing application with which you can import, edit and build custom templates to make a simple calendar or high-quality banners. Separate built-in tools for editing, building and design let you cleverly work on each, but also quickly set up your project with a wizard. Overall, it comes in handy for an abundance of situations and that's why it deserves at least a try.