Microsoft develops digital photo suite

Microsoft has unveiled Digital Image Suite 10, designed for consumers to organise, edit, share and store digital photos, including those taken with cameraphones.

The product combines the organisational tools from Microsoft's Digital Image Library 10 with the editing functionality of its Digital Image Pro 10.

Improved Auto Fixes include Exposure Auto Fix, which automatically adjusts the brightness and contrast of an image, and Colour Auto Fix, which analyses and corrects the colour and light in the image by changing the source lighting, saturation and colour balance.

Digital Image Suite's third Auto Fix is designed to improve pictures taken on cameraphones, where the quality of images is often low. The Camera Phone Auto Fix is designed as a one-click fix that specifically addresses colour casting noise issues - problems that frequently plague cameraphone images.

The digital photo application also includes improved toolsets for colour and lighting correction.

Using the bundled Colour and Saturation toolset and the Exposure and Lighting toolset, users can adjust everything from the colour temperature to the source lighting and saturation levels of their pictures. Both toolsets also provide a Levels and Curves tool to alter luminosity, colour and saturation properties of an image.

"As customers purchase increasingly advanced cameras, they need imaging software that can keep up with their hardware," said Jeanna Peterson, group product manager in the home retail division at Microsoft, in a statement.

"The panoramic stitching available in Digital Image Suite 10 provides the cutting-edge technology customers demand while maintaining the ease of use they expect from Microsoft digital imaging products."