This must be one of the few software markets where Microsoft is not a well known name. Although Digital Image Suite 2006 is the latest in a line of editing products stretching back to Picture It!, it has suffered from its early life as a bundle with Works. This is a shame, as the new application is certainly worthy of consideration.

As the name implies, this is a suite of programs, comprising the Editor, Library and a separate application called Photo Story. Photo Story is aimed at people who like to do creative things with their images and it acts like a rostrum camera, so you can pan around them and add backing music and narrations for a slide show.

Many of the same features are highlighted in the helpful, English-accent videos supplied with the product, though the program doesn't have all the easy-to-use, purpose-made tools of Microsoft's competitors. You need to use Gaussian blur, for example, rather than the blemish tool of Photoshop Elements or Paint Shop Pro, and adjust colour saturation to whiten teeth. You can achieve most of the same effects as with the best editors here, but paradoxically for a product obviously aimed at the less experienced photo buff, you need to be a bit more technically savvy.

Where Digital Image Suite 2006 excels is in its organisation. The screen layout uses a replaceable tool strip down the left-hand side which offers first menus of tools and then sliders and instructions as you come to use specific ones.

This simplicity is carried through to the Library organiser, which makes it very easy to file and categorise your images so you can retrieve them easily. You can create custom labels to attach to images, so you can pull out, for example, all images taken on holiday this year that include your partner or children.