There once was a time when taking a picture was a pretty straightforward thing, and what one ended up with was a simple photograph--nothing more, nothing less. "Photo editing" usually meant something along the lines of drawing a mustache on a 35mm photo with a permanent marker. Nowadays, though, it's possible for people to use a computer to alter digital camera photographs, adding funny, cute, or dramatic effects to them to spice things up. That's where PhotoShine really shines through.

There are alternatives to PhotoShine out there, but who wants to spend months becoming an expert in PhotoShop? And the amount of money one would pay for a license to use PhotoShop is exorbitant, especially for people with simple needs who just want to add text or some lighting or touch-up effects to their photos. For these needs, it makes more sense to use a more lightweight free digital image editing program.

The Gimp is another example of image editing software out there, and it's even free to use. But it's a huge program that take forever to load up, and it suffers from even more non-intuitive controls and un-user-friendliness than PhotoShop. In short, neither the Gimp or PhotoShop are a very good choice for regular people who just want to spice up personal photographs.

Fortunately, PhotoShine is available for the rest of us. With PhotoShine, users can add all sorts of cool effects and filters to their photos, such as emboss, posterize, and lens flare, albeit using different names for those effects. Not only that, but text overlay and color adjustments are also available. For those who aren't photography or graphics professionals but still want to kick their photos up a notch or two, PhotoShine is the perfect solution.