ArcSoft MediaImpression 1.2 aims high. It wants to be your one-stop shop for managing all of your digital media--photos, videos, even music--within a single interface. You can import, browse, search, and organize your media files, as you'd expect. But MediaImpression goes further, providing features for editing photos and creating and sharing slideshows and movies. You can easily export your media, either as e-mail attachments or photo pages, and photos can be saved as either screen savers or desktop wallpaper. You can also assemble greeting cards, calendars, and photo books.

All of these features are provided via individual add-on modules, an approach that allows ArcSoft to expand the software easily over time. This modular approach also makes for some fairly specific functionality. For example, there's a module that integrates with Google Earth to geotag your photos, and another that provides a built-in media player. This gives MediaImpression an edge over applications that adhere to a strict software release schedule. Unfortunately, some modules, such as one that uploads movies to YouTube, or one that lets you order prints from online providers, aren't yet available for the Mac. The company says those features will be added by the end of the year.

MediaImpression does a good job as a media cataloger, thanks to its strong support for adding image metadata, ratings, and tags; if you've already got a lot of existing media files, though, you may find that you have to work harder than anticipated to get them into the program.

The application's ability to integrate music and images is a plus if you want to add a soundtrack to a slideshow or a movie, but its audio features are so limited that you would never use it as your primary music player. In particular, while you can tag your music and rate songs on your computer, the program doesn't work with iPods or other handheld MP3 players.

I like that the software is extensible through additional modules right from within the program (an approach that reminds me of Firefox). MediaImpression's effects produce good results and the media converter supports a variety of common formats.

First impressions

When you first launch the program, you are presented with a Start Page, which lets you view the various media types it supports. But MediaImpression doesn't default to the standard places for storing media on the Mac--the Movies, Music, and Pictures folders; instead, you are presented with the entire folder hierarchy and must navigate to the locations where your files are stored.

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