There’s a wealth of entry level image-management suites available, both as free downloads and commercial products, but that hasn’t stopped Serif pitching in with Albumplus X2.

If you’re wondering, the X2 tag applies to Serif’s Vista-certified products, so early adopters need not worry about operability on Microsoft’s latest OS.

The other quandary might be whether it’s worth paying nearly £40 for a piece of software that ostensibly does what a fair few freeware titles can do. After, all, Google’s Picasa2, Kodak’s Easyshare and more are freebies, so why shell out? Well, Albumplus does have a few tricks up its sleeve.

On launch, the software searches your system for supported file types and presents their thumbnails in an uncluttered album view, or variety of calendar views. You can add custom tags, rate images out of five, view Exif info, flip, rotate and apply quick fixes; all of which are pretty standard features.

The Create & Share icon reveals interesting options, however. Alongside standard printing and slideshow creation, there’s the means to create photo discs, VCD slideshows, send images to mobile phones and quickly create wallpaper and screensavers.

Templates in the projects section are actually quite tasteful and comprise various well-designed themes for calendars, greetings cards, postcards and photo albums. Unfortunately, they’re awkward to use in that you can’t drag and drop to reposition an image in a template - it’s a case of nudging the imported picture with on-screen icons.

Niggles aside, Albumplus X2 is one of those apps that doesn’t need a manual. Everything is straightforward, making managing and searching through an image archive hassle-free.

For those seeking a Vista-certified, basic image-management and enhancement package offering a diverse number of output options, it’s worth a look. But Albumplus X2 could struggle when pitted against Acdsee’s lower-priced Photo Manager 9 and Kodak’s free Easyshare, for which there are already Vista versions available. Of course, there's also Vista’s built-in Photo Gallery.