It's also not clear how Ashampoo Photo Commander will attempt to stitch together a panoramic shot from two or more photos; the "panorama" turned out to be just one photo connected along one edge to the next photo in the sequence, with no ability to manually match up details or otherwise smooth out stitching together of the images. By contrast, programs like do a much better job of "finding" landmarks in photos that help stitch them together into a true panorama. I also ran into a problem while cancelling a calendar creation in-progress that caused the program to display an error message in Korean.

I had issues with the red-eye removal feature. To use the feature, you select it underneath the Quick Fix category, then you can use either an ‘automatic' mode or a ‘manual' mode. No matter which you choose, you use a tool that looks like a crop tool to select the eye which needs tweaking. Using the Automatic mode, the program was always able to fix one of the two red eyes in a sample photo perfectly, but it just couldn't detect the red in the other eye, which was slightly darker than the first. The manual mode was able to correct the color of the more troublesome eye. Of course, this is very photo-dependent; I found it amusing to tweak pictures of a five year old so he had different-colored, David Bowie eyes, but you might not.

One final note: During the course of installing the product, the wizard will prompt you to choose between the Express Installation and Custom Installation. I don't normally recommend that people choose the custom options unless they have specific needs, but in this case, the custom installation permits you to deselect the installation of something called the MyAshampoo toolbar, a Web browser plug-in that, in my opinion, didn't add a lot of value to the package. Antivirus vendors don't consider the toolbar adware or spyware, but a few consider it a "potentially unwanted app." I didn't find the browser toolbar a welcome addition at all, and the custom MyAshampoo Search that replaced my browser's home page was just not as useful as Google.

If you're willing to provide Ashampoo with your e-mail address, the company extends the trial period for an additional 30 days, so you can stave off the coach turning back into a pumpkin for an extra month. If you still like Ashampoo Photo Commander 9 enough to pay for it, $50 (or $30 for an upgrade from a previous version) isn't a bad price, but the program needs some significant updates before I feel comfortable recommending it.