Animator Professional has a somewhat deceiving name because it consists of a number of tools working together under 3 different interfaces: Animator (for combining still images with sounds into an animation/video), Photo Magic (re-touching of images, image effects), and Audio-Video-Image Processor (conversions, image frames extraction, sound extraction).

The image-editing is not great, but it is OK for basic use - it is nowhere near the functionality of Photoshop, but it is quite reasonable and intuitive for a casual user.

However, there are several areas in which Animator excels:

- Turning still images into animations
You simply import the images, add sounds, and presto - you have the animation ready!

- Screen capture
This program is not marketed as a screen-capture tool and yet it has the greatest array of options I've ever seen. Multiple manual and automated captures are great, and I love the free-hand capture with the magnifier for precision work!

- Animated and still-image effects
The list of special effects is as long as your arm, and being able to apply various parameters and see the effect in action BEFORE applying it is fantastic!

- Image mapping and web tools
Creating an image map with hot spots for a webpage was a breeze, and way better than the equivalent Dreamweaver tool. Also, using side-by-side comparison I was able to shrink an already compressed image by further 45% with no visible image degradation.

- Conversions
Converting videos from one format into another is always a pain in the neck. Animator handles this job beautifully, with the support for batch conversions for images, sounds, animations and videos. My Toshiba video camera saves the videos in an MPEG format which none of my editing packages (Captasia and Adobe Premiere) supports. With the Animator I was able to batch-convert a whole bunch of videos overnight into AVI format for editing.

Verdict: Animator Professional is an exceptional tool - it is very easy to use (I have not even opened tha manual) and it delivers. Highly recommended.