Kestrel GX 1.2 is an attractive image organiser which also includes a basic photo editor.

Launch the program and you'll first see its image viewer. As you browse through folders on your hard drive, so thumbnail images are displayed at the bottom of the screen, and you can preview any of these at a click.

Over on the right hand side of the program are options to rate your selected photo, or assign it to a particular category ("Beaches", "Friends", "Holidays" and so on) so it can be easily located later. You can also view the image metadata in great detail (EXIF, IPTC and GPS tags are supported), add details yourself (Notes, Author, Date, Tags, more) or search existing metadata to find the photos you need.

If you find a photo which isn't up to your usual standards, no problem, you can open it in the program's own editor. This isn't going to be competing with Photoshop any time soon, but there's more than enough power here to be useful. So, for instance, you can crop, resize or rotate a photo; adjust brightness, contrast, colours and saturation; add watermarks, apply filters and more.

And all this is extremely well presented. Kestrel GX doesn't seem like some tiny "me too" project produced by an individual; it looks and feels like more an Adobe program, very polished and professional.

Please note, the Kestrel GX trial can be launched for 20 times only. To use the program any further you must either purchase a home ($19.90) or business ($25.90) licence. More at the Kestrel store.

Version 1.3.1 brings:
•Several new effects have been added to the photo editor : filters, borders, frames, polaroid effect, vignettes, tilt-shift effect, bloom effect and auto image enhancement.