Laser Eye Surgery

For most of us, Elements will do quite nicely, and its price puts the software in competition with Apple Computer's IPhoto on many levels.

Elements offers more tools than IPhoto, and some may claim there's a steeper learning curve.

However, those extra features are worth the effort to learn if you want to take your home photography to the next level.

One of the nice features of Elements is its use of Adobe's "Bridge" photo organizer, which works rather like IPhoto to collect various picture files and allow you to browse to find the photos you want.

You can search photos based on meta-data such as the use of flash, a specific f-stop or camera model, making it easier to find a range of photos in a sea of images.

These search "filters" can be stored for easy reuse.

There are some nice additional editing tools in the new product: a "Magic Selection Brush" lets you select various parts of a photo to edit or adjust, while the "Magic Extractor" can highlight a subject from a photo - your dog, say - and let it be used in other pictures.

The program also offers a tool to provide "the most realistic skin colors in moments," while a new straighten tool can correct tilted ...

'Laser refractive surgery has developed almost beyond recognition'Nice (the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence) has this month given the green light to laser refractive surgery, pronouncing it safe enough for NHS use, though for cost reasons it should not be routinely available.

Although Nice appears to have overcome its earlier concerns about long-term safety, the new guidance does not gloss over the risks, which include "failure to achieve the expected improvement in unaided vision, development of new visual disturbances, corneal infection and corneal flap complications".

Around 100,000 The vast majority of patients now opt for Lasik (laser assisted in situ keratomileusis) which involves cutting a thin flap in the cornea and removing a small amount of tissue underneath with a laser in order to reshape the eye and improve focusing.

"Laser refractive surgery has developed almost beyond recognition and we can now eliminate many of the complications that used...