BarbiePhoto Designer and Digital Camera

Copyright: KBkids.com

If you are hoping this will substitute for a state of the art digital camera, look elsewhere. The resolution is very low, and the picture quality marginal. It's a great kids camera, however. This camera will eliminate development costs, and allow your children the ability to really learn how to take pictures.

The camera can take up to six pictures away from the computer. The pictures must then be uploaded. The camera can not be turned off during this time, or the pictures will be erased. This camera is, therefore, not good for away from home picture shooting except on a very limited basis. When tethered to the computer the camera can take up to 25 pictures at a time. Each time a picture is taken, it is immediately shown on the screen. Two young testers started with disastrous pictures, but quickly learned to center their pictures, and control lighting.

The camera works with the Barbie CD program as it's interface. From the clipboard, your kids can select any of the photos they have taken. They can then print them, export them for use in other programs, or edit them within the Barbie program. Some of these features will take adult supervision until they get the hang of how this all works. The program interface is a bit confusing. Surprisingly, though, it took a six and ten year old only a half hour or so before they were working completely independently.

By far, the most popular feature was pasting photos into Barbie scenes. With some practice, the kids had remarkable results. In one instance, they figured out how to take a picture of a child laying in the dentist chair with his mouth open. Dentist Barbie looked as though she were ready to go to work on him. The most difficult part of the editing, is removing the background. This will take reading the manual...something many of us avoid. With some practice, both adult and child users were able to remove most of the background from their photos. The results were still a little choppy and practice is needed.

Aside from placing your photos in Barbie scenes, you can add them to a scrapbook, which has text options and photo editing options. Your children can make very nice storybooks with the scrapbook. If they are a bit older, they can create digitized flip books. By putting a series of photos together in sequence, they can create an 'animated' flip book. This takes a bit of patience, but the results can be great fun. Your children can also do general picture editing, such as creating 'negatives,' etchings, and changing the overall color of a photo.

This program is much more fun with more than one child. This is a program which would keep any small group of girls (or boys if they don't oppose Barbie) busy for a very long time. The results are limited only by their imaginations. By combining this with other programs such as Hyperstudio, or some of the creative writing products, great results can be had by very young children.

Bottom Line: Your kids will love this. You will love the fact that there are no development costs, and your children will really be using their imaginations and learning to take pictures.

Ratings: (based on KBkids.com's 4 star rating system)

Overall: 4

BrainGain: 3

FunFactor: 4

EasePlease: 3

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