Feature enhancements in the new version include the ability to share projects with mobile devices, with support for Apple, Android, Blackberry, Mac and PCs, and the introduction of WYSIWYG in-canvas text editing.

Text attributes, such as bold/italic, font, skew, spacing and rotation, can be edited per character while special effects such as embossing and blurring can also be added on an individual character basis.

Text flows can fit into shapes while language support now includes Hebrew, Arabic and Japanese. PDF export now supports layers and vector text, which is important for very fine text, such as in business cards, or very large text, such as in grand format advertising.

Preset book sizes have been added for the following photobook manufacturers: Bay Photo, Blurb, Bridgeport, Finao, HP MagCloud, Leather Craftsmen, Millers/Mpix, White House Custom Colour, and Zookbinders.

LumaPix said the advantage of its software over photo album companies' free layout tools was that it is "manufacturer agnostic" meaning it can be used to design and reshape albums to match multiple different output specs.

FotoFusion is available in German, Portuguese and Mandarin, as well as English and trial versions can be downloaded from www.lumapix.com

Pricing for FotoFusion 5 starts from around $120 to $300 (£75 to £185) depending on the features selected.