Photo presets - thoughts?

I've played around with the photo presets and sometimes they provide a quick fix or a starting point for further edits. I do think a lot of them tend to have a blue cast to them.
Has anyone else used them and found them useful?

Not a big fan.

what do you think that Xara could do to improve them?

Have them make average photos look above average. A vintage look is fun. For a newsletter or an ad that is keyed on nostalgia. Other than that it is not of much use. It is a one off.

Most people use some form of digital camera and they take photos that are lacking in contrast, and have very poor dynamic range. Even if it was just one filter that could bring out the very most in a digital photo it would be better than the entire suite of effects filters.

I used some of those. I didn't get a feeling of blue per-say, but it is easy to go there. A lot of film process tends to go either sepia or blue when it's done wrong/stylized, as far as I can tell. I suppose they were trying to emulate real film properties, rather than trying to emulate what looks 'good'...if that makes sense. I don't do much work with photos (which might be why I forgive a lot of stuff that other people don't, I guess...lol) in terms of just doing minor editing, so maybe don't listen to me. lol

Yes I had a play with them not much use! I have better filter apps on my phone, like Aviary and SnapEm. Tried Retrica and Camera 1080 but they soon came off they were like Xara's efforts not much change. Like Gary states pictures from mobiles lack depth in the dynamic range so I use on my iPad Adobe Photoshop Express which is OK maybe not as simple as the Android ones to use.

I tend to agree with what you are all saying. I'd like to see Xara try to emulate what ON1 software has done with their dynamic contrast filter. It gives you control over 3 separate areas of detail small, medium and large and it has separate sliders that like xara's also have input boxes you can type into.