PaintShop Photo
Like Adobe Photoshop, over the years PaintShop Pro straddled the two worlds of graphic design and photography -- but PaintShop Photo is built very much with photographers in mind. This well-established package has always been a low-cost alternative to Photoshop with fewer features, but as time passes the feature gap has narrowed. Backed with massive experience and user-feedback, it offers a full range of effects for users.
Among the many features of PaintShop Photo Pro are Levels and Curves controls, an enhanced crop tool, depth-of-field effects, film and filter effects, a photo management center, and video capabilities. One of its key selling points is to offer "quick and easy" ways of achieving acceptable results, for example in removing distracting objects from photos, correcting perspective, or changing the color of a subject's costume. Its professional-level options include 16-bits-per-channel editing and RAW file conversion. It also has an excellent built-in Learning Center to help you get started.
Each new version of PaintShop Pro brings a wealth of new features. Version XI introduced new email features for sharing photos with friends and family; compatibility with Corel Painter and Corel Painter Essentials; and "Time Machine" to show what photos would look like if taken in another era.
Version X2 went even further: introducing the time-saving Express Lab feature that enables you to work quickly on several images without needing to open them. HDR PhotoMerge adds high dynamic range features; black & white conversion is improved; and now there are watermarking facilities, too.
Version X3 has brought additional workflow tools, with the aim of helping everyone who owns a DSLR to organize images efficiently and develop RAW files. You can now also transfer adjustments from one image to another. Somewhat confusingly, the name has also been reversed from Paint Shop Pro Photo to PaintShop Photo Pro X3.
Comment
Because of its novelty features, PaintShop Photo is still aimed more at the home user than the budding professional. Nonetheless you can produce professional-level work with it, especially for the web.
PaintShop Photo supports more than 350 camera RAW formats, and comes with both Corel Painter Photo Essentials that "turns photos into paintings in 3 easy steps" and media recovery software to retrieve images, movies and sound files from memory cards even if they have been reformatted. It is undoubtedly good value for money.
Tech info
- OS: Windows 2000 onward
- Price level: Approx. $80
Corel Corporation
Corel is one of the world's leading software companies with more than 100 million active users in over 75 countries. It has its headquarters in Ottawa, Canada.
From the same vendor:
- Paint Shop Photo Express
- Corel Digital Studio
- CorelDRAW Graphics Suite
- VideoStudio
- DESIGNER Technical Suite
- WordPerfect Office
- Painter
- WinDVD
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