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To those with the correct understanding of how to utilize adjustments to shadows, midtones, and highlights or what a “Hue Map” might be used for, PaintShop Pro is a powerful suite of tools.
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Even the effects that are here aren’t all that impressive, many of them producing very similar results or failing to offer anything that can be considered appealing.īut that’s not the say the software is useless, far from it. PaintShop Pro just feels old in its function compared to any of its competitors. Everything has to be done manually within a dialog box and in that sense it can be hard work to create even the basic looks unless you know what you’re looking for.Įven rotations are restricted to adjusting numbers rather than directly manipulating the image. Custom settings can be saved, which is hugely important for making the same – or familiar – edits to a photo, but there are no one-click effects.
This means that there are no presets in the strictest sense of the word. This is, of course, great for the expert, who will find the finite manipulation capable with the sliders and options within dialog boxes highly empowering. Where more effort could have been spent on streamlining the process of editing, instead it’s been used on complex and complicated tools and functions. It’s clear, then, that Corel makes no bones about who PaintShop Pro is for. It’s archaic in its layout, but more than anything it’s an awkward interface to get to grips with.
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The customizable toolbox with Essentials is a great feature but many options are combined into a single icon, which ultimately means the toolbox pretty much stays the same regardless of the user’s preference.Ĭonversely, Complete is packed with screen-filling panels, and while it’s all useful to the professional user – and can be hidden if necessary – there’s still a surprisingly small amount of space dedicated to the image itself. This two-toned nature of PaintShop Pro means that you likely want to think about your understanding of editing software before making a choice, though it can be switched back if you prefer. Software has moved on from this sub-menu reliant interface layout, and this only makes it harder for any level of user to get to and use the functions they need. There are heaps of tools available but the majority are stowed away in menus at the top of the screen, regardless of which style you select. It’s a good first impression, actually, but it doesn’t quite serve its purpose as well as it is perhaps intended. The former is a brighter, clearer UI that can be customized more finitely by the user, while the latter literally switches to a darker UI more familiar with practically every photo editing software since Photoshop adopted the gray theme. The software comes with two ‘styles’, Essentials and Complete, which is almost like choosing to be part of the light side or the dark side. There’s something of a duality about PaintShop Pro. Newcomers to image editing will have their hands full, but experts will have all they could hope for.
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PaintShop Pro, then, has its pendulum swinging heavily towards the professional editing demographic and its software – available for $79.99 alongside a 30-day free trial – is crammed full of features to match this purpose.
Some will focus on providing a cloud-based service, others on vector editing or helping create great social media images, while the rest can be divided up by their respective target audiences.
Those days have since flown by, and nowadays there’s a bevy of choices and options open to the would-be photo editor, which means that it’s particularly important for developers to specialize. Imagine a time when Corel’s long-running PaintShop suite was in a two-horse race with Photoshop. Imagine a time when you could count the features of these tools on a pair of hands. Imagine a time when photo editing software came on a disk.