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March 03, 2007
[ COREL PAINTSHOP PRO PHOTO X1 ]
Price: $200
Highly recommended
The low-down: For those who baulk at the stratospheric price of Adobe’s Photoshop CS2 this program is an attractive alternative.
Corel have added the word “photo” to the program title to indicate that it is now aimed at the digital photographer. It is not all that different from Paintshop Pro 10 but there is more emphasis on instant photo fixes and picture file organisation.
The quickest way to correct exposure, contrast and colour balance is by clicking on Enhance Photo/One Step Photo Fix. It won’t always produce the best results but most of the time it will produce a corrected image that can be made perfect with a little fiddling.
Smart Photo Fix allows for more user input into the correction process. And all the other necessary controls, such as curves, levels, sharpening, noise removal etc are provided. It is a more comprehensive image editing program than Photoshop Elements 5 -- for instance it does incorporate macros, or Scripts, as Paintshop calls them. There is a large international community of Paintshop Pro users which means that there is a rich lode of useful scripts on the internet.
Like this: Paintshop Pro has always been excellent value for money and it has just got better. There is nothing cut-down about the program. It will operate in auto mode or give the user full control.
Dislike that: The interface is not quite as elegant or as intuitive as Photoshop -- but that is a matter of learning by using.
Parting shot: This application can be downloaded in trial form from the Corel web site.The trial is fully functional but time limited to 30 days, which is long enough to get a good feel for the program.
For the digital photographer the only reason to pay for Adobe Photoshop is that it is the standard photo editing software. For anyone wanting a much cheaper but fully competent program Paintshop Pro Photo XI is the way to go.
Posted by terry at March 3, 2007 12:03 AM
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