Some photo buffs will be pleased to see support for Raw camera formats (unprocessed, uncompressed data), but the collection of filters for touching up and reviving flawed photos are worth the price of the program. We admit to being bewildered by one change listed in the docs: “What was labeled the Layers palette in previous versions is now called the Layers palette.” Sounds like an improvement that originated in the Department of Redundancy Department.įrankly, I was awed by Paint Shop Pro’s digital photography features. Version 9 adds the ability to roll up palettes and pop them open or closed via a single click to save valuable screen real estate.Ī few minor improvements, such as the ability to associate a script to an icon and a more convenient Mixer palette for creating and mixing colors, make the interface easier to use. Paint Shop Pro has 10 palettes, and the workspace can become so cluttered with little boxes that it becomes impossible to do any actual work. You can easily scroll through the images with the backward and forward buttons - a much nicer way to wander through multiple documents than using the Window menu command. With the History palette, you can step backwards and forwards through your actions and save everything to a script to replay at another time (see Figure 1).įigure 1: The New History palette lets you retrace your editing steps, delete selected actions, save them to scripts, and apply them to other open documents.Īnother new feature that I really like is the ability to arrange open images in tabs at the top of the workspace. Photoshop has had this feature for years, and it’s nice to see this addition. Major improvements to the interface include a History palette that records every action you take while editing an image. Now that Corel Corporation has acquired Jasc Software, Paint Shop Pro’s developer, perhaps the application will get newfound respect. The list of additional features in version 9 runs four pages long, making the program a serious competitor to Adobe Photoshop.

There’s something for every PC user in here - general image editing, photo touchup, Web art, and new natural media tools for the artistically inclined. Combining an extensive range of bitmap-editing tools with some nice vector drawing and animation features, this program is a steal at $119.

Paint Shop Pro 9 is a mature and very impressive application. These days it costs more than $20, but it’s also more than the cheapskate’s alternative to Photoshop. Paint Shop Pro started life as a no-frills shareware program for no-frills image editing.

Paint shop pro 9