Corel Paint Shop Pro Photo X2
£79.00
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With Adobe dominating the photo-editing market with Photoshop and Elements, it’s easy to forget there are other software packages available. Paint Shop Pro from Corel has always had a loyal following since its initial shareware days. This latest incarnation is Version X2 (version 12) and the inevitable question is whether it offers a viable alternative to its rivals?
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Paint Shop Pro (PSP) has always been stacked with features to match the more expensive editing packages. You’ll find familiar tools such as the Clone tool, Red-eye remover, Straighten tool, Paint brush, Levels plus many others. It’s hard to believe you can access advanced tools such as the Pen tool, Curves, a Channel Mixer and CMYK support – all for less than £100. However: there’s no RAW converter. Though PSP X2 will open up a RAW file, you lose any advantages of shooting in RAW. There is, however, the chance to control exposure with a new option called Express Labs, offering Brightness, Shadow, Highlight and Saturation adjustments and a sampling point to control White Balance.
Corel has revamped the screen toolbars and user menus, going for a modern graphite look. It works well – a breeze to navigate – and the Learning Centre is very handy for beginners. Click on any tool and it’ll explain what it does and how to use it, often with a couple of helpful tips thrown in for good measure. Sadly, once you’ve mastered the basics, the software is painfully slow – especially when trying to preview any adjustments. If you select Curves, for example, a dialogue box offers you a Before and After image, but won’t let you assess results until you’ve committed to them. Effectively you’re often editing blind.
It’s also slow at refreshing an image, causing ‘ghosting’, and file-handling is sluggish, too. We found it took 32 seconds to open a 200MB TIFF file, compared to just six seconds in Elements 6. Add all these issues together and the user experience becomes quite frustrating... So although it looks like excellent value at just £80, there are some crucial things missing. You can excuse the missing RAW converter, but the pedestrian performance and lack of real time preview is just annoying.
More info:
www.corel.com