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Paint Shop Pro Anniversary Edition

Version 7 of the world’s favourite photo editing app takes several leaps forward, says Don Bradbury

Paint Shop Pro (PSP) seems to have been around forever, yet it’s ‘only’ ten years old. Anniversary Edition brings not only PSP up to speed (version 7.02 now) but Animation Shop as well (version 3). New users may need to spend an evening or three getting to grips with such a powerful program, but then they, and all who were previously used to using the program, will have at their disposal an application of the first magnitude.

Indeed it’s competition with Photoshop - a considerably more expensive product - that spurs PSP on to greater heights of achievement with each release. In brief, both may be used to enhance, modify, resize, or otherwise customise any picture image in a suitable format. Photoshop may be the professional’s choice (generally), but PSP is the domain of the adventurous amateur, and that, I suspect, means at least 95% of PPC readers.

Let’s look at some of the additions and improvements, on the presumption that most PC users will essentially know their way around basic image editing already.

Photo Enhancement

Under this heading, automatic adjustment of colour balance, contrast, and saturation is possible. Frowns from purists will be ignored here as the keen amateur will often be willing to let a program like PSP take care of ‘perfecting’ their images in this way. If not, then they can always use a few stages of the multiple Undo facility and try their own hand at the job.

Some digital photographers will welcome the facility to attach their camera and add some automation, but Kodak models seem to be favoured above others.

A basic flaw of small cameras is the dreaded red-eye, so removal of this defect on pictures of people and animals is a very common need, and that’s now been automated (more or less). Nice!

Lots of damaged pictures can be rescued by digitally reworking them, so restoring such (usually) ancient photos with the scratch removal tool is handy. Again, most welcome. Similarly, automatically removing noise, dust, or specks and generally improving the impact of a picture can rescue many an otherwise binable shot.

Adjustment of the picture’s so-called ‘histogram’ can be used to enhance picture detail without loss of information, and using PSP7 you can now automatically improve your videos or scanned images as well. Overly compressed images is a very common cause of ruined shots, so the option to counter that is another useful tool to have in the old armoury. Not 100% rescue, because compression is lossy, but better than nothing.

Business and Home Graphics

Under this heading you can now align, distribute, arrange, group and resize vector objects, create and save custom-styled lines with dots, dashes, and end-caps, create and save custom shapes for reuse later, and add vector shapes, lines, and text which now support gradients, textures, and patterns on both the stroke and fill.

Brushes now support gradients, textures, and patterns, and you can position objects more precisely with snap-to grids and guides. If you feel even more adventurous you can experiment with over twenty five new artistic and lighting special effects. The ubiquitous colour palette is also enhanced in version 7.

Web designers can bring to bear the Image Mapper and Image Slicer with JavaScript rollover creation support, as well as preview graphics in various web file formats in up to three browsers, and create high quality GIF animations with the new Animation Shop 3, a nice little supplementary application.

Productivity

PSP 7 brings a ‘repeat last command’ feature, rapid image identification and selection with neat thumbnail previews of picture tubes, gradients, textures, patterns, and preset shapes, all of which is welcome. You can also navigate more easily while working in a zoomed mode with the overview window palette.

Finally, protection of critical work with the customisable auto-save facility might save your bacon one of these fine days. You can also view any adjustments you make with proofing, auto-proofing, and reset options in most dialogues.

One of our favourite additions is the ability to place several images into a print preview mode in sundry automatic ways using Print Multiple Images. This counters the problem faced by many when the time comes to print several pictures on a single page. You may still have some manual juggling to do, but the bulk of the placement work will have been accomplished.

In conclusion

Paint Shop Pro version 7.02 ‘Anniversary Edition’ brings many welcome, powerful tools to the hard pressed image manipulator. At the price, it’s a recommended buy, but be prepared to spend some time with the excellent manuals before you claim mastery.

Don Bradbury

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