Overview

Corel PaintShop Pro (PSP), previously PaintShop Photo Pro, is a program used for editing images and digital photos. It includes support for a wide variety of RAW digital camera image formats and has advanced editing features for intelligent cropping, layer-based editing, batch image processing, HD video generation, and Web publishing. PaintShop Pro also includes digital photo management features and can backup images to CDs or DVDs.

User Interface

The PaintShop Pro user interface is divided into Edit, Adjust, and Manage sections. The Edit section includes a drawing canvas surrounded by tools for free-form editing. The Adjust section allows users to touch up digital photos and the Manage section provides tools for organizing, tagging, and rating images.

Capabilities

Users can import images and RAW digital photos or create images from scratch. Several built-in effects allow users to quickly modify the color, tone, brightness, and contrast of digital photos. Once images are imported and edited, they can be maintained using the Manage view, which stores metadata, such as custom tags, a user rating, and other information for each image. The Manage view allows users to view image thumbnails and sort and filter images using search keywords or other parameters, such as the creation date and file format.

Advanced PaintShop Pro features include the HDR (High Dynamic Range) Module, Simple Carver, and Object Extractor tools. The HDR Module allows photographers to create surrealistic images by adjusting color or exposure, or by removing distractions. The Simple Carver and Object Extractor tools allow users to isolate and extract portions of images as well as expand or contract graphics without distortion. Extracted objects may be combined with other images or backgrounds using the layer-based editing features.

User Community

PaintShop Pro is used by home users, professional photographers, and graphic designers. Home users can leverage the built-in photo sharing capabilities by burning photo DVDs or publishing photo albums to the Web. Professional users may benefit from PaintShop Pro's advanced color editing and batch processing features. Although PaintShop Pro does not provide some of the high-level editing features included with Adobe Photoshop, it still provides a robust set of features for home and professional digital photo editing at an affordable price.

Screenshots:

Edit	Adjust	Manage
Workspace Customization	Open File Types	Save As File Types

Features:

• Digital photo editing with support for raw digital camera formats
• Manage view for photo organization and management
• Adjust view for quick, effective photo editing
• Batch image editing options
• Advanced object extraction and layer-based editing
• Support for many legacy image file formats

System Requirements:

Windows

• Windows XP w/ latest service packs, Vista, or 7
• 1.5GHz processor
• 1GB RAM
• 1GB free disk space
• 1024x768 24-bit color display
• CD-ROM drive
• Internet connection for online features