Corel Paintshop Photo Pro X3

Paintshop is Corel’s main, long-standing photo-editing software for home

users.The company also has a new, cheaper

Digital

Studio (at £59) which provides basic tools for editing both photos and

video, but the editing tools in Paintshop Photo Pro are much more powerful.The program works in three main modes. When it’s first launched Paintshop

opens its Organiser window, which allows users to quickly preview photos and

organise them by adding ratings, or keywords such as ‘sport’ or ‘holiday’ so

that they can be quickly located later.

Once you have selected a photo there are two different editing modes that are

activated using the buttons in the top-right corner of the Organiser window. The

Express Lab button opens a new window with simple tools for adjusting settings

such as brightness, contrast, and colour balance, along with a set of ‘makeover’

tools for removing skin blemishes, whitening discoloured teeth and even adding a

bit of fake suntan to pale skin.One interesting feature here is the ability to ‘capture’ the changes made to

one photo so they can be applied to other photos as well. If you have a batch of

dark photos that were all shot at night-time you might adjust the brightness on

one, capture those settings and apply them to all the other photos in the batch

– instantly editing the entire collection of photos all at once.For more advanced editing control users can click the Full Editor button that

opens up Paintshop’s full range of editing tools. This new version of Paintshop

includes some powerful new features such as the Object Extractor. This makes it

easier to select areas of fine detail, such as the hair on someone’s head, so

that you can copy that part of the image and combine it with another image.Another variation on this theme is the Smart Carver tool which is used to

completely remove part of an image while still leaving the background of the

image intact. Corel has also thrown in a copy of Painter Photo Essentials – an

arty program that specialises in making your photos look like hand-painted

artwork.These new features all work well. Our only complaint is that the poor

documentation provided sometimes left us a bit confused. There is a Learning

Centre palette within the Full Editor window that provides tips for a number of

tools, but many of the more advanced tools, such as the Smart Carver, are poorly

explained even by the more complete help files found on Corel’s website.So while Paintshop Photo Pro X3 does contain an impressive range of

photo-editing tools, newcomers will need to be have a lot of patience in order

to get to grips with the program.

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