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We clicked with:
Auto Preserve
Express Lab
Thinify
Black and White Filter
Shots in the dark:
Eye Dropper
Price Comparison:
Paint Shop Pro Photo X2
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Corel has updated Paint Shop Pro. The new version - X2 - takes on Adobe's photo frontline Photoshop and Lightroom programs and this time it's a very fair fight. Paint Shop Pro Photo X2 is a serious contender now for Photoshop and at a fraction of the price.
The new Auto Preserve in X2 is worth the upgrade alone. You'll never mistakenly destroy an original again. The Paint Shop Pro X2 Express Lab is also a great upgrade. It will save time for those of us who take hundreds of photos and want to crop or fix minor problems quickly. It saves you having to open each photo file individually. The rest of the roll-call of improvements is mostly 'nice to haves', but at least all the changes are improvements - there's not much that we'd call duff.
Self-Preservation society
Paint Shop Pro X2's new Express Lab feature allows you to work on several images quickly. In previous versions, you would have to open each photo individually to perform basic functions (unless you used a batch process).
Now, all you have to do is load your folder of photos into the express lab and then select your first photo. You can deploy a range of useful tools including crop, rotate and even some makeover tools, like the clone tool (useful for removing dust spots from a series of images).
Once you move on to the next image X2 prompts you to save asking you if you want to Auto Preserve your image. When you answer 'yes', it creates a subfolder called 'Corel Auto-Preserve' in the folder you are currently in, and places the originals in there. Auto Preserve also works in the main working space of Paint Shop Pro X2.
With this year's mostly awful weather, it's a struggle to find any time to produce a high contrast set of photos to test out the High Dynamic Range section of the software. A little tip here - don't try to do this on a scene with things that are moving, unless you want to turn ducks into little ducky ghosts, for example. However, I took a number of sets of photos and imported them into the HDR merge feature.
The system had some trouble recognising the true EV variations. In the example above the first photo should have been -1, the second 0 and the third +1. It did the same with all the other files I tried too. It did a credible job on the photos though and it has a useful align photos feature.
Black and White Filters
Paint Shop Pro X2's Black And White filter works really well. Just click on the colour wheel and you can see what it will do to your photo. As a start there is a Suggest Color button which seems to assess the main colours in the photo then choose and appropriate colour filter. Even if you don't like its default choices, there is plenty of scope for experimentation.
MakeOver Tools
Two new tools appear in this incarnation - Eye Drops and Thinify. The Eye Drops tool is designed to whiten the eyes of a sitter, but it has a tendency to whiten parts of the face, too. This is probably because the eye has similar shades of pink as the face. You need to select round the eye in order to keep it restricted (The Toothbrush tool also has this tendency) - use the dodge and desaturate instead.
The new Thinify tool is brilliant, fascinating and a lot of fun. Paint Shop Pro X2 allows you to be as subtle or as wild as you want. Just click on the mid region of the person, and Thinify removes pixels from the picture to 'slim' the subject down. If you go over the top they will disappear right up their own pixel.
The blemish remover tool has been improved. It does a neat job of removing blemishes without making it obvious. Then, there's the improved Suntan tool - it's OK, but not that useful, unless you like orange skin.
New Look and Picture Tubes
It's questionable if the new look is much to shout about. Moving to a dark grey interface does give Paint Shop Pro X2 Lightroom/Lightzone chic, and is supposed to draw your attention on the photo rather than the interface, but whether this actually improves your post-processing remains unconfirmed.
Picture Tubes are a love/hate thing for photographers. Some love the idea of essentially adding photo-realistic clip art to their images; others think it at best pointless. If you are in the first group, you'll warm to having 30 more Tubes to play with; the rest may summon up a resoundingly apathetic 'meh!' at the addition.
Text Extras
Finally, there are substantial improvements to the text handling section of Paint Shop Pro X2. Although this might seem of limited appeal, there is a new Watermark tool, which will prove useful to anyone who posts on the internet and wants to actively preserve their rights. You need to create a text image with a transparent background to put over your image. X2 makes it very simple to do a watermark and could save you a bit of time if you tend to do this a lot. It's embedded into the file though… so thank goodness for AutoPreserve.
You can also apply several different effects to text using Layer Styles. There is emboss, outer glow, bevel, inner glow, reflection etc. It's easy to use and if you tried to apply these effects to text previously you will appreciate the ease of use of this bit of the program.
Ultimately...
Each version of Paint Shop Pro has moved it closer to being a challenger to Photoshop instead of Elements big competition. And Paint Shop Pro X2 shows no sign of slackening off the pace. It's keenly priced and more than delivers the goods. It lives up to the 'Pro' side of its name. The game just got raised in photo software on the PC.
