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Jasc Software's Paint Shop Pro is an image creation, viewing and manipulation program. With Version 5.0, Jasc took its product from shareware to retail. Shareware products are only available from the Web, not from stores. You can still get Jasc's offer to try-before-you-buy version from their Web site, though. Paint Shop Pro is designed for home users who want to retouch and edit photos (turn your photos into button images and your animals into cartoon figures) that can then be used in cards, calendars, or even sent electronically to friends; business users who need to create images for fliers, brochures, and newsletters; Web designers who want to create images that will make their Web site stand out; and digital photographers who have need of a professional package that provides photography and retouching tools to manipulate exposure levels, retouch, enhance, contrast, crop, or resize any image. The program can also be used to build digital photo archives. Version 5.01 is an upgrade with some additional features and enhancements from 5.0, but the major changes were from from Version 4 to 5. The price is $99.00. Upgrades are $39.00. Jasc Web site is: http://www.jasc.com | ||
Serious beginners, intermediate, and advanced PC users. For beginners, it provides you with all the painting and image-editing features you need, yet it is easy to use, intuitive, and fun. For help learning the program, you can use any number of options: the User's Guide that comes with the package is very complete and includes tutorials. Jasc Software has additional tutorials on their Web site. This is a very popular program that has a wide variety of users who want to share their information, so for those of you who really want to delve into Paint Shop Pro, there are many, many third-party tutorial sites on the Web that explain, step-by-step how to use the program. These tutorials range from teaching you how to use the basic features of the program to more advanced techniques of creating and using masks. You can read them on-line and/or print them for later use. I used a tutorial from the Web for the gold section headings. Some parties even let you download the images they have used in their tutorials to make it easier to follow the tutorials. Jasc Software conveniently provides links to these third-party sites for you. http://www.jasc.com/tsites.html The numerous users groups are also helpful for solving problems. Intermediate and advanced PC users will welcome the new features such as the layers palette and digital camera support that make this program a very professional package at a fraction of the price of other similar programs. You can create a true layered graphical image. | ||
As I mentioned above, the major changes in Paint Shop Pro were made from Version 4 to 5. I will briefly describe the updates from 5.0 to 5.01 in this section, though; and then I will fully discuss the more significant changes made in Version 5.0 in a separate section below. New Features
Enhancements
Corrections Changes and corrections were made to: Paint Shop Pro Browser; resize and bicubic resample methods; drop shadow effect; text tool, sharpen filter, resizing program window, undo tool, and pasting a graphic as a new selection feature. |
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Below is a description of some of the new features in Paint Shop Pro that
change it from a good program to a great program. The Picture Tube options palette lets you control how the objects appear.
You can
make your own Picture Tubes by creating a grid of cells on a transparent
background and then
filling each cell with an image. You then export the file as a Picture
Tube and it is added to the list of tubes on the control palette. For
the dog image, I started with the original dog photo that was used to
make the glowing blue dog above, cut out the dog, filed him with different
linear fills and created a cartoon dog. I then used the cartoon dog
to create a tube. I opened a new file, filled the background layer using
the dog picture tube, placed the text on another layer, used the extortion
tool to give depth to the text, and then applied a frame. For the foot
image, I used the black foot tube that came with Paint Shop Pro, changed
the opacity and blend modes and produce an interesting glowing feet
effect. |
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Arithmetic Function--This is feature
that truly creates unique images. I used the image arithmetic function
to combine data from two images; I used the figure, water, and
dog photo (my own) and
a photo of a building from the Paint Shop Pro CD to create a third image
that is a product of the source image's color data. Different formulas
will result in different effects. You can combine images using the following
options: add, subtract, multiply, difference, lightest, darkest, average,
or, and. An interesting image can be created by combining the arithmetic
function and effects and then changing the opacity and blend mode. Filters--they can enhance any image. You can select filters by choosing them from the filter browser or from the image menu. The filter browser is a convenient way to preview filters. When you select a filter from the filter name list the sample preview displays its effect on the image.
Effects--the buttonize, chisel, cutout effect, and drop shadow effects are nifty.
Color Adjustment Commands--There
are three commands that I used extensively, alone and in conjunction
with the edge filter effects. You can create popart or cartoon figures
of your friends with these color adjustment commands. The face image
to the right is an example.
Plug-ins--There are many third-party plug-ins that work with Paint Shop
Pro. I mentioned Photo/Graphic Edges from Auto F/X and PhotoFrames from Extensis above. Once you use filters, you
are addicted, especially to frames. With PhotoFrame, you can put unique frames around your photos. But Photo/Graphic
Edges not only allows you to apply frames, but it also has great special effects that can turn photos into one-of-a-kind
images. Both of these programs were used to frame the images in this review. Alien Skin Software is now including
a copy of Paint Shop Pro 4.14 with its Eye Candy program, another plug-in. You can then purchase the upgraded version
of Paint Shop Pro for a reduced price. |
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Inclusion of Animation Shop which is a GIF Animation program. Very easy to use. You can create excellent animated GIF's with special text and image effects such as fades, blurs, wipes, and spirals. You can use the program to create banners. | ||
Paint Shop Pro 5.01 is an image editor that offers a powerful suite of image-editing tools at a fraction of the price of some other programs. Its image editing tools really cover a wide range of picture adjustments and corrections. It is easy to use, the interface is clean and very intuitive, yet it is highly customizable, with extensive control over such elements as color. The compositing tools are also powerful. With the addition of the layers palette, including blend modes and transparency levels in Version 5.01, it is impressive. Making custom Picture Tubes out of photos of your friends' animals and creating images like the cartoon dog will delight them. Click on the blue/green dog to view a variety of dogs and what you can make with picture tubes and filling an area with a gradient. Before investing on one of the more expensive image-editing programs, you might want to try Paint Shop Pro 5.01. It just might have all the tools you need at a better price. | ||
Tangent control handles with Bezier curve tool; Snap to guides; More text tool options. |
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Processor: 486 or higher (Pentium recommended) Operating System: Windows 95 or Windows NT Workstation 4.0 or later Memory: 12 MB (32 MB recommended) Hard Disk Space: 10 MB (40 MB recommended) 256 color display adapter (24-bit recommended) Pressure-sensitive tablet recommended |
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Photographs: Thanks
to Joan and Stan for supplying photos of themselves and their animals. |
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