Paint Shop Pro 9: just what a digital photographer needs

As a budding digital photographer (I just got a Sony T-1), I'm of course on the lookout for some easy to use tools for my "digital darkroom." I don't need any super-expensive packages like Adobe Photoshop CS, but I do want something easy to use that can help me create the photos I wish I could have captured in the first place. That's where Paint Shop Pro 9, Paint Shop Studio, and Photo Album 5 from Jasc come into the picture. This review is focused on the "newbie" perspective; while I'm an experienced digital photographer and computer user, this is my first experience with advanced photo editing software.

My first impression when I opened the box was simply, "Wow!" While only one CD is required for the application, the box is a heavy one due to the full manual provided for Paint Shop Pro. That's great news for beginning users, since so many applications today come with nothing more than a PDF help file on the CD.

The manual covers everything you could possibly want to know about the application in great detail, including screenshots, step-by-step instructions, helpful hints, and an index. The manual isn't the sort of book you'll want to read from beginning to end (unless you're hopelessly addicted to software manuals), but it does serve as a great reference.

New users will want to start with Paint Shop Creations: Demystifying Digital Photography by Dave Huss. This lushly illustrated bonus book is truly a treasure trove of tips and information. It covers topics such as digital camera basics, taking better pictures, organizing photos, editing techniques, and creative ways to share your digital photos with friends and family. It's an excellent read that I highly recommend, well worth the list price of $15.95, though Jasc currently has it on sale for only $10.95.

After installation, it's time to start learning how to use the software. Paint Shop Photo Album 5 gets very high marks for having powerful features that are easy to use. When you first run the program, a helpful product tour window will pop up. It covers the basics, after which you're left on your own to organize your photos, make basic edits, and learn about online services that let you get prints and photo-based gift items such as mugs, t-shirts, and even hardcover personalized photo albums.

Photo Album is a snap to use; I especially like the fact that it's not necessary to "import" your images, as is the case with Adobe Photoshop Album. Jasc's program simply takes a couple of seconds to scan, and presents you with a familiar directory listing, much as you would see in Windows. Tabs on the left allow you to quickly go between the browser view, Info, Keywords, Search, and Album views.

Keyword view deserves special mention, since it provides another way to organize your photos. You can create your own custom set of keywords according to who's in the picture, special events, travel, etc. which you can then use with the Search function to find exactly the pictures you need.

Click on a folder to see the pictures inside, and when you double-click on a particular image, you can perform some basic editing functions. Unless extremely advanced editing is necessary, you might find that Photo Album 5 does everything you need. You can zoom in, rotate, crop, adjust color balance, add text, and fix redeye problems caused by the camera flash.

It's perfect for quickly cropping photos to use on eBay, for emailing photos to friends, etc. There's also a cool slideshow feature, as well as an option that does a very good job of stitching up panoramic images. I tried it out with a few closely related images from one of my favorite artists and got some very nice results with a minimum of effort. Creative users will find ways to mix and match images of family and friends, or even different vacation photos to create some fun new ideas.

Unlike the "pick up and learn" Photo Album 5, Paint Shop Pro 9 is a much more advanced program that'll require a good time investment to learn. That investment is well worth it if you want to create some spectacular images and really get the most out of your financial investment in a digital camera. At first, many of the terms and tools really baffled me (what's a layer anyway?) but as I threw myself into the program I slowly started realizing just how powerful it is.

When you first open up the program you'll see the standard menu bar, along with a row of icons down the left side of the window and a few subwindows on the left. In Figure A, you can see a sample of the main window.

You'll find that the tools on the left will be the most frequently used; Jasc did a good job of gathering everything up and grouping them in a logical manner. Most of the tools have small arrows to the right; clicking on the arrow will show you a list of related tools. For the Perspective Correction tool, the related tools are Deform, Straighten, Perspective Correction, and Mesh Warp. Choose the Paint Brush tool and you'll see options for Paint Brush, Airbrush, and Warp Brush.

There's no way I could possibly go through every single tool in this review, but I can give you a basic idea of how Paint Shop Pro 9 actually works. I chose the Mesh Warp tool to play with, since it produces such fun effects. As soon as you select a tool, you'll see that the bottom tool bar changes to reflect the settings and options for the tool. In the case of Warp Mesh, I can select from a variety of presets, confirm or undo my changes, choose how finely detailed the mesh should be, change the edit mode and draft quality, and choose whether I want the final application to be "best" quality or not.

Pay particular attention to the controls for mesh quality; one of the best features I've found in Paint Shop Pro is the quick "sliders" that allow me to quickly change particular settings. I can use the standard up and down arrows to change the setting by one step at a time, or I can click on the larger down arrow and be presented with a horizontal bar that allows me to very quickly move from one end of the spectrum to the other. The control isn't as fine, but the speed is quite welcome when you don't need precise control, especially since you can always fine tune things with the standard one step at a time option.

Once you're finished using a tool, you can accept all of your changes by clicking on the blue check mark on the tool bar, or you can undo all of them at once by choosing the big red X. This makes it safer to play around and try all of the different options without having to worry about ruining a photo. The selective undo system is also very nice.

There's a small History palette at the bottom right corner of the screen that lists each action as soon as you take it, whether that's painting, erasing, moving, or warping a particular object in your image. Clicking on a particular item in the history will allow you to undo it, undo all items up to that point, or you can select a group of items. If you decide that you really didn't want to undo a particular action, you can still redo it as well, giving you complete control over the digital editing process.

If you need some help finding or using a particular feature, you'll be glad to know that the help system in Jasc's Paint Shop Pro 9 is truly top notch. A sampling of Paint Shop Pro's help system can be found in Figure B.

When I needed more information about the screen capture function in Paint Shop Pro 9, the index to the help function quickly took me to the right spot. All of the menu selections I needed to make were carefully laid out, and all of the options for each menu were fully explained.

After just a couple of minutes I learned all the ins and outs of the Screen Capture feature and was able to use it competently. By the way, that feature saved me a lot of time when I was taking the screenshots for this article, since it offered the option to save either the entire desktop or just a particular application window. You'll find the same level of detail and carefully thought out functionality throughtout the entire program.

If you're not quite ready for the complexity of Paint Shop Pro 9, you may want to take a closer look at Paint Shop Pro Studio. It's a relatively new product for Jasc, and is similar to Paint Shop Pro, without some of the more advanced features. Web animation is missing, as well as the ability to create macro "sets" of commands to speed up digital photo processing.

Some of the more advanced art tools like custom shapes and color mixing are also not found in Studio, but that's no great loss for the average consumer-level digital photographer. If you're mainly interested in doing more advanced editing than the simple cropping and red-eye reduction tools in Photo Album 5, but don't need a full graphic-artist level of control and complexity, Studio is a great buy at only $69 for the download edition, a savings of $50 from the $119 download edition of Paint Shop Pro 9.

In either case, the boxed version will cost you an additional $10. It's well worth it if you aren't in a hurry to purchase a last minute gift, as the printed manual for both applications is well done, nicely illustrated, and very informative. In the case of Paint Shop Pro Studio, the manual is a 122 page "Idea Book" while the User Guide for Paint Shop Pro 9 weighs in at a rather hefty 502 pages.

Bottom line? I'm very impressed with the tools that Jasc has to offer and give it 4 out of 5. They're easier to use than similar products from Adobe, such as Photoshop Album and PhotoShop Elements, and much more attractively priced. With three different versions, there's a good fit for every digital photographer: from those who need only very simple editing tools who want an easy way to share their photos (Photo Album), to more advanced users who still want an easy to use application (Studio), to those who either are (or want to be!) hardcore digital artists, image manipulators, and editors (Paint Shop Pro 9). I'm glad I was introduced to Jasc's products through this review opportunity, and can't wait to see what they offer in the future.