Review: Corel Image Tools Go Pro

With the release of version 10, Corel's Paint Shop Pro X has evolved into an advanced, professional editing suite, making it a strong offering for solution providers looking to add value to their business solutions for digital photographers and graphics artists working from their home or small office.

Paint Shop Pro X is easier to use than its competitor, Adobe Systems' PhotoShop, and boasts many new productivity features that will appeal to a variety of customers. It arrives with a new graphical workflow that simplifies many of the steps involved in applying effects to images and quickly processing photo prints.

The workflow guides users through all the key features in Paint Shop as they design and manipulate images. Corel also has increased the accuracy of Paint Shop's tools by incorporating its vector-based selection features that outline and highlight specific parts of images that need tweaking. For example, the new red eye tool allows users to outline the area around each eye before removing the red eye.

Other updated features of the suite include a tool to correct skin color and photo defects such as image noise, color aberrations and purple fringes. A new makeover tool can erase blemishes or skin flaws, whiten teeth and apply tanning to skin. In addition, with the new Smart Photo Fix feature, users can fine-tune color balance, brightness, contrast, sharpness and saturation. Photo Fix also can suggest settings that are aesthetically appealing.

Professional photographers won't be disappointed either. Paint Shop has photo retouching capabilities to darken burns, soften contrast and eliminate color spreads. Special effects can be applied by replacing colors, flipping images and adding borders.

Professional graphics artists can make good use of Paint Shop's powerful features, including the blend mode capability, which provides complex color layering to alter an image's saturation, hue and luminance.

Paint Shop's workflows can be automated using scripts. The Python engine allows solution providers to write code to perform actions on the software.

Corel Photo Album Deluxe Edition 6

Photo Album Deluxe Edition 6 is designed to help catalog all digital photos, enhance photos and provide backup. When combined with Paint Shop, Photo Album Deluxe provides a complete end-to-end digital photography solution for amateur as well as professional photographers.

Out of the box, the tool has an interactive guide that gives users step-by-step directions to take them through all of the main features, which alleviates the need to show customers how to organize files on a PC. One of the most impressive features in Photo Album Deluxe is the auto backup, which burns any photo that has not been catalogued. This feature can save users time when storing images in permanent media.

Although less advanced, Photo Album Deluxe has a few of Paint Shop's capabilities, so digital integrators can sell this product as a stand-alone for all amateur photo needs. For instance, Photo Album can fix red eye, crop and resize photos, adjust flash, backlighting, brightness and contrast. It also provides tools for saturation, color balance and sharpness.

In addition to CDs, users can quickly and easily make video slide shows that include sound.