Corel Paint Shop Pro Photo XI Review

Corel Paint Shop Pro Photo XI detailed review

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Adobe has been well-known mostly for Photoshop. CorelDraw and later Jasc Software’s Paint Shop Pro were competition back then. Jasc was taken over by Corel, and Paint Shop Pro has been developed by Corel ever since. We put Corel’s latest release of Paint Shop Pro Photo—version XI—to the test to see if the “Photo” tag at the end of the name has any substance to it.

The interface is pretty cluttered with toolbars, organisers, and help panels, leaving little space to actually work on. It’s a good thing you can turn them off. There are tons of features, but we didn’t really find a lot specifically made for photograph manipulation. Skin smoothing, red-eye removal, and digital camera noise removal were some that would be useful for photographers. A button called “Enhance Photo” brings in additional features that find the best parameters for a photo.

We found traces of features from other Corel products—Painter, for example. Paint Shop Pro Photo has a mixer that lets you add certain amounts of colours and mix them about till you get the right shade. Another feature is the option to choose the texture of the canvas when you create a new image.

The software isn’t much of a memory hog, unlike some image editing tools where memory consumption goes well over three digits in megabytes. The software peaked out at a moderate 77 MB of RAM with four images open and some effects in place.

The Windows help documentation explains all of Paint Shop Pro Photo’s features with screenshots as well as the icons you find in the interface. The learning bar explains features and also gets tasks done in quick steps without you having to go through multiple menus and windows.

If you need a software specifically for photo manipulation, Adobe’s Lightroom is the better choice. Paint Shop Pro Photo seems more like a contemporary of Photoshop. The price is $89.99—less than half that of Lightroom—and could be well worth it if you want something that can tweak photos and also edit images.

RATINGS
Performance  : 4
Features : 4
Ease of Use : 3.5
Value for Money : 3.5
Overall : 3.5

Web site: www.corel.com
Price : Rs $89.99 (Rs 3,600)