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JASC places Paint Shop Pro 9 (PSP 9) in direct competition with Adobe’s Photoshop CS and Corel Photo-Paint 12, a professional product offering at almost a consumer level price. List price is $129.00 which I believe is up from previous versions of this product with an upgrade cost of $59 or $49 with User Group pricing. PSP 9 is somewhat of an incremental upgrade from PSP 8 which was a major change from PSP 7 and earlier PSP products.
In the Photo Imaging Department, which is where my interest lies, PSP 9 new features include new “filters” to add fill flash and backlighting along with a digital camera noise filter and Chromatic Aberration filter that can be used to remove glows that may occur in the high contrast area’s of an photo. I found the “fill flash” filter to be extremely effective and easy to use in bringing out the facial details of the photo’s taken at the IPCUG picnic which can be viewed elsewhere in this newsletter; the fill flash works to correctly light the foreground objects without bringing up the overall brightness of the photo which can result in bleaching out other objects in the photo which occurs in some other products when attempting the same result. Using PSP 9, you can restore old photos and even add color to them as well as using a Soft Focus feature to create romantic effects.
New to PSP 9 is Raw Camera Image Support, previously only available with Photo CS and some other products. This tool allows you to adjust the “digital negative” raw image in the camera such that you can set the white balance, exposure and sharpening levels at the “negative” level in the camera for subsequent use in PSP 9. One cravat on Raw Camera Image support, your camera has to be one that is supported by the software. The manual for PSP 9 refers to supported cameras as being “high end digital cameras” and my camera, which I consider a high quality, if not “high end,” is not on the supported list.
Image file EXIF information is now available in the browser view. This is detail from the image such as resolution, if flash was used, camera settings, etc for any selected image. This feature was commonly available in even consumer level products and is a positive addition to PSP 9’s image browser.
New
in PSP 9 is its One Step Photo Fix feature. This one is very impressive
as I had a fall photo which I took of the Boise river and the brilliance
of the fall colors just wasn’t really evident in the photo until I clicked
on the “One Step” and wow, the fall colors almost leaped out of the image!
In addition to the One Step, all the tools such as color, contrast,
levels, histograms and filters are available to fix even the most
challenging of photos.
A very useful feature in PSP 9 is the ability to go anywhere in the “history” stack of operations or adjustments made to an image and undo it without undoing any of the subsequent adjustments. This is an incredible advantage in PSP 9 over the usual back arrow process found in other products where you have to keep stepping back all the way to a place where you can move forward again in fixing a photo. The “recorded” history can be used to apply the same steps or processes to other photos. These “scripts” can be recorded, edited and run on any image.
PSP 9 offers a variety of tools in fixing the appearance of a photo such
as perspective and straightening but also include “mesh warp” and specific
to PSP 9 is its Background Eraser which allows you to erase the background
while preserving detail such as grass, hair, and even the antennae of a
Monarch Butterfly! Using Manual Color Correction, you can exactly
match the colors from one image to another.
PSP 9 new features include “Art Media” tools that allow you to turn photo’s and other digital artwork in true works of art with painting effects including “mixing” paints directly on the canvas as well as mixer pallet that allows you to mix colors “off canvas.” There is also an Art Eraser that allows you to remove “paint” from the canvas! New is Image Tracing, which allows you to repaint a photo without loosing the original imagery. Typical artist tools such as Pallet Knife and Smear allow you to work realistically on the canvas. Art Media tools include the oil brush, chalk, colored pencil and marker.
Keeping in mind that PSP was a graphics tool before it was a digital imaging tool, it is endowed with all the functionalities of text manipulation, layers, masks, and filters that allow you unlimited creative possibilities!
If you are not sufficiently impressed by what is written here, I would invite you to visit www.jasc.com where you can view videos of what the product can do, visit the community area where there are tutorials and the gallery of what others have done with PSP. You can also download a free trial version of PSP 9.
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