Comment on Corel PaintShop Pro X4 Ultimate by Lynn – Crystal River Users Group.
My Quick Look at PSP X4,
By Lynn Page Webmaster/Newsletter Editor Crystal River Users Group (CRUG)
I have had the opportunity to spend a little time looking at Corel PaintShop Pro X4 and am pleased with the changes to an already excellent product. I will be doing a full review for my user group (CRUG) but want to provide a few initial observations.
The Getting Started/Welcome screen that opens in front of the workspace will be a benefit to new users and I found it worth the little time it took to look through the explanations. PSP X4 has moved to a more traditional tabbed interface most of us have come to love. The easily spotted tabs in the middle of the title bar make it simple to move between the Manage, Adjust and Edit tasks whether you have the application full screen or not.
The Manage tab contains the Organizer in the bottom pane and a Navigation pane on the left. In the past I generally did not use the Organizer very often but did note some nice features on the Manage tab. The auto hide feature for the Navigation pane provides room for a much nicer preview of a selected photo. Dedicated photographers will appreciate the additional information about the photo displayed in the right pane. The Organizer task bar now includes a Share icon to easily share a photo through email or on FaceBook or Flickr. There is also an icon to Auto Group photos taken within a period of time up to a minute. What I liked the best is that PSP remembers where I was in the Organizer and goes to that location when I return.
The Adjust tab is a beefed up version of the Express Lab. With the addition of controls for color balance, brightness/contrast, fill light/clarity, local tone mapping, and digital noise removal it can now truly handle many if not most routine photo fixes. Selecting photos for adjustment is simple as the Organizer is readily available in the bottom pane. I may now find myself starting on the Adjust tab instead of going directly to the full editor.
The full features of PSP X4 are available on the Edit tab. The Organizer is again available in the bottom pane and a single click of its Show/Hide Navigation Pane icon opens it to the left of the image in the workspace. So I no longer have the need to keep Windows Explorer open to get to my photos. I have focused my time in looking at some of PSP X4’s new editing features while quickly reviewing some of my favorites. To look at the new HDR exposure merge I took a series of photos from our stairway landing towards the morning sun behind a wall of windows. My camera does not have an automatic setting for this so I just manually selected an aperture and altered the shutter speed. After selecting the set of photos that looked the best creating a single merged shot was simple. In Edit select the photos to merge form the Organizer panel then in the File drop down menu select HDR and then Exposure Merge. PSP starts the process. In the merge step you can choose settings and do custom editing. I just clicked Process to move on to the next step. Here you can choose from preset settings or make your own adjustments to temperature, contrast, highlights and midtones before clicking process. After completing the merge I adjusted the perspective of my photo before trying out the new Fill Light/Clarity adjustment. It is great for saving photos that may seem too dark. Use the sliders to bring light into the dark areas while maintaining detail. It is a wonderful tool. Next I used the new Vignette photo effect to create a faded white edge and finally added a photo frame. This resulted in a photo ready for display from a series of unusable shots.
Another new and notable feature in PSP X4 is Photo Blend. It is a simple way of getting the best parts of a series of photos. Just paint in the potions to keep on each photo and paint out the areas not wanted. I tried it out and was able to get the whole family looking good. Photo Blend is straight forward enough for anyone to try. No need to worry about understanding layers and filters.
These new features make PSP X4 a definite upgrade candidate or a perfect choice for someone looking for a photo editing application. As with any upgrade there is a learning curve and I did have a couple of little stumbles. My major one was that it took me a while to realize the workspace is tabbed. After duplicating an image I could not find it so by the time I realized my mistake I had 3 copies. It also took me a minute to try the esc key to cancel and back out of Smart Photo Fix.
I have also been using PSP X4’s extensive artistic capabilities. It is easy for a user like me to just focus on editing digital photos to get the best possible image. By doing that we miss out on the wonderful array of artistic effects available through PaintShop Pro. The artistic features make PSP X4 a great tool for scrap-bookers and beginning digital artists as well as photo editors.
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