|
Paint Shop Pro Photo X2 (PSPX2) is Corel’s third upgrade to this highly popular and affordable image editing application. Don’t be misled by the title, Paint Shop Pro, as it bears no resemblance to any painting application, I think someone else has snapped up the name Photo Shop. I have watched PSP steadily grow and improve over a number of years, from a shareware application through to this latest release. Corel have crammed in stacks of features that are going to be useful for any digital camera owner who wants to do some advanced photo editing.
A new dark grey interface which is great for judging your image colours, but depressing to work with for any long period. I would have liked an option to choose my own shade of grey.
The actual layout and interface of Paint Shop Pro X2 is excellent. Located on the left side is the learning centre, this displays useful information about the tool currently in use, which can be turned off once you’re familiar with each tool’s functions. The Tool palette is a single strip of 20 colourful tools which is docked at the left edge. This can be dragged out to make a floating palette, which can then be resized to suite your requirements or available space. Display the palettes you want to use on the right edge, all the palettes can be turned on or off in any combination. At the base of the work area is the Organiser, this can also be a floating palette or a pinned palette which opens when you hover the mouse pointer over it. At the top of the screen is all the drop down menu items, Standard menus and an Options toolbar, this changes to reflect the tool in use.
This is a Quick Edit version of PSPX2 that is accessed via a button located on the Standard menu bar. This button is discreet and took me a while to find it, I would have liked something more obvious. Once clicked a new interface launches with a few tools along the bottom of the workspace and some basic sliders on the right edge. There is a suggested setting button which performs a quick fix, which you can further tweak to suite the image. The Express lab produced very good results - if you are after a quick fix then this should more than satisfy.
|
