What’s new in Corel Paint Shop Pro Photo XI?

Photo Organizer: The PSP browser has benefited from a major overhaul, it’s now called the Photo Organizer from here you can manage images and perform complex searches by filename, date, keyword or folders. By default the organiser looks for images in the My Pictures and Shared Pictures folders, but you can add as many folders as needed by clicking on the Add More Folders icon. Depending on how many images in your folders, it may take some time for the database to build or update, fortunately this is a background operation, so you can still get on with other things – like make a coffee. Once the database has been built the images appear almost instantly and you can also enlarge the thumbnails via a zoom slider. Images can be opened by just dragging and dropping them on the workspace or double clicking on them. The Organiser can be docked to any edge or used as a floating window, by default it is located at the bottom of the PSP workspace. If you prefer the previous PSP Browser, then you can toggle between Organiser and Browser. The Browser can’t be docked. I haven't worked out any other differences, but I am sure there must be - why else would Corel provide this option.

Organiser (left) and Browser (right) - spot the difference

The Photo Organiser  incorporates a Tags feature, whereby you simply add a keyword tag to an image and then select to view the images with the assigned tag. To assign a tag to multiple files you select the images, drag them over and drop them onto the chosen tag, or drop the tag on individual files. The actual process is not fast and images which had been assigned a tag didn’t always display immediately, nor did the search feature bring up all the pictures in folders which had been assigned a Tag. However, refreshing the folder, updates the database and then the images can be found. The search feature is excellent, just enter a word, which could be the name of a folder or keyword and images are found almost instantly.

Colour Changer Tool: Use this tool to globally change selective colours in an image. The tool works in a similar fashion to the Magic Wand tool by selecting all the colours in a range. Just click on a colour and it instantly transforms all similar colours to the foreground colour swatch. The magic bit is that it will keep the image detail and by choosing another colour from the colour picker it instantly modifies the colours in the image. There are tolerance and edge softness settings – ideal for adding a new colour to a sky.

Original colours	Red changed to Blue
Enjoy hours of fun by swapping colours

Time Machine: This filter transforms your pictures into simulated wet chemistry prints of a bygone era. The processes range from a 1830 Daguerreotype through to a modern style cross processing. The effects include an appropriate border and are very good and will prove fun to use, although I would have liked a Holga or Polaroid SX70 effect included. Perhaps these will appear in PSP XII?

The Time Machine filters dates from 1839 to 1960

Daguerrotype picture captured with a Nikon D1 digital camera