Film and Filters: One of the main drawback when shooting film was that you had to carry a bag full of optical filters. This is all a thing of the past with Digital imaging applications, as most of the filters can be replicated via software. The film and Filters plug-in makes a good job of altering the colours and intensity on an image. Don’t sell your Polarising filter though.

Throw away your Cokin filters, PSP can replicate them all - but keep your Polarising filter

Black and White Film: This filter together with the infrared filter really make PSP XI stand out. The B/W filter is superb in operation, just select the filter you want to use, Red, Green, Yellow, Orange or Blue and select the strength then adjust to taste. Photoshop has only just added a dedicated B/W filter to its repertoire. As with the previous version of PSP, the infrared filter is probably the best I have seen short of actually shooting IR film.

Infrared filter - worth the price of PSP alone

Infrared results are spectacular

Other new feature include

Skin Smoothing: If portraiture is your thing, then this filter may be of interest. It effectively removes blemishes, scars and wrinkles from people – it may even prove to be a cheaper alternative to plastic surgery. Come on Corel where is the obesity filter?

Quick Review: The Quick Review feature allows you to manage your slide shows quickly and easily. You can even apply a quick fix to a slide, set a rating for a slide, add captions and rotate images in a slide show.

Photo Trays: Photo Trays allow users to sort their photos, letting users group photos in batches for convenience. This is a really useful item, just add the pictures you want to work with to a tray and you can get on with editing.

Enhanced Curves and Levels: The Curves and Levels dialog boxes give users exceptional control over image adjustments such as contrast, colour and levels. The curves dialog is a marked improvement over previous versions.

Enhanced RAW Camera Support: Users can open and edit RAW files from leading digital cameras. As with version PSP X, this RAW file editor failed to produce a reasonable result with my Nikon NEF files. Although I am sure with a lot of perseverance I could get something acceptable.

Minimum System Requirements

Recommended System Requirements

Pros.

Cons.

Verdict

Corel Paint Shop Pro has been around for a number of years and it has a large following. It’s a superb application that deserves all the praise it receives. Corel are putting a lot of effort into producing a better application with each release, and they are succeeding. Although PSP XI is not a major improvement over PSP X, it still offers a lot of value for money.