Bruce Von Stiers
Just when you thought that things couldn't get any better for the Paint Shop Pro program, JASC added some new things to it. There is now version 7 of Paint Shop Pro out on the market. I checked it out and felt that it indeed was better than the last version.
For those of you who don't know the product, Paint Shop Pro is an image editor and a lot more. You can use the program to manipulate photos and images. If you have photos that have been scanned, the program can enhance them, removing red-eye or scratches. It is also a full-featured image design program.
Some of the new features in Paint Shop Pro 7 Automatic Color Balance, Automatic Saturation Enhancement and Automatic Contrast Enhancement. These may not seem too necessary for some users, but the more intense image editors out there will appreciate the new automated features.
There are now snap-to grids and guides that will aide the user in working with a design or image. If you are going to be working on something that requires minute detailing, then the grids will allow for specific placement of elements.
One of the things about Paint Shop Pro that has drawn tons of users to it is the thirty-day trial evaluation period. You can download Paint Shop Pro and use it for 30 days without having to pay for it. There are very few products that you can do that with, especially a full-featured image program like this. Adobe doesn't have a trial download of Photoshop like this.
If you are like most people who use graphic editing software, your designs end up on a web page. Version 7 of Paint Shop Pro now makes it easy to view a graphic in a browser without having to send it out on the web and viewing it there. From the View pulldown menu, select View in Web Browser. From there, you can view the graphic in four different file types, (.BMP, .JPEG, .GIF and .PNG). The program will convert the graphic to the file type you want and then generate the HTML code that will be used by the browser to display it.
The Help system has been improved some. Besides the sectional help menu there is also a Find command and a keyword area. These are tabbed windows that allow for quick and easy ways to find help for your questions about the program. If that isn't enough, there is a 495-page reference manual and a hundred page Getting Started Guide that will give you some help as well.
Folks who have been exposed to Photoshop will love the rollup tool palettes that are now a standard feature in Paint Shop Pro. There are now vector tools that will let you draw an object and place text anywhere along it's path. One example that I tried was a guitar shaped object. The text that I added followed the lines of the object perfectly. You can also create some neat shapes and save them in the Shape Library for later use.
Paint Shop Pro now supports over 100 different digital cameras. Odd are, that unless you have an extremely low end or off the wall digital camera, Paint Shop Pro will be able to read the images from it.
For people who are concerned about size and downloading an image on a web page, the programs has an Image Slicer. This allows you to cut up an image into sections so that it will download faster in a web browser. Other features along that same line are the Image Mapper and the Image Rollover Creator. The Image Mapper lets you select a shape that will on an image that will be invisible to the naked eye. Click on the area and you will have a link to another web page, area of the same page or any other place that you have specified when setting up the image map. The Image Rollover Creator lets you create cool rollovers from the buttons you design or images that you work with.
Paint Shop Pro also comes with Animation Shop 3. You can use this program to create animations from your graphic files that can be used on the Internet. The animation file can be saved in GIF, FLC, FLI, MNG or AVI formats. Some of the cool features in Animation Shop 3 are frame modifications tools and the Banner Wizard. Use the Banner Wizard to create some cool looking banners for your web site
Animation Shop 3 has a Morph Image Transition effect that is really cool. Take a picture of your mother in law and turn her into a warthog using this effect. Just don't let her, or your spouse, see it. The program can also open and work with MPEG files. There is a preview mode that allows you to do frame by frame editing.
Paint Shop Pro 7 supports more than 40 different file formats. If you need to save the image to print commercially, saving it as a postscript file is easy. Most of the common file formats like GIF, BMP, JPG, TGA and PCX are supported. There are also older formats such as IMG that can be read by the program.
If you want a good graphics program that does just about everything Photoshop does but at a fraction of the cost, then Paint Shop Pro 7 is your best bet. With the photo editing and creation tools that the program has, there is plenty of opportunity to make perform some amazing things with your images.
The list price for Paint Shop Pro 7 is $ 99. You should be able to find it at your local software retailer for a little less. You can also download a 30-day evaluation copy as I mentioned before. This will let you try it out before buying it. The web site for Paint Shop Pro is www.jasc.com
System Requirements:
Pentium PC (500 mhz recommended)
Windows 95/98/NT 4/ 2000
32 MB RAM (128 MB recommended)
CD-ROM drive
75 MB free hard drive space
256-color display
© 2001 Bruce E. Von Stiers