Motivation: Nominally this looks like a Painting match made in heaven ....
Software: Corel Painter IX, Corel/Jasc Paint Shop Pro 9

Corel of Ottawa is in the process of acquiring Jasc Software of Minnesota in an important acquisition in the graphics field. On the face of it this looks like a Painting match made in heaven. The digital camera and mobile phone camera markets are starting to really take off. And Web use of digital images has spurred utilizing graphics and images everywhere in business. Finally, Jasc has 4 major programs that will be of interest to Corel.

First, Corel has been for the past decade bundling various third party photo albums for use with its Corel Draw and other Paint programs - now the Jasc Photo Album and Media Center can be bundled and packaged however works best for Corel. Next, the program Animation Shop fills a small but important gap - being able to produce animated GIFs for use with Web banner ads and other roll overs. It makes a nice bitmap utility and step up to Corel's own more ambitious RAVE animation tool. Third, there is the WebDraw program that is able to produce SVG based drawings This is important because SVG defines vector graphics in XML format. in a standard way usable by many programs. SVG already has taken off in the cartography and catalog creation vertical markets and awaits a browser breakthrough. With Microsoft XAML, Mozilla XUL, and Macromedia MXML all needing a standard XML-based vector drawing capability - SVG may yet prosper despite abortive starts including Corel's own ambitious Smart Graphics Suite.

Paint Shop Pro - The Crown Jewel

But clearly the Jasc crown jewel is the photofinishing program Paint Shop Pro. For a long time Corel gave Adobe's market leading Photoshop program a real race for features and capabilities with its own PhotoPaint program. PhotoPaint had bested Photoshop in masking, brush features, some color correction features and overall ease of use - especially previewing color adjustments and effects. But for the past two versions of Corel Draw, the PhotoPaint part of the Suite has gotten only laughably minor upgrades and improvements in comparison to Photoshop which has relentlessly added on major improvements.

In the meantime Jasc's Paint Shop Pro has emerged as the clear number two program in features and functions. Paint Shop Pro matches many of Photoshop's features and does better in a handful of key ease of use categories. On the whole Paint Shop pro delivers 75-90% of Photoshop's features at 1/4 the price. In the recent 9 version of Paint Shop, the program has split into two - Paint Shop Pro Studio 9 includes Jasc Photo Album and a trimmed and more coachable version of the master program. This split gives Corel more options in how it may decide to combine the the Jasc software with Corel own.

Concern: Poor Corel Record on Mergers

The fly in this ointment is that Corel users have seen all of this merger synergy go sour at least 3-4 times before. Most notably, Corel acquired Micrografx which also had a promising technical suite of graphics programs - a)Micrografx Designer a vector drawing program similar to Corel Draw but with some powerful technical drawing features; b)Photo Publisher - one of the pioneers in bitmap and photofinishing software and a good fit with Corel's PhotoPaint; and c)suite of business iGraphics programs with nifty data-based and ease of operations features. How did these programs merge, complimentary market and/or co-energize each other ? Hardly at all. Limited joint marketing. No strategic meshing of the Draw and Designer brands. Limited to no cross fertilization of programming technologies or joint efforts to establish a common target base. PhotoPublisher disappeared along with some nifty utilities and ideas for color corrections, special effects, and use of templates. The iGraphics developers undoubtedly contributed to the Corel Smart Graphics = but again promising technology stays in isolation as neither Corel Draw nor Designer utilize the XML , SVG, and other frameworks.

The same thing has happened with the Painter/KPT/Bryce programs Corel acquired from Fractal Design. Again very little co-marketing or cross fertilization of programming ideas or components. But even in the natural fit between bitmap paint programs PhotoPaint and Painter there has been little of that. For example, PhotoPaint has great open file thumbnails and superior preview options for filters, effects and color adjustments. These are areas where Painter is weak; yet there has been no cross movement on any of these features over at least 3 versions of Painter. Painter has great brush features no transfer across the other way either. Hence my worries. And when you glance at the opportunities lost with the SoftQuad XMetal brand acquired roughly at the same time as Micrografx - it does not augur well for Corel and Jasc.

Yes Corel has gone private and is under new Venture Capital management very anxious to make a return on investment more than just cutback induced profitability. Yes, again there are as we have seen natural fits between the Jasc and Corel products where technology transfers, strategic adjustments, and co-marketing opportunities could be exploited. And the remaining Corel staff should have the institutional memory of what not to do. And this reviewer very likely is not alone in the Corel community of customers in being a large admirer of Corel Draw, Painter, Designer, Photo Paint and Paint Shop Pro programs among others. All of us would like to see the two companies succeed. But unfortunately, I am from Missouri - for Corel and mergers and in fact its whole portfolio of promising products, its show me time.

Jacques Surveyer also has a website full of Painter enhanced images, see SportPics.ca.