Adobe Photoshop has a challenger! Actually there have been many challengers to the top spot as graphics editor that Photoshop has claimed for at least the last five years. Corel PhotoPaint with its context sensitive property bar and superb previewing of color adjustments and effects has been the most recent. But Ulead's Photo impact mounted a charge with its clever Effects Browser and innovative use of styles. And ACD/Deneba Canvas could lay claim to the crown by combining bitmap, vector graphics, text and DTP features in a neatly integrated package. But these pretenders to the crown of top graphics editor have not been able to match Adobe Photoshops lead and constant improvements in such areas as color control for input, display, and output; compositing through multi-layer masking and transparency control; plus automation with history, actions, and batch processing facilities.

PaintShop Pro matches well all of the image manipulation, color adjustment, selection, vector graphics integration, and even layering features of Photoshop while even stepping ahead in a number of features. The only area where Jasc concedes a clear advantage to Photoshop is in color control for display and printing output. But even in printing PaintShop Pro's has unique features with Picture Frames and Print Layout Templates. And Paintshop Pro is fast and easy to use but also very powerful.

Hover for full Image Browser

For a long time, PaintShop Pro was the only bitmap graphics editor to have a built-in image browser producing a very quick thumbnail table of all the images one was editing in a folder. This feature alone kept this reviewer faithful to PaintShop Pro until its output and feature set approached that of leaders like Adobe Photoshop and Corel PhotoPaint. But with version 2 of Elements incorporating a much improved image browser, the writing appeared to be on the wall for Jasc. However, PaintShop Pro added nifty features like the hover hints which popup over the thumbnail of an image or more options in the right mouse click of an image. And Jasc's browser is still faster than Adobe's. The only major drawback is users can't drag and drop either Adobe or Jasc thumbnails into other programs like Dreamweaver or Word.

Hover for PaintShop Pro Tour

Then PaintShop Pro returned the favor and borrowed the Hints and How To features from Photoshop Elements. But Jasc called them Tour and Learnining Center respectively. I like the way the Learning Center is developed from a help file format because it is familiar to users. Also it is able to point to and call upon topics in the Tour or, like Adobe's Hints, perform some of the described tasks in PaintShop Pro directly. Thus users have a graded learning experience - they can do it themselves or have the Learning Center do a part of the task for them or see a movie or lesson on the general topic. Excellent support for an also very good written manual. Give PaintShop Pro high marks for help.

Out of Box Experience

Jasc has always done a pretty good job of making its program easy to install and get started using effectively. This version is improved. The install is easy and straightforward. The written documentation is some of the best in the industry including a good Getting Started and Introduction to the Program chapters in the very readable Users Guide.

Finally Paint Shop Pro 8 provides a whole series of totally automated "fix this photo" commands that gets new users real, improved photo images very quickly:
One Step Photo Fix - a toolbar button that applies color, sharpness, and smoothing
Automatic Color Balance - improves images that are shifted in hue - least reliable
Automatic Contrast Enhancement - generally makes small contrast enhancements
Automatic Saturation Enhancements - remarkably good saturation improvements
Clarify - helps give images crisp focused colors
Histogram Equalize - good, reliable best guess auto-color adjustment after Clarify
Straighten Tool - toolbox godsend, really corrects horizon line problems quickly, accurately
Perspective Correction Tool - another toolbox godsend, does as advertised easily
One Step Photo Fix is a bit of a gadget but the rest are largely practical and useful tools. Moreover, if they get users into trying out PaintShop Pro that will prevent a worse case occurring - shelfware. So credit PaintShop Pro with a good out-of-box documentation and sustaining tools and help.

Basic Graphics Editing

With today's automated digital and film cameras, probably 80 percent of all images need only simple edits - usually cropping, some simple adjustment to color or a bit of sharpening and maybe a touch up or two. Sure users can do all the exercises in Photoshop 7 Artistry by Haynes and Crumpler - but use PaintShop Pro 8; that is indeed a measure of how powerful PaintShop Pro is. But what they are going to ned to do first and most often are the CAST operations-Cropping & image correction, Adjust colors, Sharpen images, and Touch ups. Lets look at what Paint Shop Pro provides in each of these areas.

Hover for Image, Crop view

Cropping and Image Correction PaintShop Pro has a full set of cropping and image correction tools. Already mentioned are the Straighten Tool and Perspective Correction. Flipping, Mirroring and Rotation can be seen in the menu pulldown shown at the left. Rotation includes 90 degree clockwise, counterclockwise, and free rotation by a user specified angle. But the crux of corrections will be cropping the photo. And the PaintShop Pro Tool Options bar allows fine control of the crop. Click the Maintain Aspect Ratio check box and the crop rectangle will maintain the current images aspect ratio. Check the Specify Print Size check box and then choose either a preset Print size in the pulldown at the far

left of the Tool Options bar or enter you own size in the next two Width and Height fields (they are partially obscured by the pulldown menu in our screenshot). Then move the crop rectangle around the screen by dragging anywhere inside the crop rectangle. Finally, make fine adjustment to any of the side by dragging them in or out or setting theappropriate control field in at the right end of the Tool Options bar. What's missing ? It would be nice to be able to rotate the cropping rectangle and nice to have the areas outside the cropping rectangle shaded a little darker - this helps to decide if the crop is right.

Other image correction commands available but often used at the end of the edit are:
Add Borders - adds either symmetric or user specified borders with user specified color
Canvas Size - nearly the same as Add Borders except the color is the current canvas color
Crop to Selection - crops image to the smallest rectangle encompassing all selected/masked areas
Picture Frame - adds special preset picture frames (there are 40 choices) to canvas border
Resize - shrinks or blows up an image to user specified dimensions. Blows ups beyond 250 percent result in jaggies and more contrasty images; likewise shrinking less than 50% removes details and increased color drift.
Watermarking - adds Digimarc watermark to the image for copy protection.
The only significant command missing from this set is the Color Crop or Trim command which allows users to crop away color borders of a fixed color and thickness. Notably, Photoshop does not have the Straighten or Perspective Correction tools nor the Picture Frame command.

Adjusting Colors

There is no doubt that the hardest thing to do in graphics editing is color corrections. This because of two things - first, color perception is relative to what colors are nearby as has been demonstrated in not a few psychology experiments. Second, many color effects are non-linear - for example, linearly increasing the brightness of a picture throws it off. It just does not look right over all. So be prepared to put on your thinking hat when adjusting colors. As we have already seen, PaintShop Pro has at least 3 automated color correction tools to get you started. In addition the Learning Center and Tours provide additional insights on color adjustment tools. However, if you need to step to the next level, PaintShopPro has the all the basic color adjustment tools:
Brightness/Contrast - basic adjustment for over or underexposed and flat images
Color Balance, RGB, Channel Mixer commands - to adjust images too hot/reddish or too cool/blue
Colorize - to change a black and white or color image into a duotone like a sepia print
Gamma Correction - another adjuster for under or over-exposed images
Highlight Midtone Shadow - corrects under and over exposure in a narrower range
Negative Image - inverts all the colors to look like a photo negative
Posterize - an Effects command which reduces the number of colors in an image
Threshold - reduces the colors to either black or white depending on luminance threshold
But with the exception of Gamma Correction, these are primarily linear tools - they work well for small 10-15% adjustments but increasingly throw the colors out of kilter in a image unless applied only to selected areas using masking tools. An alternative to going to the extra work of masking tools is to use the second level of Paint Shop Pro non-linear adjustment tools.

Non-linear Color Adjustment Tools Choice of first non-linear color adjustment tool to use is predicated on the the problem, underexposed flat colors indicates the Curves tool whereas a strong colorcast suggests the Manual Color Correction tool. In our flower bed image a generally underexposed shot suggested using Curves first. As you can see from the screen shot at the left, Curves provides a non-linear way of adjusting brightness contrast over the shadow-midtone-highlight range. It is especially helpful in PaintShop Pro that before and after thumbnails are conveniently available (not so in either Photoshop edition). As well once you set up a specific curve that is working well for a group of shots you can save the value as a preset-and then reload the next time you need it. This capability of saving presets is a real boon that PaintShop Pro has extended across all its filter, effects, and color adjustment commands. Even better these presets then appear in the Effects Browser as thumbnails of what the Curves and other commands can do (see below for screen shot). But the key idea is that users can make very subtle color corrections with non-linear Curves

hhhbecause the outline of the curve adjust gradually from shadow tones through midtones to highlights in a precise manner. We have about a dozen presets for Curves alone saved.

After applying the Curves correction there is still a cool, bluish patina on the image which RGB correction does not fix properly (highlights becoming yellowish). So we turn to the Manual Color

Correction command. This command allows us to spot a source area in the image that should be a certain color. Say a white picket fence that is gray. So we click on the grey fence in the thumbnail and that color appears in the Source color square. Then click on the Target color square and the Color Picker dialog appears from which we choose the color white. Now what the Manual Color picker does is adjust whole image for this color shift. However, the command also respects the existing HSL values throughout the image and makes not a simple replacement but rather a proportional adjustment. The result is often an uncannily superb improvement in color over the whole image. For our garden flowers image Manual Color Correction helped remove a bluish patina that we just had not been able to fix with either the Color Balance or RGB commands. So now Manual Color Correction is used preferentially for images that appear to have a medium to deep color cast simply because the command is so versatile and easy to control.

Another command that allows more precise color control is Histogram Adjust. This command shows the Luminance Histogram for an image. Try the following simple test to see how a histogram works.

Create a new empty campus. Click on Histogram Adjust(we will use HA for short). Make sure the Overlay histogram result check box in the lower left is checked. There should be one spike on the extreme right of the histogram. Now choose a light gray (Not black) and paint 1/4 of the canvas and then click HA. A second spike should appear on the histogram close to the left of the first. Add a mid gray stripe and click HA, a third spike should appear in the middle of the histogram. Paint a black strip click HA and a spike will appear on the exteme left of the histogram. Finally choose any color but make it a fairly dark shade and click HA. The Histogram Adjust dialog should like the screenshot to the left. Now comes the fun! Click on the Output Max (the button with white dot and small tail just at the upper right of the histogram). Notice what happens to the luminance spikes - they all move as the button is moved up=>lighter or down=>darker. Try the Midtone compress slider. Move it up and only the two spikes to the right and left of the center spike adjust - and they move towards each other when the slider is moved up and away when the slider is moved down. When moved up (or compressed)the midtones are being moved to a flatter neutral gray luminance right at the center. When moved down, the midtones colors diverge - the lighter tones become lwhiter the dark tones converge towards black. Finally slide the gray triangle slider just

above Gamma. In this case the pure white and black spikes do not move at all; but all the other spikes do move either darker when the gamma is lowered or lighter when the gamma is raised by moving to the right. Notice that the color spikes move disproportionately. Hence the name non-linear color control. Also notice the subtle color control possible with Histogram Adjust. Now to add more control, just below the thumbnails click the Colors radio button. Choose a color from the pulldown and try adjusting any of the HA sliders. Notice what happens - gray is a color just waiting to be brought out.

Speaking of colors waiting to come out-our flower image has some just waiting to sparkle. Sounds like a problem for the HSL-Hue/Saturation/Lightness command. Just about every paint program worth its salt has a HSL tool and this is really the first of the non-linear color controls simply because changing Hue means moving and changing the basic underlying color gamut of the image. Likewise Saturation changes are very non-linear because of the way our eyes perceive relative color. And depending on how the HSL command has been implemented lightness can be treated linearly (most programs or non-linearlySuffice it to say that mastery of the HSL command requires subtlety and lots of trial and error. Hence the advantage of the comparison before and after thumbnails in PaintShop Pro. In our flower image the pinks plus the deep blues/purples lack a bit of pop. So the color correction will be done in two stages. First with Adjust | Hue and Saturation | Hue/ Saturation/Lightness to be followed by a more precise HueMap correction. But first lets use our color test canvas, the one with pure white, black two shades of gray and a color stripe. Watch what happens on HSL adjustment. Move the Hue slider over to far left. Only the color stripe changes, no change for the black, white or gray stripes. Move the Saturation way down and then up. Again only the color stripe changes. Change the Edit dropdown to be some color, Reds in our example. Again only the color strip changes. However when we move the Lightness slider then all the stripes change and in a linear fashion. Try this in

Corel Painter or Adobe Photoshop. If the grays are just slightly off perfect (R=31 G=33 B=32) then the Hue and Saturation corrections will change the grays too. This shows that color correction commands vary in sometimes distinctive ways among the graphic edit programs. As for our flowers, we added more saturation to the blues by choosing that channel in the HSL's Edit dropdown. But this moved the greens. So we backed off these HSL changes by just pressing the Cancel button.

Hover for Image, Huemap

Instead using the HueMap command will be the way to correct for specific color changes. After selecting Adjust | Hue and Saturation | HueMap, try adjusting a few of the colors quickly. The results show how sensitive PaintShop Pro is to small changes in the various HueMap settings. Hover over the thumbnail of the HueMap dialog at the left to see the final adjustments made. Note how much the greens, purples, and pinks moved in hue and saturation. HueMap is a favorite for precise color/hue adjustments. In addition there is a 4th level of color corrections which involves using a combination of masks and color correction tools. Users can do their own selects/masking and then apply the above color correction tools which will only apply to the selected areas. Or users can apply an adjustment layer which applies selectively the following tools: Brightness/Contrast, Channel Mixer, Color Balance, Curves, HSL, Invert, Levels, Posterize, and Threshold. Because users have a layer for each adjustment, by double clicking on the layer they can change and refine the adjustment at anytime. Further, the adjustment mask is editable as a grayscale layer and so truly sublime effects are possible.

There are even more non-linear color correction commands available like Level, Fade Correction, Black & White Point Levels, Red-Eye Removal, Grey World Color Balance among others. Hopefully, readers will have come away with the impression that Paint Shop Pro has a deep and wide set of choice for color corrections. There are four levels of tools from one-click automated through simple basic color adjusters to non-linear tools that have been made very approachable. At the highest level, Paint Shop Pro has Adjustment Layers nearly equal to Photoshop's less a Gradient Mixer option and Photoshop's easier enabling of direct edits to the adjustment layer. But I will give those away and take PaintShop pro's Manual Color Correction, Fade Correction and Histogram Adjust tools any day.

Sharpening: A Return to Focus

So now that we have gotten the colors right we need to sharpen up the image. Sharpening is the next hardest thing to do well in graphics editing just after color edits. The basic problem is that sharpening depends on an already imprecise science of edge detection and then enhancing those found edges. But with a blurred or out of focus image, finding the edges is even more difficult. Add to this the effects of enhancing the edges (often done by changing the contrast of the pixels at the boundaries or even putting in highlight pixels) and image contrast and spurious noise effects can soon become rampant as seen in the example immediately below.

Here are two samples of how useful the smooth side of sharpening can be. Edge preserving smooth has been used with a round each of Edge Enhance and then Erode. Note how well the smoothing works. A follow up Sharpen step tightens up the final image. Likewise there is a big improvement with the Salt and Pepper Filter after color correcting and sharpening some skin tones. But these filters extend well past portraits and work wherever there are

large solid or uniform gradient colours - car finish, signs, flower petals, etc. In fact, users will find that they start using many of the sharpening tools in tandem. For example Edge Enhance followed by Erode work well together as Erode dampens the edge highlighting of Edge Enhance. Ditto for sharpen and Dilate but this time highlighting is added. The second phenomenon users will have to get used to is that many of these sharpening filters are image size dependent. On the 250Kpixel nude portrait it took only two Edge Enhances to cause serious splotchcies; but on the full size 2Mpixel image it took 5 Edge Enhances to do close to the same damage. Simple rule - more pixels in the image, less pronounced the sharpening effect.

Finally, users may be victim of the CSI effect. On TV and movie programs they show photos being magnified by 10x or even 25x times and then the grainy image being snapped into focus. Or severely motion blurred images being cleared up such that any five year old could read the license plate numbers. Not here. Not for $120 US, not in Photoshop, maybe in some military labs. If the image is more than mildly out-of-focus, the only option is to Edge Enhance right to the onset of noise and then downsize the image by 50% or more.

Final Step: Touch Ups

For many graphic designers and artist our final step, touch ups is really the first step and starting point for their artistic work. So after looking at the touch up tools, which the artist and painter may well use we will spend some time on the brushes and filters which both photo editors and painters might use. In the world of photo-editing we are covering the topics of "grooming" and gardening" respectively. Grooming involves removing objectionable parts of an image; while gardening means adding to the image content that was not originally there. Of course painters and artists are full scale horticulturists and should proceed here.

Grooming in the world of photo-editing touch-ups starts with cropping and some of the many image-wide corrections noted at the start of this review. But some come at the end of the photo-edit where there is the need to groom out some of the rough spots. But first let us consider the rules of retouch. When doing grooming work the first rule is to not damage the image in the process of doing the retouch. The second rule is to be invisible - the retouch should blend in with the existing image and leave no marks behind. Viewers should have no idea that a blemish was smoothed out or a telephone pole removed. One of the key ways of insuring this is to select specific areas of the image to be retouched, masking out all other areas from inadvertent alteration in any way. PaintShop Pro has 5 masking tools and about 20 Select commands to help insure that only the user desired area will be subject to retouch. Of course these same masking tools and operations can be used for color corrections, painting effects, and other graphics editing. Here are the masking tools.

Polygon Selection - allows users to draw any of 15 preset shapes as selected area. Most often used shapes are rectangle, circle, ellipse. The selected region cannot be moved or manipulated. It can be added to or trimmed by using another selection operation. In the tool options, the Mode pulldown allows for three types of masking operation. The default is replace. That means the currently drawn mask will replace any previously existing selections or masks(we use the names here interchangeably). The second selection or mask mode is add. That means the current masking operation will add to any areas not masked on the image. Finally, the replace mode only works if there is an existing mask. the current masking operation will take away any overlaping areas from the previously existing mask.

Freehand Selection - is actually four tools depending on which Selection type user choose from the first dropdown in the tool options bar. If readers get the impression they should have the tool options bar open at all times, they are right - it is essential not just for masking but painting and other retouch operations. The Freehand selector works like a one pixel paint brush and traces out the contours of the selected area as the mouse is moved over the screen. If the user does not close the area PaintShop Pro takes a straight line to complete the end points. In fact this is the strategy used for closing off a selection in all the selectors. The Point-to-Point selector draws straight line segments between user clicked points on the image. A double click or right mouse click closes off the selection. ESC erases all the points; DEL/Delete key erases the last point selected. The Smart Edge selector uses the underlying HSL values of the pixels to try to identify a natural edge or border. It then lays out the mask edge to follow that border. Smart Edge can be very smart particularly if users set the Range tool option wider or narrower as their basic image demands. The Edge Seeker selector works the same as Smart Edge except it is geared more towards hue differences than saturation and brightness values. Try Edge Seeker when Smart Edge is not working well.

Magic Wand or Color Selection - masks all contiguous areas on the image in a similar range of hue values. Well Magic Wand actually works on 7 different "color" equivalents - RGB, Hue, Color, Brightness, Opacity, and All Opaque(non-touching opaque areas are included). The default is RGB but users should try Brightness as well. Use a higher Tolerance number in the tool options to include a wider range of values in the mask.

Now that an area is selected or masked, users can alter that mask with about 20 Selection commands contracting, expanding, feathering and even saving the mask for later reuse. This gets into the world of channels and alpha masks which are very useful for advanced edits. You can even Edit Selection. This allows users to use such tools as AirBrush, Smudge and Push (but strangely not the Paint Brush tools)to change the borders of a selection - very handy to fine tune a mask. this capability plus the excellent Freehand and Magic wand variations means that PaintShop Pro matches and goes beyond Photoshop in mask/selection features.

The Retouch Tools

So now that we have roped off the area for retouching what does Paint Shop Pro allows us to do ? The retouching tools and commands can be grouped into 3 general categories. There are the Point Retouch tools which work generally where the retouch brush is pointing to. Then there are the Point Color Retouch tools which apply color corrections to the image areas under the retouch brush. Finally there are a huge set of effects and filters which apply their corrections across all areas of the image unless the image is masked or selected. Then the effects/filter are only applied to the masked/selected areas. Hence the importance of masks.

There are nine Point Retouch tools, the most important of which is Clone. This tools allows users to replace an offending spot with nearby pixels that hopefully will blend in with the neighbouring area. This is where things get tricky - as often that is not the case. So the point retouch tools help to restore

Area or Image-wide Retouch tools do exactly as implied they work on an area of the image (often a selection or masked area)

The Painting Shop

The Professional Touches

The last two versions of Paint Shop Pro have moved the program into the top of the line in color correction, layering, masking,and scripting features. Paint Shop Pro still has more to go to match all of Photoshop's layering features or Corel Painter's brushes. Still the improvements are marked and, fortunately for users, not slavish copies of other programs. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the scripting

review after review I have been calling for 3 things in Photoshop and related Adobe programs - a context sensitive property bar, better preview capabilities and a standard set of dialog options. With Photoshop Elements 2 users gots 1 1/2 of these. A full property bar like Paint Shop Pro's context sensitive Tool Option Bar is available; but only full screen preview is provided not the before and after views available to Paint Shop pro users. And neither Photoshop 7 nor Photshop Elements hasa uniform set of dialog options available. this is too bad because in many dailogs users want to rest the all the properties and start over - this is just a button press in Jasc but a tedious exit and restart the dialog in Adobe. likewise it would be useful to turn on and off the preview feature so you can set the controls and then preview excatly when you want - easy in Paint Shop Pro. Finally when you get the exact settings right -it would be useful to save them. This is almost always available in Jasc, the exception in Adobe.