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computerwriter.com
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Jasc Paint Shop Pro 7Toronto Star Fast Forward column for November 16, 2000 Copyright ©, Myles White, 2000 A couple of months ago, I reviewed an
up-and-coming product in the image editing market, JASC Software's Paint Shop
Pro (PSP) 6.02. At the time, I mentioned that the company was poised to release
the next version soon. Well, soon is now. New Features: Two of the major improvements are to automated processes for "fixing" raster images (photographs and other bitmaps in a variety of formats) and the addition of a slew of vector drawing tools you can use by themselves or over top of raster images. New routines now include the ability to automatically adjust colour balance, contrast, and saturation, to remove "red-eye" from people and animals, and to restore damaged photos with a scratch removal tool. Paint Shop Pro 7 also has automated routines to improve video, scanned, and "overly compressed" images as well as global removal of noise, scratches, dust, or specks. An adjustable Histogram lets you enhance details. Note that most of these aren't revolutionary tools. With the exception of the red-eye reduction for animals (their "red-eye" often tends to be "green-eye," especially with cats), most other consumer-oriented image editors already have these features. But it does mean that JASC has done a good job of catching up. About the only thing missing is even a semi-automated routine for cutting parts of images out to create collages. Microsoft's Picture It! and MGI PhotoSuite 4 Platinum still have the edge here. The vector drawing tools provided are both a little more and a little less than you'll find in other programs. For example, the palette of shapes boggles the mind. Sure, there are ellipses, rectangles, and the other standard geometrics (triangles, polygons, spirals, and more). But then you can add buttons, arrows, top hats, wizard hats, "Groucho" nose and glasses, and the programmers-only-know how many other pre-set shapes and objects (there were too many to count). You could spend a whole afternoon playing with them (I did). All shapes can have solid, patterned, textured, or gradient fills; so can outlines ("strokes"). For that matter, so can brushes (and you can also paint with shapes, too). If you create a shape you really like, you can save it separately and re-use it often. You can create patterned lines with custom end-caps. JASC has also added 25 new artistic and lighting special effects. At least one vector effect is missing, however, and that's the ability to blend two objects (say, for example, a circle and a square) and to have the program create intermittent objects showing a transition from one shape to another (along with colour values). "That's a good idea," said one of JASC's product specialists. "I'll have to put that in as a feature request for the next version." However, you can blend vector layers, raster layers, or both (leading to all sorts of interesting effects). Other catch-up enhancements include a "repeat last command" function, the ability to save and restore workspace settings (for instance, which tool dialogues are open on screen), the ability to see changes instantly before you commit to them through what the company calls "Auto-Proof," and improvements in the tool palettes that make it easier to select options (for example, you no longer have to keep your left mouse button down when scanning the drop down visual list of shapes; it stays on screen until you make a selection). Animation: When I reviewed Paint Shop Pro 6, I didn't get around to
looking at the "bonus" program that shipped with it, Animation Shop 2.
On this round however, I took great delight in sampling Animation Shop 3. For
those of us who create animated GIF (Graphics Interchange Format) files, this
unassuming little animation editor is a treat. Animation frames are laid out in
a row across your screen so that, depending on your resolution and the size of
the frame, you can always see three or more cells at a time. That makes They've also added a new "morphing" tool to the list of page transitions that's a lot of fun to work with. You can also rotate frames, add floating images and text, import MPEG (Motion Picture Experts Group) files, and replace colours (including changing background or spot colour transparency) for one, several, or all frames in your "movie." However, it's just as well that Animation Shop 3 ships with Paint Shop Pro, because it lacks anything other than the most rudimentary image editing tools. For example, you can paint on a frame, but you can't select and copy just part of it. Animation Shop and Paint Shop Pro are designed to work together. You can transfer images back and forth with a fair amount of ease, but it's a necessity. To do refined raster / vector edits to animation frame contents you'll need Paint Shop Pro running in the background. I think I'd like to see the programs combined into one (as is done in Corel's PhotoPaint). Good News: At $169 suggested retail (about $149 street), JASC Paint Shop Pro 7 isn't the least expensive program available that combines raster and vector editing with animation capabilities (MGI PhotoSuite 4 Platinum is about $50, but has no vector drawing and Microsoft PhotoDraw V2.is about $129 on the street), but it is far from the most expensive (the CorelDRAW 9 Suite is $769). It's definitely worth a look. More info: www.jasc.com or 1-800-622-2793 |
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Paint
Shop Pro 7 is out and about and if my mail is any indicator, I may have been one
of the last to know that it was an up-and-coming entrant. True, I didn't get a
lot of mail, but what I did receive from PSP users was high in praise. Fans of
PSP are going to have more to rave about in the new edition. When I took a look
at Paint Shop Pro 6, I noted that it fell short of competing products, such as
MGI's PhotoSuite 4 and Microsoft's PhotoDraw in some areas of automation,
although I lauded the JASC product for its innovative use of layering. Not only
could you add additional raster image layers, but also adjustment layers where
you could fiddle with brightness and contrast, hue and saturation, and other
global changes without affecting the underlying photo and could selectively make
them invisible to see how combinations of changes would affect the final
product. All of things I liked about Paint Shop Pro 6 are still here, but there
are tons of additional features in version 7.
image
adjustment from frame to frame a little easier, but JASC has also added
"onion-skins" to version 3 so you can work on a close-up of one frame
at a time while still viewing ghost images from previous frames. 