Review of:
Paint Shop Pro 4.0 
by Susan Ives, Alamo PC

I own Photoshop— and spent more than $600 for it. But, I still find myself turning to old reliable Paint Shop Pro for a few tasks that it handles better than the more expensive program. Unless you are a professional designer, Paint Shop Pro should meet all of your needs. 

 What do I use it for? 
 
 

1. Scanning: Because of a power struggle between my modem and scanner, the scanner is hooked up to my old computer. I use Paint Shop Pro on that system. It is more powerful that the "limited edition" programs that come bundled with most scanners, and has the advantage of allowing you to scan and edit using the same program. My digital camera is also configured so that I can download my photos directly into Paint Sho Pro.

 

 

2. Screen Captures: All of the screen captures in my Internet training manuals were grabbed with Paint Shop Pro. Screen capture options are full screen, client area, a window, an object or an any area that you rope off. You can do a screen capture with a right mouse click, or with a hot key combination that you specify yourself. As with scanning, you can then edit the screen capture right into Paint Shop Pro.

 

 

3. Batch Processing: This is one of those features that you don't appreciate until you need it. I had a CD-ROM with 150 images that I had to convert to JPG format for use in a web site. Manually, this would have taken several mind-numbing hours. Using Paint Shop Pro, I opened a directory and told the program to convert every file called *.TIF to a JPG format. I jumped into the swimming pool and let the computer do all the work. This alone was worth the $70 I paid for the program.

 

 

4. Format Conversions: Photoshop 3, the version I use, cannot read WPG graphics, and I have a bunch of them on my Art Explosion 40,000 CDs. Paint Shop Pro handles them fine. An acquaintance who is an expert with his scanner confided that when he converts images to JPG format for his Web site he always turns to Paint Shop Pro. Photoshop only offers four options for image quality: low, medium, high and maximum. Paint Shop Pro provide more control by permitting you to specify a compression percentage. Paint Shop Pro can cope with about 30 file formats.

 

 

5. Graphic editing and enhancement: This, of course, is the core of the program. Paint Shop Pro will do just about anything you want to a graphic. You can crop it, shrink it or enlarge it. You can lighten it or darken it. You can change the colors. You can touch it up. You can edit out the picture of your ex-wife in the group photo. You can rotate it, skew it, invert the color. You can pick the color out of an existing graphic and duplicate that color in another graphic. You can combine graphics, adding a clip art bow tie to a photo of your dog.


 I use Paint Shop Pro to create simple original graphics - it took me about ten minutes to create the five that accompany this review. 

• To make the button, I used the selection tool to draw a box, called "marching ants," on a plain white background. PaintShop Pro's Buttonize special effect (two mouse clicks) turned it into a 3-D button. I then used the text tool to insert the text. This is the system I use to create button bars for web pages, such as the ones on the San Antonio Conservation Society Web Site. 
• To make the drop shadowed text, I just typed and positioned the text and clicked the effect Drop Shadow. To do this in Photoshop, you either have to go through a tedious ten-step process, or purchase and install a drop shadow plugin. You'll see this on the Conservation Society Web page, too. 
• To make the globular NEW graphic, I typed the text then applied the circle deformation.
• The word FILL is filled with a brick pattern. I typed the word FILL, and then set my paint bucket (flood fill) to PATTERN. I then opened up another graphic, in this case a copyright-free web page background JPG that I downloaded from the Internet. I clicked the paint bucket on the text, and it filled with brick. Note: although these illustrations were created in black and white for the PC Alamode, Paint Shop Pro does color!)
Paint Shop Pro lets you create masks, which block off parts of the graphic to keep them from being affected by changes you apply to the rest of the image. This is a way to apply interesting edge effects to your photographs.The program also can use the plugin filters created for PhotoShop. I used Eye Candy to created the weave pattern on the box shown here, but hundreds of free filters are available on the Internet at sites such as the Filter Factory Gallery, at www.netins.net/showcase/wolf359/ffagalry.htm. 

There are some things in Paint Shop Pro that aren't as sophisticated as Photoshop. PSP doesn't do layers. Layers allow you to make each change to a graphic in a new layer so if you mess up you only ruin the latest layer, not the entire graphic. In Paint Shop Pro, if you goof you start over. It also doesn't appear that PSP will let you create a color separation. The previews of the various effects in Paint Shop Pro are clunky; Photoshop hangles this with a sleeker interface. 

 The two best things about Paint Shop Pro are it's reasonable price and the fact that it's shareware. You can download PaintShop Pro from the JASC web site. You can use it for a 30 day free trial, after which you are expected to pay $69 plus $5 shipping and handling. Upgrades from former versions are only $23 (the upgrade to Photoshop version 4, by contrast, is $179!) 

You can pay for the program over a secure server on the Internet, or print an order form from your shareware copy. It is also available in retail stores for about the same price; I've seen it at CompUSA. Whatever your source, it comes with disks or a CD and a nice little manual. If you get stuck, there are third party books and tons of Internet Web sites that cater to users. JASC has even started a newsgroup, comp.graphics.apps.paint-shop-pro, and sells a CD-ROM based tutorial for only $29. No excuse not to be an expert! 

 Susan Ives, the Alamo PC webmaster, cannot be trusted with scissors, glue or paint but has unleashed her latent artistic soul with computer graphics.