Software
Review of: |
 The
more I work with Photo-Paint, the more I’m impressed with it’s tools and
versatility and I’m very impressed with version 10. Photo-Paint 10 is reported
to have been rewritten to be faster and more stable. In other words, the
performance difference between version 9 and 10 is said to be like night
and day.
If you’ve been using Adobe Photoshop, you will have to unlearn certain manipulation techniques and learn some new terminology — layers in Photoshop are called objects in Photo-Paint. Although Photo-Paint has the same tools as Photoshop, many of them have different names and finding where tools are located takes some repetition before feeling at home with the program. The Eyedropper is a good example. On the Photoshop toolbar is an eyedropper icon. There is no such icon in Photo-Paint! After searching, I found that all I had to do was place my cursor over a color I wanted to sample and click the letter “e” for Eyedropper. That sample color is now ready to be used. The major difference I’ve found between the two programs is that Photo-Paint has many CorelDRAW tools and techniques embedded into the program. For instance version 10 has Fit Text to a Path, an old staple of CorelDRAW but a great enhancement to Photo-Paint. CorelDRAW buffs will find themselves spending a lot more time within Photo-Paint to build their graphic projects as the tools available in Photo-Paint will be extremely familiar. Another major difference between the two programs is price. Adobe Photoshop is priced at $609 on Adobe’s Website and the upgrade version will cost you $199. Currently the only way you can obtain Photo-Paint version 10 is to buy CorelDRAW 10. Yes, it comes bundled with CorelDRAW. The Corel Website indicates that Photo-Paint 9 (the previous version) is available for $349 while CorelDRAW 10 (bundled with Photo-Paint 10) is $549. The upgrade price for CorelDRAW10 is $239. I’ve thought about Corel’s marketing strategy to bundle Photo-Paint with CorelDRAW. Since Adobe Photoshop is the target competition for Photo-Paint — and since Photoshop is so embedded in service bureaus, ad agencies, freelance designers, photographers, et al, Corel’s thinking is right on. There is a huge CorelDRAW user-base of graphic artists, designers and home-based users. If Corel can develop this user-base to start using Photo-Paint on photo type projects, there are enough similarities between CorelDRAW and Photo-Paint that a transition from Photoshop to Photo-Paint is sure to follow. It will be a steep hill to climb. Have patience Corel. So what’s new with Photo-Paint 10? I mentioned Fit Text to a Path above. You can assign text to any path and both the text and the path are still editable. You can even assign shadowed text to a path for some very interesting effects. Text now has the ability to be edited after it has been scaled, skewed or rotated. Scaled text is instantly redrawn. Aliasing is reported to be better with this version. Corel has improved how Photo-Paint stores the image so panning and zooming within a 50MB graphic is almost real-time. There are new tools for adding and removing noise — for blurring and sharpening images. Greatly improved is the Interactive Drop Shadow tool (imported from CorelDRAW) which now has controls for opacity and feathering on the drop shadow controls. Also new in Photo-Paint 10 is the smart blur. This feature should give you the ultimate control over blurs — although my level of photo enhancement is trying to make images sharper rather than add a blur on purpose. Corel has rewritten Masks not to auto-clip as they are moved out of the document space. The mask will now only contain objects within the document/image boundaries. You can now drag a mask from one image to another by clicking and holding the Control Key while dragging the new mask over to another image. You can specify the order of color separations and can align all printers marks to the edge of an image or to the edge of a page. Color management has been redesigned to be more intuitive by combining all the essential color management options in one redesigned dialog box. Another new feature is Hide Active Object wherein you can hide objects and changes on different layers using the list in the Object Docker window. You can edit objects within an image, trace the history of their changes, and create what-if scenarios using this feature. A feature that I’ve not opened yet is Corel Motion FX 10, a Flash like application similar to Flash 4 and LiveMotion. In this program, you can change object and effect properties over time (tweening). A timeline docker at the bottom of the screen allows you to create and edit your project using familiar CorelDRAW tools. Most software reviews end up telling you how to accomplish tasks within the program. There are so many features in Photo-Paint 10 that I won’t even attempt this task. What I will do is make one more comparison with Adobe Photoshop 6 and Photo-Paint 10 — a tool that is used frequently in image editing and enhancement —Masking Tools. Masks allow the user to isolate specific areas of an image. Once a mask is defined, the user can adjust color and/or apply effects to the mask (or outside the mask). Moving a mask out of the image as a floating selection or object is a common technique when using masks. While the seven basic masking tools in Photo-Paint are about equal to the eight masking tools in Photoshop, the number is misleading. The function of each masking tool is similar between the two programs, the ability to easily modify a mask is what separates Photo-Paint from Photoshop. Each program uses context sensitive tool bars that display settings that allow you to modify the way the selected tool behaves without going into any of the menus. Photo-Paint has an additional tool bar called the Mask/Object tool bar that offers instant control over masks. A tool by tool comparison should start with the Rectangle Mask too.
Creating a basic rectangle mask works exactly the same with both programs.
The difference lies in what attributes can be changed during the creation
of the mask and how easy it is to modify a mask after it has been created.
Table 1 compares Photo-Paint Property Bar with Photoshop Tool Option Bar
while
Another comparison is the Magic Wand tool which both programs have. They are based upon masking by color with the accuracy of the mask based on color tolerances. Photo-Paint lets the user choose HSB (Hue, Saturation, Brightness) which allows greater control of the mask area. Photo-Paint’s Lasso mask tool works completely different from that of Photoshop. Photo-Paint’s Lasso tool is based on color tolerance or HSB (like the Magic Want tool). Instead of sampling a color you draw a freehand shape around a portion of the image you want masked and the mask is “pulled” inward until a color change is “sensed” based on the first color sampled when the lasso shape is drawn. Another comparison is the Mask Brush tool which works differently than Photoshop’s counterpart. Accessed from the Mask flyout in Photo-Paint, it allows the user to draw masks using the shape of the brush (nib). This ability to choose from the many nibs available plus the added ability to use any transparency built into the nibs creates endless artistic possibilities. Table 2 shows the differences between the two programs to change attributes after a rectangle mask is created. Photo-Paint has a long, uphill road to take on the heavily entrenched Photoshop market but there are enough differences between the two programs to warrant a look. I am particularly impressed with added Photo-Paint tools to further spark creativity and I’m feeling more and more at home with this program each time I open it. Corel Corporation
Clarke Bird Bird has about as much creativity as a bag of hammers but loves tweeking photos for hours on end. His wife has threatened divorce many times but relents when he shows her a photo in which he has smoothed wrinkles on her pretty face and darkened her greying hair. |