Overview

This continuing review of Corel’s Corel Photo & Video Bundle covers Corel Paint Shop Pro Photo X2. My experience with Corel Paint Shop Pro Photo began when I won Version XI as a prize for a photograph I submitted of the FACUG Spring 2007 conference. Since then and my review of the application in September of 2007 Paint Shop Pro Photo has become my photo editing application of choice.

Paint Shop Pro X2, as the previous version, is easy to use. The menus and toolbars are similar to other photo editing applications. Therefore you will find Paint Shop Pro Photo an easy transition. The Tools Toolbar, displayed vertically, contains tools image-editing tasks including buttons Selecting, Outlining, Cropping, Cloning, Erasing, Filling, Painting, and Text Entry. The small down arrow by a Tool indicates that a group of similar tools are provided by a drop down listing. If you are unfamiliar with these tools, the Learning Center on the left side of the main pane offers help with editing tasks and explains the use of the tools. The Standard Toolbar shown below the Menu Bar displays the most common commands, including saving images, undoing a command, and cutting and pasting items.

Interface Changes

Express Lab

Paint Shop Pro Photo X2 includes a new Express Lab that puts some common photo editing tools in one location. It is like a mini-application within Corel Paint Shop Pro Photo X2. The settings for a tool appear along the right side of the Express Lab. After selecting the folder with the photos to work on you can move between photos using the Next and Previous buttons.

Open Express lab from the View drop down menu or click the Express Lab Icon in the Standard Toolbar. Click the Get Photos button and browse to the folder of images to be loaded into the preview bar at the bottom of the Express Lab. Select an individual photo to load and the smart photo fix editor is displayed on the right. It includes sliders for Brightness, Shadows, Highlights and Saturation and a histogram for exposure. Additional tools are available below the selected image including Save, Save As, Undo, Redo, Straighten, Crop Tool, Smart Photo Fix, Makeover tool, Clone Brush, Red-eye Tool and Rotate Right or Left.

Express Lab is designed to help complete the first cut editing of photos. I personally did not find the Express Lab useful. I prefer to work completely through the editing of each photo. It would have been useful for rotating photos if a group of photos could be selected and an operation completed on all in one step.

HDR Photo Merge

HDR Photo Merge is a major addition to Version X2. It combines bracketed shots using different exposures to create a single high contrast photo. My camera does not have the ability to take bracketed shots so I manually took photos with varying exposures and used HDR Photo Merge.

From the File drop down menu select HDR Photo Merge. Click the Browse button to find and select the photos to be merged. Since I had to manually take the photos I found that using Align Images to better position the images for merging a plus.

A preview of the merged images and thumbnails of the photos to be merged are shown. Click the Suggest Settings button to see the image as Paint Shop Pro Photo X2 recommends it be merged. I merged the photos with this setting first and then went back through the process and customized the Suggested Settings by using the Brightness and Clarify sliders.

Photo Editing

Editing photos can be easy with Paint Shop Pro X2’s One Step Photo Fix. With one click, Paint Shop Pro makes automatic adjustments to color, brightness, contrast, and sharpness. Many times this all that is necessary to get extra detail or color. I always start my photo editing with One Step Photo Fix because it is so simple. If the result is not good enough it is easy to undo the process if the photo still needs additional work. This is where Smart Photo Fix comes in. Manually adjust brightness, saturation, focus, and black and white levels until you get the results you want. Smart Photo Fix shows you the before and after in real time so you know what the end result will be.

This photograph of a mother black bear and cubs taken by my brother-in-law this spring in Yellowstone did not show the cubs clearly.

The mother was trying to get the cubs across a stream but one was afraid and crying. So she decided to feed them to quiet the baby down. All three were nearly the same color and quite far away so it was hard to see the cubs. Using One Step Photo Fix and Smart Photo Fix I changed the dark tones and highlights to make the cubs more visible.

One Step Noise Removal automatically gets rid of unwanted pixels or groups of pixels resulting from image compression. The Color Balance editor makes it easy to make a picture appear “cooler” or “warmer” by changing the color temperature and tint in both white balance and color balance.

Paint Shop Pro X2’s Clarify tool analyzes the image and adjusts the brightness in each region to enhance depth and clarity. Choose the strength of the effect and Paint Shop Pro X2 sharpens the image bringing out fine detail. Here I used the same photograph of the black bears and the Clarify Tool.

If a photo is slightly blurred from unsteady hands or object motion, High Pass Sharpen, in the Enhance Photo tool set might help. By increasing the contrast of certain pixels, the High Pass Sharpen tool can make the blur disappear. Specify the radius around the soft edges to define change, and the resulting image will be clearer. It’s something you play with and adjust manually.

Fort this photo off buffalo galloping through a meadow I used several steps to reach a final edited image. The image labeled Original is the photo as cropped and resized for the review. Paint Shop Pro Photo X2’s new Crop to New Image feature is great. It lets you crop the photo automatically to a new image so you don’t have to worry about resaving and loosing the original photo.

Then with Smart Photo Fix followed I slightly increased the brightness of the shadows and highlights. Using Color Balance I increased the warmth of the colors in the photo. Finally I used the High Pass Sharpen to increase the detail

Makeover Tools

Paint Shop Pro Photos X2’s Makeover tools are a subset of photo editing tools to apply cosmetic improvements to people in your photos. The Makeover tools have been improved and include the Blemish Fixer, Toothbrush, Eye Drop, Suntan, and Thinify. The Red Eye tool is still available as a separate tool in the Tools toolbar.

With Blemish Fixer you set the Size control and Strength and then simply click over the blemish. Set the strength of the Toothbrush and brush over the teeth to whiten them. Add whitening eye drops to eyes with the Eye Drop tool. The Suntan tool has settings for Size and Strength. Just set the values and then drag over the flesh tones. I find that it is helpful to first select the area for editing, like the teeth, eyes and faces before applying the Toothbrush, Eye Drop or Suntan.

An amazing new Makeover tool is Thinify. It makes slimming down easy. Just set the Strength and click in the middle of the person to slim down.

I thought that this picture of my sister and nephew sledding only needed a few improvements. I used the Makeover Toothbrush, Eye Drop, Suntan and Thinify tools. Then I applied the Skin Smoothing tool from the Adjust drop down menu. To add a little color to the snow I used the Magic Wand Selection tool to select the snow in the background. Then with the Dropper tool I selected a pale blue color from the snow and finally used the Color Changer tool to change the white background snow to the pale blue color.

Additional Editing Options

Corel Paint Shop Pro Photo X2 offers so many possibilities that it would be impossible to even gloss over them all. So I have only discussed a few of the most commonly used editing features. But I also wanted to touch on a couple fun things that you can do.

Changing Colors

The Color Changer tool offers a lot of options for editing images. If you are considering redecorating, Color Changer can help with selecting colors. Another fun use for the Color Changer is to colorize old black and white photographs.

Quickly substitute a new color paint in a photograph before redecorating a room.

My mother did a lot of photography and would hand color black and white photographs. So with Paint AHop Pro Photo X2 is digitally added color to this photo of her with the Color Changer tool.

Erasing the Background

The Background Eraser tool also offers many options. There is a new add-in Background Eraser tool in my version of Paint Shop Pro Photo X2 but I found that I liked the original tool better. When you have the opportunity to photograph something you may never see again but the day is not sunny all is not lost. When we toured Denali the clouds did not obscure the mountain but the sky way gray. So I cropped and edited the image. Then using the Background Eraser I removed the sky. After adding a new layer behind the mountain I cloned the sky from another photo into my image.

Another use of the Background Eraser is in creating a collage of photographs. West Yellowstone, Montana has painted buffalos scattered throughout the town. I found them interesting and photographed each. But a photo of painted buffalo in front of buildings and on street corners is not very interesting. So I used the Background Eraser to create images of the painted buffalo with no background. Then I copied each and pasted it as a new layer on a photograph of a herd of buffalo grazing in the park. The same process can be used to create a collage of family photos or other scrapbook images.

Creative Content

Besides the actual editing and even artistically combining images Paint Shop Pro Photo offers additional creative content. Photo Effects, creative Frames and Photo Tubes are just a few. I used a photograph of a double rainbow taken from the back door to illustrate some of these features.

Here I cropped and edited the image with Smart Photo Fix. Then from the Effects and Illumination drop down menus I selected the Sunburst to add the sun and light rays. Positioning the sunburst in the right upper corner worked with the rainbows in front of the mountain.

Then with Add Frames and Photo Edges found in the Text and Graphics portion of the Learning center I selected three different frames to border the photo. Paint Shop Pro Photo offers everything from the edge treatment, to the whimsical photo frame and elegant picture frame that I chose.

 

A final fun option is the addition of Picture Tubes. Select the Picture Tube tool in the Tools toolbar or in the Learning Center in Text and Graphics select Add Graphics. Then select a Picture Tubes from the drop down menu and drag to paint it over the image. Here I added rain clouds, birds, dogs and cats and a jumbo jet.

Conclusions

I was already sold on Corel Paint Shop Pro and have been using Version X1 as my photo editing application of choice for several years. The new features in Version X2 make the program even better. The Express Lab is good for photographers with large amounts of images to process who wish to make quick preliminary changes to their photos. The revised Makeover tools will interest portrait photographers.

Corel Paint Shop Pro Photo X2 is an impressive image editing application with a broad selection of tools that are easy to use. As a part of Corel’s Photo and Video Bundle or as a standalone application Paint Shop Pro Photo is an affordable, easy to use, full-featured image editor.