Despite having Paint in the name, this program has left the old Paint Shop Pro far behind and is a fully focused photography tool costing far less than some other editors.
At first glance, Paint shop Pro Photo X2 seems to lack pro features, then, deeper searching reveals a full array of powerful tools. Their grouping and location may seem strange to a user more familiar with Adobe Photoshop. However, after more use, the design philosophy of the function navigation started to make sense. The Corel people have paid attention to grouping commands and functions to make image processing more efficient.
For sharpening images, pro photographers prefer to work on the luminosity information only, as applying the sharpening process to the color information may alter the color in the image. Some other photo editing programs need to be in a special mode before moving to the UnSharpMask dialog box, in Paint Shop Pro Photo X2, there is a check box in the UnSharpMask dialog box to apply sharpening only to the luminosity information.
Image Management
Paint Shop Pro Photo X2 has a comprehensive range of features for sorting and finding images for the serious snappers, who inevitably accumulate a wealth of photographs.
Here the integration of functions is evident when photographers plug a memory card into the computer’s card reader. Even if Paint Shop Pro Photo X2 is not running, a small module runs in the background and handles all the image copying and directory creation tasks to transferring the photographic image files from the memory card to a new folder on the computer’s hard disk.
Paint Shop Pro Photo X2 is similar to Adobe Lightroom in more ways than their graphite interfaced theme, with a strip of image thumbnails below the main window allowing for selection of individual images for processing from the current directory or a search result.
The Paint Shop Pro Photo X2 search function is a powerful tool. At the initial sorting, photographers assign a caption to images containing a good range of descriptive and relevant keywords. This sets up for a later search for a keyword in the captions, even across a range of directories, and Paint Shop Pro Photo X2only displays thumbnails of images found in the search.
Exposure Adjustment
The image adjustment tools in Paint Shop Pro Photo X2 range from powerful and simple to use controls, to all the complex functions for pro photographers. Whatever your level of photography there are tools for adjusting image exposure levels and color balances.
This range is typified by a simple color adjust function giving the photographer the option to make the image warmer - yellower, or cooler - bluer, simulating color filters on camera lenses. This is a simple easy solution for color adjustments for the JPEG images favored by many photographers. The other extreme of the range of Paint Shop Pro Photo X2 is it is also a RAW converter for precision adjustment of the image’s color temperature.
A feature of Paint Shop Pro Photo X2 adjustment dialog boxes is that they are expandable up to full screen size and they contain two image boxes for before and after adjustment views. Using images of the same size and the same zoom level, gives a better comparison of the effect of any changes.
Image manipulation
Paint Shop Pro Photo X2 has the normal tools for selecting objects and combining images for the serious times and a number of functions for the less serious such as functions to apply a range or borders or adding decorative frames to images.
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