JASC software Paint Shop Pro 9 review

Paint Shop Pro has always been a powerful photo-editing program, and this upgrade beefs up its creative armoury with a long list of new features.

However, its main weakness has been its rather unwieldy interface. When you launch the program you're faced with a workspace that's awash with toolbars, pop-up menus and palettes. That hasn't changed with this version and Paint Shop Pro's developer, Jasc Software, has missed an opportunity to tackle that problem.

Jasc's rather technical approach is apparent even during installation, when the installer program throws around terms such as 'executables' and 'thumbnail shell extension'. Most home users won't have the faintest idea what these terms mean, so Jasc, now owned by Corel, should really make more of an effort to simplify Paint Shop Pro's presentation and get rid of all the techno-babble.

There have been a few interface changes in this version, though. The Learning Centre palette has been updated with some simple tutorials that explain how to perform various tasks, such as using the new art tools to trace over a photograph and make it look like a hand-drawn painting or sketch.

You can also try to eliminate some of the onscreen clutter by reducing tool palettes to a tab at the right-hand side of the screen. However, this feature is rather unpredictable, and we found that collapsing one palette would often cause other palettes to disappear as well, leaving us rooting through the manual to find out what was going on.

But if Paint Shop Pro's interface remains something of a disappointment, the program certainly goes to town with its new features. Taking a leaf out of Photoshop's book, there's a new History palette that lists all the actions you perform while you're working on a photo. You can click anywhere on the list to step back instantly to a specific point in the editing process, or you can Control-click on any action in the list to undo just one specific action.

The Text tool has been updated, allowing you to create vertical text, and you can now type text directly into the Print Layout dialog box. This is really useful when printing photos, as it allows you to add text elements, such as captions, to your prints without having to alter the original photos.

There are a number of important new features for the keen photographer. Paint Shop Pro can now import RAW camera images from high-end digital cameras (these are unprocessed image files, rather than the compressed JPG file format used by many cameras). There are also a number of powerful photographic filters, such as the Backlight and Flash Fill filters, which can be used to correct overexposed or underexposed images.

One of the biggest changes to Paint Shop Pro is its new range of art media tools. There is a new set of art brushes, including oil brush, chalk and pastels. When you select one of these you can click the Trace button in the toolbar that runs across the top of the screen. This places a transparent tracing layer over your photograph, allowing you to trace over the photo with the art brush and make it look like a painting. Palette Knife and Smear tools allow you to blend colours together on the tracing layer, or you can use the new Mixer palette like an artist's palette, adding dabs of different colours and mixing them together to create new colours. This sort of feature has only recently appeared in Corel Painter, which is more than twice the price of Paint Shop Pro, so you're certainly getting your money's worth.