Jasc Paint Shop Pro 7

_www.jasc.com

Maureen Shannon, NJPCUG

No two (graphics) applications are created equal.  Once you know this, you can narrow your search for an application down to what features are important to you and how much you want to spend. Jasc Paint Shop Pro falls into the category of a full featured, medium priced graphics application.  I use several applications so that I can take advantage of all the requirements I have for various things that I do. Unfortunately, features vary from application to application and tool use and features may as well.  For the past two years, the majority of the work I do has been in Paint Shop Pro, version 6 and now version 7. Paint Shop Pro is an excellent place to start if you are new to working with graphic applications or for an addition to a well-rounded application selection. There's enough power and possibilities packed into Paint Shop Pro 7 to satisfy all levels of users.

Paint Shop Pro 7 is great for both the novice user and the expert because it combines the features and tools most of us want and need. It's not difficult to understand and as you learn to use it and take advantage of the many features and effects, you will be amazed at the results that can be obtained.  Adding to this, there are many sites on the world wide web that offer tutorials that will teach users how to use these tools and effects to the fullest.  Included with Paint Shop Pro 7 is version 3 of its animation application, Animation Shop.  I don't use the animation component as much as I do the Paint Shop Pro but I have used it and had good success with it. I mainly focus on creating images for our user group home page/web site, editing photos, and things of that nature.

The toolbars selections list can set all the toolbars and their tools or effects to be available by clicking their icons, or just use selected toolbars that have items you will use most frequently. Selecting toolbar settings is as simple as choosing "Edit" from the menu bar and then choosing toolbars and then checking or unchecking the toolbars you want to be active on the checklist.

Paint Shop has many tools. Each brush tool is customizable and easy to work with. My favorite tool is the picture tube. I have hundreds of tubes in my collection and add to it all the time. Tubes can be found for free on many internet sites and are easily created from images you may have already. My plug-in collection is also large. For those who look at PSP and don't know how to add more than the default three plug-ins, it very simple to add more plug-ins within an existing plug-in folder. Simply create a folder inside a plug-in folder call it, plugins, add all you other plug-ins inside of it. When you restart the software, all the new plug-ins will be there.  I have my SPG Web tools as one of the three plug-ins and the "plugin" folder in side that. Every plug-in I have added is recognized and available to me.  Some tool features or uses are:

Masking tools: shapes (rectangles, elipse, circle, etc.) freeform, and the wand tool allow you to create masks/selections of all shapes and sizes

Retouch tools can darken or lighten RGB colors, smudge, push, soften, sharpen, add color, etc. to an image and greatly enhance or change the color levels in the image

Clone Brush will copy and replace parts of the image with another section of the image

Flood fill with solid color, gradients, texture

Spray Paint color, texture in varying degrees of opacity and hardness setting

Paint brushes add color, custom brushes will add images in varying degrees of color opacity and hardness

Picture Tube tool will spray an image on a background or add to a graphic/photo - use tubes on layers to create scenes - tubes are adjustable in size when directly sprayed, can be selected and sized, rotated, flipped, opacity changed when placed individually on layers -new tubes can be easily created and imported into the tube folder.

Working with layers is extremely easy and each layer has it's own transparency adjustment and merge settings. When I work, I try to make each new, added feature on a layer of its own so that if I change my mind I can delete the layer and not affect the rest of the image. The layer and brush palettes can be set to automatically rollup when you move the mouse cursor off of them so that they are out of the way but easily available when you need them. I love this feature. There is also an overview window that shows the entire image being worked on. The palette rollups make the working area less cluttered and easier to work on a large image without a tool palette hanging over the edge of it.

The browse feature is another item that I frequently use. I can browse all my images, on all my drives or cd collections, by simply opening the browser and pointing it to the drive and folder I want to view. It's quick loading and offers me thumbnails of all available images and I can easily drag and drop anything I need onto the workspace to use it.

When I create an image for the home page, I either use the default setting I have created (size 550X425 pixels, black background, resolution 72) - I can change any of these settings if I need to, or open a background image that I have created in a terrain editor and then copy and paste it onto my background. Sometimes I use a sky generator to put a sky on the black background and then create water or ground features under it.  Other background features can also be copied and pasted on the default background and then edited to fit it. Building the image with the picture tube brush (an image sprayer) creates some interesting and very beautiful graphics. I like making nature scenes and water applets and usually look for tubes that can be used in them. I also have also created rooms using the flood fills in masked areas and then applying an effect to create the look of drapes and a wood texture to make a desk, then adding objects or a spray image to complete the scene.

The effects included in Paint Shop Pro are a lot of fun to work with and with a little experimentation you can add some dramatic and unique looks to the images. I have used combinations of tools and effects to create effects like a hand coming out of the water and the water around the arm is rippling.  I like the artistic effect selection included in Paint Shop Pro 7 very much.  There is also a selection of frames that can be used to enhance photos or graphic images.  An effects browser provides a preview of what effects will look like on the image. Effect types include:

Blur (average, blur, blur more, Gaussain, motion, soften, soften more)

Sharpen (sharpen, sharpen more, unsharp mask

Edge (dilate, enhance, enhance more, erode, find all, find horizontal, find vertical, trace contour

Noise (add, despeckle, edge preserving smooth, median filter, salt & pepper filter, texture preserving smooth)

Enhance Photo (automatic color balance, contrast & saturation enhancement; deinterlace, jpeg artifact removal, moiré pattern removal; automatic small scratch removal; clarify; fade correction; manual color correction; red eye removal)

3 D (buttonize, chisel, cutout, drop shadow, inner bevel, outer bevel)

Artistic (aged newspaper, black pencil, brush strokes, charcoal, chrome, colored chalk, colored edges, colored foil, colored pencil, contours, enamel, glowing edges, hot wax coating, neon, pencil, sepia, and topography)

Geometric (circle, curly Q's, cylinder horizontal & vertical, page curl, pentagon. Perspective horizontal & vertical, pinch, punch, pixelate, ripple, skew, spiky halo, twirl, wave, warp, twirl)

Illumination (sunburst (lens flare) and lights)

Reflection (feedback, kaleidoscope, pattern, rotating mirror)

Texture (blinds, emboss, fine leather, fur, mosaic - antique & glass, polished stone, rough leather, sandstone, sculpture, plastic, straw wall, texture (various selections), tiles, & weave

Plus any "User Defined" plug-ins

Paint Shop Pro also had tools for editing and retouching photos. I have used this many times to fix photos that I have taken that need color adjustment or red eyes fixed. You can also clone damaged areas of a photo to make it look good as new again! The software has support for digital cameras too.

Color Controls:

Adjust (brightness/contrast, channel mixer, color balance curves, gamma correction, highlight/midtone/shadow, hue/saturation/lightness, hue map, levels, red/green/blue, threshold)

Colorize

Grey scale

Histogram functions (equalize, histogram adjustment, stretch) 

Negative image

Posterize

Solarize

Split Channel (split to RGB, split to HSL, split to CMYK)

Combine Channel (combine from RGB, combine from HSL, combine CMYK)

Edit palette, load palette, save palette, set palette transparency, view palette transparency

Count colors user

Increase depth (2 colors - 1 bit, 16 colors - 4 bit, 256 colors - 8 bit, 32k - 24 bit, etc.)

Decrease depth (16 colors - 4 bit, 256 colors - 8 bit, 16 million - 24 bit)

Images can be resized in several ways offering more possibilities than I have found in other software. Not only can the image be resized to a specific size using smart sizing to keep it proportionate (uncheck to make it size to other dimensions, but it can be sized by percentage too. The percentage sizing can include all layers or a single layer. This works great when making a custom transparent watermark. Images can also be sized to print size.

Other productivity features include multiple levels of undo and redo, batch file conversion format, and multiple image printing. The multiple image print feature can save you from wasting special print papers by allowing you to add more than one image to the sheet of paper.

Paint Shop Pro 7 also comes with capture software. The capture setup is another easy to use feature that works very well. I have used it any number of times to take screen shots and they have always been clear and sharp. The capture feature can be set to take single or multiple captures and customized to any specific area, screen, or window.  The capture can be used with a mouse click or hot key and even set with a few seconds delay.

Web development tools are also part of Paint Shop Pro 7. A JPEG/GIF/PNG Optimizer custom sets the image for web use making it the best size and compression for viewing or allow for the settings to be selected by the user. Images can be sliced and used for faster downloading of images on the web. (Sliced images are the ones that load in small rectangles that show as a complete image when finished downloading).  Image maps can be designed, these are sections of an image are used to link to areas on a web site.  Other web development features are an Image Rollover Creator, View in Browser feature, and Dynamic animations.

I like Paint Shop Pro very much and would recommend it to anyone who is looking for a good graphics application. The price varies depending on whether the application is downloaded - $99(items such as the picture tubes, frames, and other "fun stuff" are not included in the download version but are available as a separate download) or if a boxed version is purchased - $109. A boxed version contains all the extra's plus the manuals and of course, the application CD. I prefer and would recommend the boxed version.