Jasc Paint Shop Pro 8

Again, the changes are more than just cosmetic - each of the major tools has been rethought and updated. The Zoom tool in particular is far more flexible, offering percentage zoom levels rather than fixed ratios, and the main zooming options have also been added to the Overview docker. The Crop tool now lets you crop to standard photo sizes while automatically updating the resolution value to match the desired size. And the control over text is now handled via the Options ribbon bar (though text is still edited in a window rather than in situ).

The biggest change, however, is to the brush handling for PSP 8's various paint and retouch tools. The underlying engine for these has been completely overhauled, producing smoother results and offering two new options: Continuous Paint, where all inputs count as a single stroke (important for laying down textures); and Wet Look, which simulates the effect of water-based paint where edges are darker than the centre. The control over the brush shape has also been improved and you can save your customised brushes as presets alongside PSP's built-in range of creative options, such as crayon and charcoal. Plus, while you're painting, you gain far greater control over your brushes, especially if you're using a Tablet via the Brush Variance palette.

PSP 8 also offers a number of completely new tools. The Straighten tool lets you straighten scans or digital photos simply by marking a line that should be horizontal or vertical. The Perspective Correction tool is a useful variation on the same theme, letting you mark the four points of an object that should be rectangular. If you want to add distortions rather than remove them, PSP can oblige with its new Mesh Warp tool, while local effects such as twisting, bloating and pinching are handled with the new interactive Warp Brush - great for producing Goo-style caricatures. Finally, there's the new Background Eraser, which lets you paint away the background around objects.

When it comes to filters that affect the image as a whole, PSP 8 now follows the majority of its rivals by splitting the commands into two camps: the main colour corrections available from the new Adjust menu, and special effects, which remain under the Effects menu. The handling of these effects has also been updated. The Effects Browser now generates pages of thumbnails at a time, not just for every effect but for each preset too. You can also now create presets from just about every filter dialog.

The support for third-party filters has been improved as well - not that most users will need them. PSP has always provided an extensive range of filters and this has been further expanded. Again, a number of these offer distortion-based effects: Polar Coordinates maps pixels from Cartesian to polar co-ordinates; Spherize wraps an image around an imaginary sphere; and Lens Distortion simulates pincushion, fisheye or barrel distortion. Further creative options include the self-explanatory Soft Focus; Magnifying Lens, which blows up a portion of the image; Halftone, which simulates the screening process used for commercial print; and Balls and Bubbles, which lets you add realistic spherical objects to your image.

In terms of new functionality, the biggest single change in PSP 8 has to be the introduction of scripting. Using the new Script toolbar, you can now record any sequence of actions as a macro ready for playback (plenty of samples are also provided). The whole process is straightforward and you can even automatically record brush strokes - something Photoshop doesn't allow. If you need further control, it's possible to load your recorded script into PSP's built-in script editor, for example, to set up conditional processing. Plus, the ability to apply scripts via the Batch Conversion dialog allows you to automatically apply the same changes to multiple images.