Corel Paint Shop Pro X

Paint Shop Pro (PSP) has come a long way from its shareware origins to reach its current position as the only serious competitor to the all-conquering Photoshop. Under the new ownership of graphics giant Corel, PSP now has the opportunity to really take the challenge to Adobe. So what does this latest version offer?

Version 9 saw some major interface improvements, but the environment remained too technical, fussy and amateurish. Now, with a new colour scheme and redesigned icons, the program seems much more professional and modern. More importantly, with rationalised toolbars and menus, and slight tweaks to the toolset (including a new Pick tool for selecting and transforming layers), the program is generally less intimidating.

The most effective interface changes have been made to three of the most important palettes. The most striking is the rewrite of the Learning Centre, which is now docked down the left of the screen by default, providing context-sensitive descriptions of the tools as well as access to comprehensive task-based tutorials. The Layers palette has also been revamped, with the former indecipherable command icons replaced by a clean drop-down menu. The display of opacity and blend mode settings for each layer is now optional, opening up the necessary space to provide visual thumbnails for each layer. The Browser palette has been redesigned too, providing instantly resizable thumbnails of supported files and, by default, is now docked across the bottom of the screen in 'photostrip' mode.

The integrated file browser is handy, especially when dealing with multiple images, but digital photographers handling hundreds and thousands of images need dedicated image management. As such, the single biggest improvement in PSP X is the bundling of the standard edition of Photo Album 6. This provides a visual front-end for image management, along with features such as keyword cataloguing and archiving to CD, although features such as VCD and web gallery support have been reserved for the standalone program.

The bundling of Photo Album shows Corel's focus on the digital photography market, and this is apparent throughout PSP X. To keep up with the constantly improving quality of digital cameras, the program now supports a wider range of RAW camera formats and provides more options for boosting their image quality on import. All files can also be automatically processed on opening, and there's 16-bit/channel support that allows for much greater tonal range for the most common colour-correcting commands (although you still have to drop back to 8-bit to apply most filters and retouching tools). Overall performance has also been increased significantly, especially during program startup, when handling high-resolution images, and when undoing and redoing edits.

For the all-important task of enhancing your photos, PSP X concentrates on making existing power more accessible. For example, there are one-click versions of its existing filters for removing noise and the common purple-fringe effect caused by digital cameras' chromatic aberration, plus simplified default handling for controlling colour balance. In addition, the program adds filters for simulating the effects of shooting with black-and-white and infrared film, and for seamless sharpening.

Most impressive - and the undoubted star of this new release - is the Smart Photo Fix command. This analyses the current image and makes a best guess for correcting contrast, brightness, sharpness, saturation and colour balance. For most photos, the suggested settings produce significantly better results, but, crucially, you can always override them with the slider controls to fine-tune where necessary.