Corel have recently released an upgrade to their PaintShop Pro, this time version X4 as well as a new product called PDF Fusion.
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“PaintShop Pro delivers ‘DSLR’ power at a ‘point-and-shoot’ price while offering an uncompromising depth and selection of pro-quality tools to expertly manage, adjust, edit and share your entire photo collection”, claim Corel
The software includes 75 new and enhanced features including new photo editing features, dramatic improvements in speed and performance, enhancements to the user interface and convenient ways to share through social media..
“We worked closely with our user community throughout the development process for PaintShop Pro X4,” said Craig Copley, Senior Product Manager for PaintShop Pro. “Our users are diverse, engaged and incredibly passionate about photography. While they use PaintShop Pro for a variety of creative purposes, all of them share a desire for artistic freedom and the ability to achieve their vision quickly, with tools that are intuitive, powerful and efficient. With the community’s input and support, we believe we have a release that delivers the depth and range of features that makes this a fantastic upgrade for our users.”
Just some of the new and enhanced features include:
• New! HDR Tools – Completely redesigned to bring you the latest technology in high dynamic range photo production, the new HDR module provides tools to merge photos and create picture-perfect exposures with stunning contrast. With built-in presets to get you started, images look their best in no time. This module also saves you time with the option to process large batches of HDR exposure brackets quickly.
• New! Photo Blend – Create the perfect composition by easily selecting people, objects or areas from a series of images. The Photo Blend tool is a new and powerful option for photographers who want to produce compelling group shots or creative scenes where one person appears in multiple poses.
• New! Fill Light and Clarity – The Fill Light tool lets you work quickly to bring out underexposed areas without affecting the overall brightness of your image, while the Clarity tool makes it easy to enhance subtle yet important details.
• New! Selective Focus – Enhance the depth of field in any image or easily create the look of miniatures and small-scale models with the new Selective Focus tool.
• New! Vignette Tools –Often used in wedding and portrait photography, the Vignette tool provides a classic portraiture style by applying a soft, faded border around the outer edge of photos.
Performance –
• Enhanced! Performance – With new performance updates and optimizations, Corel PaintShop Pro X4 is faster than ever before with speed increases of over 50% on launch and accelerated performance on popular effects such as Vibrancy, Noise Removal and Depth of Field compared to past versions.
• Enhanced! Full Screen Preview – Fast, full-screen preview allows you to efficiently review your photos and use the entire screen to quickly view, rate, and rotate your images and discard those that don’t make the cut.
Usability –
• Enhanced! Workspace – A redesign featuring new tabbed workspaces allows you to move easily between photo workflows. The Manage workspace gives you all the power to review, tag, rate and organize your photos. The new Adjust workspace puts commonly-used editing tools at your fingertips, while the Edit workspace provides you with a full range of professional-level editing tools.
• Enhanced! User Interface Updates – Corel PaintShop Pro X4 offers numerous UI updates throughout the product designed to help photographers and graphic enthusiasts alike be as productive as possible. These include the Adjust workspace for quick and powerful edits; the ability to access the organizer in all workspaces; dual monitor support for enhanced efficiency; additional Adjustment layers; an updated Curves dialog; easy-to-read Histogram tools; and enhanced metadata support.
Sharing –
• Enhanced! Built-in social media sharing – For when your shots are picture-perfect, tools integrated into the organizer allow you to quickly share your images on Facebook, Flickr and resize “on the fly” for emailing.
“When inspiration hits, I won’t waste time waiting for my software to catch up. The enhancements to the overall stability and speed of PaintShop Pro X4 are obvious from the moment I open and run the program. The updates to the user interface allow for a brighter, cleaner workspace, while the dual monitor support gives me the real estate I need when I am working on an image. PaintShop Pro X4 gives me more opportunities to be creative, while helping me accomplish what I want to do faster than before.” - Gene Salois, PaintShop Pro X4 Beta Tester (PaintShop Pro user since 1994)
PDF Fusion
PDF Fusion allows the importation of over 100 different file types in order to create a PDF document by simply dragging and dropping into the program.
Editing files in PDF Fusion is also possible.
Converting files is another available function, including batch converting.
Corel Corporation
www.corel.com
