Jasc Paint Shop Pro 7 10th Anniversary Edition Review Jasc Throws a Party and Throws Some Extras Into Its Image-Editor Box Eric Grevstad
Mon 10/22/01 -- Except maybe for Niko Mak's WinZip, it's hard to think of a program that's climbed more successfully from shareware to the mainstream retail market than Jasc Software's Paint Shop Pro. What started out as a simple image viewer and converter has grown into arguably the leader in the "in-between image editor" category -- programs positioned between limited, novice-oriented touch-up tools like Microsoft Picture It and graphics professionals' favorite heavy artillery, Adobe Photoshop.
To celebrate, Jasc has released Paint Shop Pro 7 10th Anniversary Edition, which bundles the most recent (7.04) release of the painting, drawing, and Web site illustration and animation package with a handful of freebies. They include Media Center Plus 3.1, an image (and sound and video file) organizer and previewer sold separately for $39; seven working samples plus a score of nonfunctional demos or previews of the third-party plug-ins or special effects filters Jasc sells -- Alien Skin Eye Candy, Flaming Pear, and Virtual Painter; over two dozen new shapes, picture frames, and picture tubes (Paint Shop Pro's special paintbrush objects); and extra tutorials and tours to supplement the program's existing online and printed help.
The extra goodies don't increase Paint Shop Pro's cost -- still $99 downloaded or $109 boxed. (We vote emphatically for the latter, which comes with two things we almost didn't recognize in this age of empty-save-for-a-CD software cartons -- thick, amply illustrated paperback manuals.)
Nor do the extras change our earlier opinion of Paint Shop Pro, especially since the actual version 7 program is unchanged since September 2000: It's a sensational choice for print and Web publishers on a budget, with three-quarters the power of Photoshop at a $500 lower price, but a tad daunting or difficult for casual users or beginners.
The lack of a recent upgrade is starting to get serious, since Paint Shop Pro's competition is getting stronger -- earlier this year, for instance, Adobe replaced the lame Photoshop LE with the solid Photoshop Elements for $99, and Ulead Systems has just released an upgraded PhotoImpact 7 for $100. But while we look forward to Paint Shop Pro 8, the Anniversary Edition's bonuses are nice to have.
More Than One-Touch Editing
Our list above omits one entry on Jasc's "$100 Extra Value Included Free!" list, because it was bundled with Paint Shop Pro long before the Anniversary Edition -- Animation Shop 3.04, a Web-friendly utility that helps you convert a series of still images, buttons, or banners into animation frames ranging from simple Web-site decorations or animated cursors to AVI video files with assorted transition effects. Stitching still frames together is by nature painstaking work, but the program's animation and banner wizards, along with a good variety of sample files, help even beginners get the hang of it.
Frankly, the reason reviewers call Paint Shop Pro difficult compared to hand-holders like Picture It is that it's too stubborn to offer many similar wizards itself -- some, like the step-by-step, preview-before-doing dialogs for optimizing an image or trying different compression levels for quicker Web downloads (complete with estimated download times on various modems), are exemplary, but they're not obvious (File/Export/JPEG Optimizer, or File/Save As/Options). Some consumer-friendly programs would offer a big button labeled "One-Touch Color Balancer"; Paint Shop Pro's tools are even more effective, but mix menu choices like Effects/Enhance Photo/Automatic Contrast Enhancement with ones like Colors/Histogram Functions/Equalize.
But the Anniversary Edition Product Tour (a series of brief "pull down this menu" demos) helps -- rather more than the Anniversary Edition Tutorials, a set of 10 Adobe Acrobat files that offer step-by-step instructions but read like scholarly articles on topics like "Using Curves Adjustment Layers" and "User-Defined Filters: Embossing."
