Review: Corel Paint Shop Pro Photo XI image-editing software

With the word Photo clumsily grafted onto the end of its name, Paint Shop Pro Photo XI is a solid upgrade for this veteran image-editing program.

None of its new features are as innovative as Corel claims, but they do work well and provide some powerful editing tools that are also nice and easy to use.

The redesigned browser window, for example, is hardly unique. After all, most photo-editors have some sort of browser that allows you to quickly view and sort through your photos.

However, Corel’s version of the Browser can be positioned as a strip that runs along the bottom of the screen, rather than as a separate window that occupies the entire workspace.This allows you to quickly skim through your photos at the same time as working on a photo in the main workspace.

There’s also an option called Picture Trays that allows you to gather small groups of photos that might belong to a specific project such as a slideshow.

The new Color Changer isn’t unique either, but you’d have to pay more than £500 to get a comparable feature in Adobe’s Photoshop. This feature allows you to quickly change the colour of objects such as items of clothing.

It won’t simply flood the object with a new colour – it also manages to preserve the texture and shading of that object to produce completely realistic results.

There are also some new effects and filters, including the ability to reproduce photo-processing techniques from the past, such as a box camera from the 1900s.

The list of completely new features is relatively short though, so this isn’t a massive upgrade. However, it does provide some powerful editing tools at a competitive price.

It’s not the cheapest photo-editor available, but Paint Shop Pro Photo XI is a good choice for people who want to go beyond the basics and do more than just correct simple flaws such as the dreaded red-eye.

Also consider:
Serif Album Plus 4
An easy to learn package, but pretty limited

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