Webuser Forums: paintshop

Hi Ian,

Glad to see that the humour on these fora is a benefit, as I'm a firm believer that a light heart can aleviate many a symptom, albeit temporarily.

There are a fair few packages out there, the majority aimed at the domestic user. Most of them are available as a trial download, they're not small so Broadband would be advantageous. Prices range from free to several hundreds of £££'s. Some are available as previous versions on magazine cover-mount CD ROM's or Lite versions bundled with digital hardware. It might be worthwhile asking around family and friends to see if anyone has a bundled version of something useful!

This list isn't exhaustive, but I think it will be a place to start.

Adobe - These guys provide the Daddy of all photo editing applications; Photoshop. The last version was 7, but they have just announced the new version CS. This is the choice of the professionals and has a price tag to go with it. There is a domestic version, Photoshop Elements 2 which is a favourite with many amateur digital photographers. It is a reworked, lite version of Photoshop with less under-the-bonnet functions and more user-friendly wizards.

Ulead - PhotoImpact. One time favourite of digital hardware manufacturers. PhotoImpact was bundled with scanners & cameras but, with vast improvements in the software, they now retail the title.

Corel - CorelDRAW Essentials. I haven't had any experience of this package, per se. Corel swallowed up Micrografx not too long ago, and Micrografx used to produce a package called Picture Publisher which I did use. That was more akin to PhotoImpact as opposed to Photoshop, so I assume that Corel Photo Paint (the image editing part of Essentials) is similar.

Microsoft - Digital Image Pro 9 is the latest from Mr Gates. Not taken this for a test drive, so no comment. However, it will, obviously, fully integrate with all your other MS applications....

Jasc - Paint Shop Pro 8. Began life (many moons ago) as a free download (that would fit on a floppy several times over), this has grown into a full blown image editing tool. Like the rest of the domestic packages it doesn't match the power of Photoshop, but who needs that editing capability? (Especialy at that price

).

Roxio - Photosuite 5 is probably one of the easiest of the bunch to use. It's almost entirely wizard driven, but as such denies the user the ability to fine-tune the image.

There are also Albums/Viewers which have limited editing facilities - primarily for enhancing images, as opposed to radically editing them. Some of them integrate with above packages. These include;

Kodak - EasyShare software is free to download and use. It gives you direct access to the Kodak site for printing & sharing services. The editing function is purely for enhancement without any real editing power.

Irfan View is a useful imaging tool. Primarily a viewer it offers extremely limited editing functions. But it is free to download.

ACDSee 6

Thumbs Plus 6

Photoshop Album 2

Paint Shop Photo Album 4

PhotoMeister 2

I hope this is of help in respect to packages available. With regard your wifes arthritis, and you may already have investigated this, there are several alternative styled mice available along with trackballs (a favourite of a close friend, also with arthritis) and graphics tablets, which may make life a tad easier for all concerned.

TFC

Nothing is a problem for me...