Paint Shop Pro review

Jasc’s Shop Pro may very well be the consummate exemplar of shareware applications, demonstrating that shareware type clients can really compete with the big boys. Not only does Paint Shop Pro offer more than 95% of the features that are found in more expensive rivals like Adobe Photoshop, it also includes a ton of its own unique features coupled with a great looking interface and an excellent online help system.

Better than that, Paint Pro Shop costs less than $100 and is available on the Internet for a thirty day free trial evaluation. On the other hand, Photoshop will cost you more than $500, and you don’t even have the option to try it out first!

All the standard imaging tools are built into Paint Shop Pro as well as extremely useful features that you can’t find in Photoshop and similar competitors such as quick batch conversion capabilities, advanced screen capturing with automatic drag and drop right into the interface, and a built in image gallery browser for quick viewing of an entire directory of images.

Some additional features found in Paint Pro Shop include color placer and masking tools, interlaced graphics support, vector based image capabilities, and more advanced image filtering tools than you could ever possibly imagine. Paint Shop Pro provides built in browsers for allowing you to preview the effects of an extensive array of filters and image manipulation tools.

Jasc Paint Shop Pro also offers support for more than forty different types of graphics as well as support for third party Adobe compatible plug in filters. All of the popular graphic types are supported including GIF, JPEG, Portable Network Graphics, Windows Bitmap, Kodak Photo CD, Corel Draw, Microsoft Paint, and Photoshop. The fact is, Paint Pro Shop more than doubles Adobe Photoshop’s support of graphic formats.

One of Paint Pro Shop’s best features is the on line help system implements tabbed folders, quick navigation, extensive documentation, and advanced searching. This makes the task of understanding how to use the program’s massive collection of features very easy and very entertaining.

One of the more recent additions to Paint Shop Pro as of version 5.0 is the integrated Animation Shop client. Animation Shop takes you step by step through the process of creating and modifying animated graphics for use on the Internet. This program offers an extensive set of image and text translations with wizards and previews for helping you add your own cool effects to your animation.

However, there are a few minor features that are missing in Paint Shop Pro that would make the client even better. An example of this is that the near perfect inline screen capture tool lacks only the capability to define a specified sized are for capturing. Some of the selection and manipulation tools don’t offer nearly as many fine tuning options as those found in Adobe Photoshop. On the other hand, there are several tools within Paint Shop Pro that offer more options than Photoshop.

With the major releases of versions 5.0 and 6.0, Paint Shop Pro has made some huge strides in bridging the gap between itself and Photoshop. Many new powerful additions can be found along with intuitive user enhancements in the most recent release that Paint Shop Pro stands on its own against Adobe Photoshop, even when the price isn’t taken into account.

In general, you will be extremely hard pressed to find a better graphics program on or off the Internet, especially one less than $100. With the majority of users out there, it just doesn’t make sense to pay $500 or more for an application like Photoshop when a comparable client like Jasc Paint Shop Pro costs so much less and offers just as much if not more features. Thanks in part to the shareware premise, you can even try it out before spending any money. What could possibly be better than that?