Corel Photo-Paint 9

Corel PHOTO-PAINT is an application with a long history and one that I have used off and on for as many years. This latest Version 9 is not all that different in outward appearance and the included feature set than the previous Version 8, or even 7 for that matter.

However, using this new Version 9 was a much better experience because of what I can best describe as refinement. Before getting into how Corel PHOTO-PAINT 9 performed, let me first describe what the package contains and generally what it is designed to do. The name PHOTO-PAINT is about as broadly descriptive as you can get for such an image-editing product.

It has the tools, processes, and brushes that computer artists need for painting and digital photographers require to acquire images from scanners and digital cameras, color correct, manipulate, and incorporate in a publishable document containing not just photographic images, but graphic design elements and standard text and manipulated type fonts.

In addition to the main paint and image-editing application, Corel also includes Bitstream Font Navigator 3.0 to organize, view, and select fonts stored in your operating system. Canto Cumulus 4.0 is an acclaimed professional digital asset management application; Adobe Acrobat Reader for access to documentation in Acrobat .PDF format on disc; DigiMarc Digital Watermarking to record your copyright within images; Human Software Squizz an image morphing utility; Corel Capture 9 to record and save screenshots; and Corel Script Editor to automate processes.

The features within Corel PHOTO-PAINT 9 are more extensive than just about any image editor consumer software product currently available. They include in part:

• Artistic media brushes that may be used directly and as cloning brushes to paint or repaint using all kinds of natural painting effects as well as more imaginative options.

• Layered object effects can be created to manipulate, composite, as well as add graphic elements like type with drop shadows over a photographic image.

• You can either open or save to a wide variety of graphics file types making resources created in a number of different applications available, as well as creating images in PHOTO-PAINT that can be used in other applications, including Adobe Photo-shop, MetaCreations painter, among others.

Ixla digital camera support is built-in providing easy access to the images stored by most of the popular brands and models of cameras.

• Full support is included for HTML output to create content for web publishing.

• Encapsulated PostScript Export includes enhanced color management to assure high quality printing and output to offset press reproduction.

• Images created in PHOTO-PAINT may be output in PDF format for web or offset printing targets.

• A Wizard is included which makes output to a pre-press service bureau easy.

More extensive and controllable access support of color management is included, incorporating the selection of one of a number of standard color workspaces with ICC profiles which may be imbedded in output files.

• And in Corel tradition the package includes a clip art library of 1200 items, 1500 royalty free photos, 750 floating objects, and 300 TrueType fonts.