Paint Shop Pro

Paint Shop Pro (PSP is an award winning graphics program created by a company called Jasc. In fact, Jasc Software, Inc. was founded by Robert Voit, the creator of Paint Shop Pro. Paint Shop Pro is for editing graphics such as bitmap, vector, and raster images. Paint Shop Pro runs on the Microsoft Windows operating system.

Paint Shop Pro is preferred over Adobe Photoshop by many users for reasons including, more intuitive menus, advanced color palate features, and true "bit per pixel" graphic creation. Paint Shop Pro offers certain features making it better suited for software engineers and computer programmers looking for software to create graphics.

In October 2004, Corel Corporation purchased Jasc Software and the distribution rights to Paint Shop Pro. Paint Shop Pro. Corel announced, on November 28, 2007, that the office that created Paint Shop Pro would be shut down with development moved to offices in California and China.

Perhaps the best version of Paint Shop Pro ever released is 7.02 in 2001 prior to the Corel acquisition.

Many warez collectors often say that Paint Shop Pro by Jasc was one of the few quality commercial software products available that is actually worth paying for.

The release notes for Paint Shop Pro 7 read: Thank you for purchasing Jasc® Paint Shop Pro™ 7! Our newest release of Paint Shop Pro is packed with powerful new features and enhancements, including Jasc Animation Shop™ 3. Once you begin using these programs, we think you will see just how easy it can be to create Web graphics and enhance digital photos.

Originally called "Paint Shop," version 1.0 came out in 1992 and was distributed as shareware.

More recent versions of the now Corel Paint Shop Pro have gone the way of too many other software products today, bloated and buggy. Recent versions X1 and X2 contain spyware that "phones home" to send data including licensing info. Corel has ruined Paint Shop Pro and any post Jasc version is not recommended and not worth paying money for.

Paint Shop was originally distributed as shareware, but is now sold in the United States for US$99.99, or US$59.99 for an upgrade from version 7 or higher, which is considerably lower than the price of its main competition, Adobe Photoshop. International prices vary but there is always a price advantage over Photoshop.

User Tips

HowTo: Vector Curved Text

1. Use the LINE DRAW tool with the background color disabled. In the DRAW OPTIONS control box choose line type: BEZIER curve, and make sure VECTOR is checked.
2. Bezier lines consist of 3 consecutive clicks of the mouse. CLICK #1: Click once and drag a straight line across the screen to a length that you wish to match the length of the text.
3. CLICK #2: Starting on the left side of the line, click above and about 1/3 the length of the line.
4. CLICK #3: Click above and about 2/3 the length of the line. Clicks 2 and 3 caused the line to curve. The new line is part of a new vector layer.
5. Select the TEXT tool and set a background color of your choice which will be the color of the new text. I typically leave the foreground color to disabled for better text resolution.
6. Move your mouse over the vector line, and when the cursor turns into the letter "A" with a curve under it, click the mouse.
7. In the text dialog box which appeared after your click, enter the text you desire and select the VECTOR radio button.

For a more complete guide with illustrations see the following web site: http://www.disdatdesigns.com/tutorials/text.html

HowTo: Antialias (anti alias) Select, Copy, Paste

The Antialias box in the Controls Palette controls whether or not your selection is copied with or without anti alias effect.

1. Click the selection button on the left sidebar.
2. Toggle "Tool Options Window" (top toolbar) until "Tool Options- Selection" box appears. In the first tab you can select or deselect the Antialias checkbox. If you have this unchecked, then you should be able to copy and paste with a crisp edge!

Operating Systems

Windows

This is primarily software for Microsoft Windows

Linux

Although Corel had its own Linux Distribution at one time, after acquisition of Paint Shop Pro from JASC the Corel company never made a version for Linux.

Many versions of Paint Shop Pro have been successfully installed under Wine in Linux.

The best way (opinion) to convert your old Paint Shop Pro PSP images to other formats or simply to open and view them under Linux without having Paint Shop Pro installed is using the software XnView.

Sometimes Linux users can be snobs and when asked for something like PSP for Linux they always say Gimp and go on to proclaim how much better Gimp is. Well, Gimp functions a lot like Adobe Photoshop and includes some of the less-than-efficient elements in the user interface. Paint Shop Pro users love PSP because it is not Adobe Photoshop and therefore are probably not looking for a Linux equivalent of Adobe Photoshop. The bad news is that there really is nothing like Paint Shop Pro for Linux, or any other operating system. Corel did nothing positive for Paint Shop Pro, and certainly did nothing to expand its presence on other platforms.

More on running Paint Shop Pro under Wine coming soon...