by John Pangia

Corel PhotoPaint 9 Digital Camera Editions is an Editor's Choice Award Winner!

June 15, 2000

Corel has pulled off a pretty good trick here. They've taken a $495 program (Photo Paint 9) and squished it into a great little package that they're promoting on their site (www.corel.com) for $79.

I know, I know... the old bait and switch, right? What's the catch? What don't you get?

Granted, the full blown version of Photo Paint 9 is worth its' weight in gold if you're a graphics professional. It's what you "do" get in this neat little slimmed down edition that is pretty impressive, and on top of that, you don't have to go to a three day seminar to learn how to use it. It's point and click right out of the box.

Let's start with the opening screen...

Looks simple enough doesn't it? Just click on where you want to go to get started.

Chances are, since it is the Digital Camera Edition, you'll want to load a pic from your camera. Click on "Get Image", and you're there.

Here's what you'll see inside. Drivers are included for 120 different cameras and scanners. Have your hardware plugged in, and you're ready.

What's that? You haven't taken the perfect picture yet? But you need a certain kind of image right away? There are 5000 digital photos included on the CD, as well as 1000 clip art images, 800 fonts, 500 objects, and 300 templates. You might find just what you need.

Ok, so now you have your pic up on the screen, but something's wrong, the color isn't right, or you didn't realize you were shooting into the sun, and you don't know the first thing about hue, gamma, etc.

Extensis Software makes a nifty utility called Intellihance Pro that corrects these kind of mistakes with a click, and it's sitting right up there on the tool bar waiting for you, and that takes care of that.

So now you have a good pic, and you want to get creative. That's where the fun really starts. There are more paint brushes here than I ever had in my studio, but we'll get back to that later. It's the point and click stuff that most people will like. How about a couple of hundred special effects?

Most of the effects have a pop out submenu, and some of the submenus have submenus. You could spend hours just playing with this.

Here are just a couple of examples.

	Give your picture a nice foggy vignette.
	Change the lighting to suit your mood.
	Add a little rain with just a quick click.
	Or put your masterpiece on canvas.

And that's just the tip of the iceberg.

There are more tools here than you can shake a stick at...

and the Custom Image Sprayer lets you add nice little touches without drawing or painting a thing.

If you are into painting, remember those brushes I mentioned earlier? Here's a nice little selection to play with.

You can change the shape of every brush type, and change the size on the fly without going back to a menu.

That means when those creative juices really get going, you can paint something like this...

I won't mention any names, but I've already used this package to replace much more expensive software I had on my computer, and even dumped the programs that came bundled with my scanner and digital camera because Photo Paint actually makes those tasks easier. All in all I'd say Corel has done a pretty good job here, and for the money I think it's worth a look.

Windows 95,98, or NT
Pentium 133
32MB ram (64 recommended)
2x CD-Rom drive
SVGA monitor
Mouse or tablet
100mb hard disk space for full install

Copyright 2000, John Pangia, All Rights Reserved