The Bottom Line
- More flexible than most similarly-priced, novice-oriented programs.
- 120-page Idea Book is less intimidating than most user manuals.
- Studio and Album are not very well integrated.
- Many tools and functions don't work very well.
- Not as easy as it should be for the intended users.
Description
- Paint Shop Pro Studio is a photo editor for novice- to intermediate-level digital camera users.
- Includes Paint Shop Photo Album 5 Standard to organize, search, archive, and share photos.
- 120 page Idea Book introduces the program workspace and features.
- Enhance with crop, straighten, red-eye, sharpen, fill flash, backlighting, and one-step fix tools.
- Restore with scratch remover, clone, tint, background eraser, lighting, and color correction tools.
- Create with picture tubes, frames, special effects, shapes, distortion tools, text, and patterns.
- Share scrapbook pages, calendars, greeting cards, e-cards, print packages, and screen savers.
- Requires Windows 98SE/2000(SP4)/Me/XP 256 MB RAM, 500 MB hard disk space, IE 6, and Flash player 7.
Guide Review - Jasc Paint Shop Pro Studio
The Idea Book that comes with the program is probably the most significant step in making the program less intimidating for new users. It introduces the program and provides step-by-step instruction for tasks such as rotating, cropping, fixing color, removing distractions, combining photos, creating scrapbook pages, removing scratches, burning photo CDs, and more.
Studio also includes Paint Shop Photo Album, which has to be installed separately. Other than a "Jump to" button in each program, the two programs are not integrated at all. Tighter integration might have eased the learning curve for beginners.
For the price, Studio does offer a lot of fun features and more flexibility than some of the competition, just don't expect it to be much easier to learn than Paint Shop Pro.
