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Whether it's clipart, fonts, plug-ins, RAM, etc. while it's nice to have 1000 fonts or 150,000 pieces of clipart on hand, there is no point in calling the
local concrete company to send a truck over when you're just doing small work that only requires one bag of the mix-it-yourself kind.The people at JASC have realized this very concept with Paint Shop Pro version 4.12
for Windows(R) 95 by putting in just enough Adobe Photoshop-like features to make it a good choice for people who don't currently aspire to run their own photo-retouching company, but need more than Microsoft(R) Paint.
To start with, this shareware program offers the flexibility to use some 30 file formats. From the standard reading and saving in .BMP, .JPG, .GIF and many more bit-map file types to also being able to read several
vector formats like Corel(R) .CDR, .WMF, and even Autocad .DXF among others. Of course since this is a raster or bitmap program you can't save to those vector formats. If you have several images to look at, PSP has a
browser that makes it easy to see which file you're going to load. Then once you've loaded your image, PSP offers several features you would expect to find in more high-end programs. Adjusting the color levels and
intensity is very easy and one of the new features for version 4.12 is the floating palette. In addition, along with the normal selection of sharp, smudge, flip and rotate, you can also use an unsharp mask and create
masks for several special effects. What I found very easy to use were some special effects built-in like the very overused drop shadow plus emboss, buttonize, cutout and more so you don't have to use plug-ins.
If you do own any Photoshop(R) plug-ins like Kai's(R) Power Tools, Eye Candy from Alien Skin(R), or the many others, JASC says they should work just fine. My experience, however, and my only major complaint about PSP
4.12, is that when using Eye Candy in PSP it likes to crash. It doesn't happen every time, but its enough to be a nuisance. In defense of Alien Skin, their plug-ins are written specifically for Photoshop(R). If you're
an artist, PSP 4.12 does much more than manipulate pictures, it has a nice selection of brushes, pens, pencils, and other items for you to draw, sketch or paint your next masterpiece. And if you don't like drawing on a
smooth white surface, you can select several different textures like wood grain or sidewalk (which is nice if you're drawing with chalk). You can also use PSP 4.12 for creating text effects to use on your web page or
in your next newsletter, etc. and you can very easily change from a 24-bit 16 million color image to 256 color or grey scale with a couple of mouse clicks. They also include a batch processor if you have lots of images
that need their format changed. PSP 4.12 includes a capture program so you can take screen shots and use them in your projects, plus you can scan right into the program with a TWAIN compatible scanner. Paint Shop Pro
is not Photoshop(R) (and I do own a copy of it and use it too) but as I said at the beginning, there is no point in whittling a small tree branch with a chain saw when a pocket knife is all that the job requires.
If you need the layers and other extra features that Photoshop(R) has, then by all means get it. But if you're like most people that need a well rounded bitmap drawing program to use to get photos ready for your
personal web page or newsletter or make some fancy titles, then Paint Shop Pro 4.12 should fit the bill nicely. You can always move higher up the software ladder to Photoshop(R) when you need to. Remember, version 4.12
is for Windows 95, they do, however, have a version for Windows 3.11. |
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