Corel is more popular with their Corel Draw than a photo editing software. A few years ago, when one bought Corel Draw suite, you also get other add-ons like Corel PhotoPaint and many others. No one really takes those ‘Add-ons’ serious and for photo editing, one would turn to other software like Photoshop. However, Corel has taken their game to a whole new level by introducing a standalone photo editing software, the Corel PaintShop Pro X4 which is purely professional photo editing software.

Corel PaintShop Pro X4 is flexible photo editing software from Corel that offers professional quality results but it’s quite affordable. Corel PaintShop Pro X4 is an improved version of PaintShop X3. A few concerns were report with PaintShop X3 and that was worked on with the newer version as we will briefly explore here.

Overview

While many professional quality photo editing software are insanely expensive especially for an amateur, Corel PaintShop Pro X4 is loaded with features, its flexible to allow one have some fun but at the same time do some serious editing but with all that the software is quite affordable.  Corel PaintShop Pro X4 offers more options than most software in its league by combining photo editing, retouching, painting, drawing, and image management into one package.

Apart from these technical advantages, Corel PaintShop Pro X4 also comes with an easy-to-understand Learning Center and training videos which will be of great help especially for new users. With Corel PaintShop Pro X4, you can also manage, adjust, and Edit your photos with ease step by step and can finish your work at one step if you so wish. Lastly, Corel PaintShop Pro X4 lets one to easily copy and apply multiple adjustments to many photos in a batch process to save time spent working on photo by photo.

What new with Corel PaintShop Pro X4?

Working with Corel PaintShop Pro X4 has been made easy with the integration of three workflow interfaces shown in the form of three main tabs placed at the top of the program window. These tabs are Manage, Adjust and Edit.

Manage tab contains option to let you browse, review, and rate your images, edit metadata, and create collections of photos. Once you click the source of the photo(s) you want to work on, all the thumbnails will be displayed below the preview window. By double clicking a thumbnail, you will come to a full-screen review with an unobtrusive toolbar to help you quickly delete, rotate and rate your photos.

Adjust tab has options that allows one to make simple photo adjustments such as clarity, brightness/contrast, colour balance, fill light, tone mapping, noise removal, and sharpening. Here you can also crop, straighten, removing red eye, do some cosmetic touch-ups, and clone your photos. If you are dealing with batch photos, you can copy attributes and paste then on all other photos in the batch to apply changes.

Edit tab contains options that allows for detailed editing of the photos by going to the pixel level photo editing.

Other aspects

There are many other new and old aspects of Corel PaintShop Pro X4 that can’t be exhausted here. However, I would like to mention a few aspects that may interest you. To start with, there is an option where you can easily share your photos via email or through Facebook and twitter. Then there are other great options like vignette which helps you add soft edges with ease and photo blend tool that helps you merge various photos and their best aspects into one.

Final paint

As hinted above, there are hundreds of tools and options that come with Corel PaintShop Pro X4 and all can’t be reviewed here. The best way to understand software is by using it. Without question, Corel PaintShop Pro X4 is a high end photo editing software that comes at an affordable price. If you want to try it before buying, you can download the free 30 days trial version and see for yourself. While on editing mode, the window seems so crowded with tools and if you are new user, it may confuse you. However, Learning Centre that runs at the right of the window is an excellent resource to know all you need about each tool.

Photos by Nathan Gitonga