The Materials palette has undergone a new facelift. A new tab, in addition to the Rainbow picker and Swatches tab, has been added. The new Frame tab provides a very handy means of selecting or adjusting a color: click anywhere along the outside frame to select a hue, then either click in the area within the frame to get the saturation and lightness you want or drag the saturation and lightness arrows along the bottom and right side of the frame, respectively.
The new History palette tracks the commands applied in your editing session. You can use it to selectively undo operations or to create scripts. (You can still record and edit scripts as you did in PSP8 as well.)
PSP9 has lots of good stuff for photgraphers, including four new photo filters:
Digital Camera Noise Removal removes noise introduced by your digital camera while retaining image texture
Chromatic Aberation Removal removes off-color glows that can appear in high-contrast areas of your digital photos
Fill Flash simulates fill flash to correct underexposed shadows
Backlighting corrects overexposed areas surrounding a photo's subject
In addition, there's RAW support for many digtial camera models from Canon, Fuji, Kodak, Minolta, Nikon, Olympus and Pentax. Not all models are supported, though, so check the Jasc site or try out the evaluation version of PSP9 first if this feature is important to you.
There are two new effects: Displacement Map (under Effects > Distortion Effects) and Radial Blur (under Adjust > Blur). Both of these effects are more sophisticated than their Photoshop equivalents.
Displacement Map enables you to create some great surface effects, including realistic tatooing and engraving.
Radial Blur provides three types of specialized blurring - Spin, Zoom, and Twirl - along with the ability to adjust the center of the blurring and to protect a percentage of the central area from blurring.
I love both of these effects. My only complaint regarding effects is that there aren't more added effects and there are no enhancements to existing effects such as Magnifying Lens.
Caution: One set of effects that did get "enhanced" are the "find edge" Edge Effects. If you used these effects for photo correction or included them in scripts, you're in for a rude surprise. I suppose the new version is supposed to be closer to a pencil-drawing effect. If that's not what you used these effects for, you can still get their equivalents as presets to the User Defined Filter effect.
Also "fixed" in PSP9 are the Perspective - Horizontal and Perspective - Vertical effects. If you used these effects to create egg shapes from circles and balls, you're now out of luck. There is no easy equivalent way to create eggs in PSP9. (You can get sort of the same effect without too much extra trouble using the Mesh Warp tool, though. See my Creating Eggs from Circles.)
In addition to Preset Shapes, PSP9 has Ellipse, Rectangle, and Symmetric Shape tools. These new drawing tools provide great control and precision. For example, button makers will be very pleased with rounded rectangles created with the Rectangle tool.
I'm particularly fond of the Symmetric Shape tool. At its simplest, this tool lets you draw precise regular polygons, stars, and flower shapes. Once you get the hang of modifying the control points of a basic symmetric shape, you can also create much, much more. Vector fanatics will love this tool.
Caution: The Ellipse, Rectangle, and Symmetric Shape tools do not create paths. If you want a path, you have to convert a shape to a path. You'll need to convert to a path if you want to make text follow a path based on your shape or if you want to use your shape as the base path for Gary Barton's VectorPaint or VectorTube scripts.
Probably the most obvious change in PSP9 is the new Art Media stuff. There's a new type of layer and a new set of tools for simulating natural art media, such as oil painting and drawing with pastels.
Don't expect to jump right in and create beautiful works of art, though. Be prepared to put in lots of time if you want decent results. Folks with little experience with physical art media might have a better time of it than those who do, since many of the tools don't closely mimic the behavior of real-world tools and media.
Personally, I wish more time and energy had gone into other areas of the program. You really need a graphics tablet to use the Art Media facilities, and anyone with a graphics tablet probably already has Corel's Painter Classic or Painter bundled with the tablet. Painter is a whole lot better and easier to use, in my opinion. Maybe Corel's acquisition of Jasc Software will mean a change in the approach to Art Media, though, with the PSP natural media facility becoming more like Painter. (One can only hope. <g>)
PSP8 users who are considering upgrading to PSP9 primarily for the Art Media stuff might first want to check out Art Rage, a free software package available at www.ambientdesign.com/artrage.html. PSP9's Art Media is a first cousin of Art Rage, and Art Rage might be enough to suit your needs.
There are several other (perhaps less noteworthy) enhancements, too:
The position of text on a path can be easily adjusted.
You can now examine EXIF data in the Browser.
It's easier to print captions and titles using Print Layout.
You can now use Resource Categories to organize and manage your PSP resource files.
Speaking of resources, though, if the last time you got PSP was the PSP7 Anniversary Edition, you're going to be unpleasantly surprised by the dearth of resources bundled with PSP9. There are relatively few things like Picture Tubes, Masks, Patterns, and presets included with PSP9. (Note: Jasc/Corel has recently made a 21MB collection of resources available for download here: www.jasc.com/support/customercare/articles/psp9components.asp.)
As mentioned earlier, the two new effects are great but it would have been nice to have a few more new effects and some enhancements to some older effects. Some new effects I'd like to see are a Perlin noise generator (à la Photoshop's Render Clouds), a High Pass filter, and something along the lines of Balls and Bubbles that would create 3D-like solids other than spheres. For enhancements to existing filters, lighting and depth controls for Emboss would be good, and so would a means of adding a pattern or texture to the frame in Magnifying Lens. There are other effects and enhancements on my wish list, but these head the list.
More masking tools would be great, too. Something along the lines of Extract, for instance, that would let you mark the edge of the figure you want, fill in the part you want to keep, and then refine the knock-out.
Something like Photoshop's Healing Brush or Alien Skin's Smart Fill would be helpful for photo repair and enhancement.
And could we please have the ability to stroke a path with a brush or Picture Tube! Hey, even Microsoft's Digital Image Pro has this ability. In fact, PSP is perhaps the only mainstream image editor that lacks this feature. Gary Barton's VectorPaint and VectorTube scripts are a help, but they can't substitute for real path stroking.
Other things that would be handy are more enhancements to the drawing tools, including enabling gradients to bend with a line or shape.
The answer depends on what you need. Folks who use PSP mainly for photo or vector work would be well-advised to move to PSP9. Those who use PSP mainly for graphics work might be happy staying with PSP8. And those who want to get involved in natural media work might be happier using Painter Classic, Painter, or Art Rage instead of PSP9's Art Media.
Don't just take my word for any of this, though. Head over to www.jasc.com/products/paintshoppro/psptrialreg.asp and try out the evaluation version of PSP9 for yourself.
Copyright ©2004
Lori J. Davis
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