Corel Photo-Paint 9

Photo-Paint is a relatively high-end program, but it’s included here bescause it is with the widely used CorelDraw and it has a reasonable crossgrade price. It requires about 125M of disk space, depend-
ing on the options selected and whether any components are already present as a result of installing other Corel programs.
The artistic effects such as crayon or watercolour worked well on the photos we tried, certainly better than PhotoDraw’s. There is also a wide range of other effects, including simulated weather. The rain effect was more convincing than snow, especially when the setting was closer to drizzle than downpour. The texture maps could also be useful. For instance, the result of applying the brick wall texture to a photograph is just as you would imagine a photorealistic painting on the side of a building to look. The effects are interactive in that you can adjust the parameters, either by retyping or by nudging with the arrow keys, and see the result. Dust and scratches can be removed automatically, but there is no red-eye filter. The Checkpoint feature is very useful, as it gives a quick and easy way of capturing a particular stage in a job and returning to it if things don’t work out right. The image sprayer produces interesting results; the preset rope patterns provide an idea of how this feature could be used.
Pantone and other colour palettes are supported, as is input from TWAIN scanners and cameras. CorelScript and VBA make it possible to automate operations, which is useful if you need to perform the same operations on a set of images. You can record CorelScripts, making it easier to get started.
A very wide range of file formats is supported, including Wavelet and Photoshop. For Internet use, there’s GIF, PNG and JPEG.
Photo-Paint doesn’t lead you by the hand, but APC found it produced some of the most attractive results of all programs reviewed. The tutorial Is flawed, because the terminology it uses doesn’t seem to match that in the tool tips. Part of the problem is that each flyout’s icon represents its currently selected item, so to be most effective, the tutorial system would need to be able to interrogate the state of the flyouts to prompt the user appropriately. The good news is that there is a proper manual. Call us old-fashioned, but APC has yet to see the online help system match a good manual.