Corel Paint Shop Pro X and Corel Photo Album 6

Corel Corporation today announced the release of Corel Paint Shop Pro X and Corel Photo Album 6. These are the first versions of the software to be introduced since Corel's acquisition of Jasc in October 2004.

From a Corel Press Release:
Corel Paint Shop Pro X and Corel Photo Album 6 will be widely available through Corel's global channel partners over the coming weeks and through www.corel.com starting today.

Corel Paint Shop Pro X
With a revamped user interface featuring a new, integrated Learning Center and Browser palette, Paint Shop Pro X is designed to accelerate learning and increase productivity. Tools are intelligently organized by task within the Learning Center palette, enabling users of all skill levels to produce professional-looking results with no previous photo editing experience required.

Offering a unique combination of one-click fixes and precision controls for fine tuning, Paint Shop Pro X delivers unrivaled flexibility and control, enabling users to grow easily into the program as their knowledge of digital image editing develops. Below is an overview of the new and noteworthy features included in Corel Paint Shop Pro X:

• New! The Paint Shop Pro X Learning Center: The new Learning Center organizes tools logically by task, providing users with a step-by-step guide and quick access to the instructions and tools needed to complete the most common photo editing projects.
• New! Browser Palette: The Browser palette is now integrated into the Paint Shop Pro X workspace to make it even easier for users to access, view, organize, and work with their images.
• New! Smart Photo Fix: The new Smart Photo Fix analyzes a photo and suggests settings to auto-correct color, brightness, sharpness, and saturation — all in one step. Smart Photo Fix gives users new levels of control by allowing them to combine the simplicity of automatic corrections with the precision and control of manual adjustments.
• New! Makeover Tools: Paint Shop Pro X introduces a powerful new collection of extreme Makeover Tools to help users quickly and easily retouch the subjects in their photos. The Makeover Tools include the Blemish Fixer, Toothbrush and Suntan Brush.
• New! Object Remover: The new Object Remover lets users seamlessly eliminate unwanted elements from photos, intelligently filling in the resulting gaps with appropriate background detail.
• New! Special Effects for Black & White Photos: With the new Special Effects filters in Paint Shop Pro X, users can now easily convert images to simulated black and white infrared or apply color filters while converting to black and white images.
• New! Corel Photo Album 6 – Standard Edition: Included for the first time with Paint Shop Pro X, Corel Photo Album 6 provides efficient organization, sharing and photo backup options, along with hundreds of new drag-and-drop creative project templates.
• New! Advanced Features: Paint Shop Pro X now includes support for 16-bit/channel adjustments, ICC-based color management, the ability to import and export CMYK images using ICC profiles, along with enhanced monitor calibration that allows LCD screens to be correctly calibrated.
• Enhanced! Camera Raw support: Paint Shop Pro X now supports over forty Camera Raw file formats. Users can open, enhance, process, and convert images taken in the Camera Raw format.
• Batch Processing: Users can easily process batches of images with Paint Shop Pro X. The Batch Process command lets them use scripts to apply fixes to batches of images, and users can also convert batches of images to a different file format.
• Perspective Correction Tool: With the Perspective Correction tool, users can fix buildings, landmarks, or objects in their photos that appear to be in the wrong perspective or that were taken from an angle other than directly in front.
• Straighten Tool: The Straighten tool lets users quickly align crooked photos and automatically crop the edges using any line in the photo.
• Creative Tools: Unlike other photo editors in its category, Paint Shop Pro X also offers an extensive collection of graphics, web design, and art media tools to further extend the creative options available to customers.

Corel Photo Album 6
Offering the broadest range of functionality in its category, Corel Photo Album 6 provides users of all skill levels with easy-to-use tools to download, organize, edit, share, and protect their favorite photos. Corel Photo Album 6 introduces a unique zero click download to help users efficiently download, view and organize their favorite photos, without ever clicking the mouse. In addition, using Corel's new Photo Trays, users can quickly create their own photo "to do" lists, identifying photos to email, print or upload to an online photo site. Providing new automatic tools to complete the basic photo tasks faster, Corel Photo Album 6 gives users more time to enjoy sharing their photos with family and friends. Below is a summary of the new features included in Corel Photo Album 6:

• New! Corel Photo Downloader: When a Corel Photo Album 6 user plugs a camera or memory card into their computer, the new Corel Photo Downloader automatically downloads, rotates and saves photos to a destination chosen by the user. After the user sets their preferences once, the next time they plug in their camera or memory card , Corel Photo Album 6 will do the rest – no clicks required.
• New! Photo Finder: Corel Photo Album 6 automatically finds all the photos on the user's computer and organizes them by the date that they were taken.
• New! All Photos View: The new All Photos View lets users browse their entire photo collection at once.
• New! Photo Trays: The new Photo Trays help users stay organized, enabling them to quickly sort photos for e-mailing, printing, or uploading to a photo sharing web site.
• New! Recent Downloads list: The Recent Downloads list automatically keeps track of the last ten groups of photos downloaded to the user's computer so that they can quickly and easily locate their most recent snapshots.
• New creative project templates: Corel Photo Album 6 includes a wide array of high quality templates to create photo calendars, greeting cards, scrapbook and album pages, collages, video CDs, multimedia slide shows, certificates, hard cover albums and other photo keepsakes – all with drag-and-drop simplicity.
• Automatic photo recovery, backup, and storage: With billions of digital photos stored on computers every year, and less than 15% of home users actively backing up their hard drives (Source: IDC), more and more people are vulnerable to losing treasured photos through system crashes or viruses. Corel Photo Album 6 includes powerful PhotoSafe technology to automatically backup and safeguard photos, along with PhotoRecovery software that recovers accidentally erased images, movies, and sound files from all types of digital media.

Pricing and Availability
Available for a suggested retail price of $129 US, Corel Paint Shop Pro X includes Corel Photo Album 6 – Standard Edition, Pixmantec RawShooter essentials, two hours of free lynda.com video instruction and a printed user manual. Corel Photo Album 6 – Deluxe Edition is available for a suggested retail price of $49 US. It includes PhotoRecovery software ($29 value), Xtras Scrapbook Templates, Volumes I and II ($40 value), Pixmantec RawShooter essentials, and a printed user guide.

To learn more about Corel's digital imaging portfolio or to download a free, fully functional trial version of Corel Paint Shop Pro X or Corel Photo Album 6, please visit www.corel.com/paintshoppro or www.corel.com/photoalbum.

Also see:
• Review: Paint Shop Pro 9 for Windows
• Review: Paint Shop Photo Album for Windows