Corel PaintShop Pro has been one of the enduring photo and graphics editing tools for PC, having been originally launched by Jasc Software in 1992 until it was acquired in 2004. PSP has served as an alternative to one of its main competitors in the form of Adobe Photoshop and has included the ability to be extended through the use of Photoshop-compatible plugins.
Now, PaintShop Pro has come to the Microsoft Store in its subscription variant and, for those who sign up, the first month will be available for free. Plus, if you change your mind during the course of the free month, you will be able to cancel at no charge.
In terms of features, PaintShop Pro boasts the following:
- Choose from multiple workspaces to suit your project style and skill level.
- Customize your workspace for maximum efficiency.
- Use multiple Layers and Masks to make artistic photo compositions and graphic design projects.
- Touch up your favorite photos with high precision selection or cloning tools and restore old photos with flaw removal effects.
- Draw and paint with built-in brushes and drawing tools and use color palettes, gradients, patterns and picture tubes to take your designs to the next level.
- Work with powerful adjustment tools to edit, crop, resize, remove noise, sharpen, enhance colors, use curves and levels to make your photos stand out.
- Add text to images to create interesting projects, like a meme or a picture quote. Adjust fonts, size, style, alignment and more with a complete set of typography tools.
- Try out intelligent one-step solutions and filters such as One-Step Photo Fix and Smart Photo Fix to take the guess work out of achieving the perfect photo.
- Automatically correct distortions, vignetting and chromatic aberrations with the built-in lens correction.
- Transform photos into a work of art with Artificial Intelligence and replicate the style of iconic artists with Pic-to-Painting.
- Straighten a 360° photo with rotation or make it appear leveled. Remove and automatically replace the tripod in the image or produce an interesting ‘planet-like’ effect.
- Enjoy complete control over your RAW images including before and after views and a large preview option.
- Speed up common and repetitive tasks by scripting almost any action with the full-featured scripting engine.
- Use makeover tools to eliminate red-eye, blemishes and unwanted lines, or smooth wrinkles, whiten teeth and even out skin tones.
- Increase productivity with batch processing by applying adjustments to many photos at once.
- Access a wide range of built-in templates to create collages, greeting cards, social media images, web banners, brochures and more.
You can expect the software download to be roughly 720MB and, like other apps available via the Microsoft Store, you"ll be able to install it on up to ten Windows 10 devices that are linked to your Microsoft account. You"ll also get the benefit of having the software kept up to date for you automatically and contained
Of course, if subscription software doesn"t tick all the right boxes for you, particularly in terms of localized pricing, you can still buy the standalone version of PaintShop Pro 2020 here.