Paint Shop Pro

Paint Shop Pro (PSP is an award winning graphics program created by a company called Jasc. In fact, Jasc Software, Inc. was founded by Robert Voit, the creator of Paint Shop Pro. Paint Shop Pro is for editing graphics such as bitmap, vector, and raster images. Paint Shop Pro runs on the Microsoft Windows operating system.

Paint Shop Pro is preferred over Adobe Photoshop by many users for reasons including, more intuitive menus, advanced color palate features, and true "bit per pixel" graphic creation. Paint Shop Pro offers certain features making it better suited for software engineers and computer programmers looking for software to create graphics.

In October 2004, Corel Corporation purchased Jasc Software and the distribution rights to Paint Shop Pro. Paint Shop Pro. Corel announced, on November 28, 2007, that the office that created Paint Shop Pro would be shut down with development moved to offices in California and China.

Perhaps the best version of Paint Shop Pro ever released is 7.02 in 2001 prior to the Corel acquisition.

Many warez collectors often say that Paint Shop Pro by Jasc was one of the few quality commercial software products available that is actually worth paying for.

The release notes for Paint Shop Pro 7 read: Thank you for purchasing Jasc® Paint Shop Pro™ 7! Our newest release of Paint Shop Pro is packed with powerful new features and enhancements, including Jasc Animation Shop™ 3. Once you begin using these programs, we think you will see just how easy it can be to create Web graphics and enhance digital photos.

Originally called "Paint Shop," version 1.0 came out in 1992 and was distributed as shareware.

More recent versions of the now Corel Paint Shop Pro have gone the way of too many other software products today, bloated and buggy. Recent versions X1 and X2 contain spyware that "phones home" to send data including licensing info. Corel has ruined Paint Shop Pro and any post Jasc version is not recommended and not worth paying money for.

Paint Shop was originally distributed as shareware, but is now sold in the United States for US$99.99, or US$59.99 for an upgrade from version 7 or higher, which is considerably lower than the price of its main competition, Adobe Photoshop. International prices vary but there is always a price advantage over Photoshop.

User Tips

HowTo: Vector Curved Text

1. Use the LINE DRAW tool with the background color disabled. In the DRAW OPTIONS control box choose line type: BEZIER curve, and make sure VECTOR is checked.
2. Bezier lines consist of 3 consecutive clicks of the mouse. CLICK #1: Click once and drag a straight line across the screen to a length that you wish to match the length of the text.
3. CLICK #2: Starting on the left side of the line, click above and about 1/3 the length of the line.
4. CLICK #3: Click above and about 2/3 the length of the line. Clicks 2 and 3 caused the line to curve. The new line is part of a new vector layer.
5. Select the TEXT tool and set a background color of your choice which will be the color of the new text. I typically leave the foreground color to disabled for better text resolution.
6. Move your mouse over the vector line, and when the cursor turns into the letter "A" with a curve under it, click the mouse.
7. In the text dialog box which appeared after your click, enter the text you desire and select the VECTOR radio button.

For a more complete guide with illustrations see the following web site: http://www.disdatdesigns.com/tutorials/text.html