New Features
 

• Set black and white points
  The Black and White Points effect allows you to rebalance the highlights, midtones, and shadows of your photo to a full range of colors.
• Correct distortions
  Correct common pincushion, fisheye and barrel distortions.
• Produce a romantic effect
  Add soft, romantic lighting to your photos using the Soft Focus effect.
• Halftone your images
  Reproduce the halftone process used in printing.
• Add balls and bubbles
  Create 3D balls or transparent bubbles anywhere on your image with the Balls and Bubbles filter.
• Call attention to your image
  Use the Magnifying Lens effect to bring attention to a portion of your image by placing a magnifying lens over it.
• Create Web page backgrounds
  Create high-quality seamless patterns and tiled images for Web pages, presentations, or other creative projects with Seamless Tiling and the Offset effect.
• Correct perspective
  Fix distorted perspective in photos with the time-saving Perspective Correction tool.
• Straighten photos
  Straighten a tilted or crooked scan or photo without any guesswork using the Straighten tool.
• Erase backgrounds
  The precision Background Eraser detects and erases pixels along the strongest edge, making it a snap to remove background areas from your photographs.
• Warp images
  Use the Warp Brush or Mesh Warp to stretch, shrink, twist, or push your photos to create imaginative images.
• Edit Selection Mode
  In this mode, selections are treated as a layer allowing you to use the raster painting, drawing tools, and effects to modify the selection marquee.
• Mask Layers
  Masks are created as grayscale adjustment layers, making it easy to create and edit masks to create stunning compositions.
• Layer Groups
  Group common elements of an image to be viewed, moved, or hidden as a single unit for ultimate control over layered images.
• Save time
  Record, edit, and save commonly used tasks with Automated Productivity Scripts™.
• Personalize Paint Shop Pro
  Use Dynamic Personalization™ to dock palettes, customize toolbars, and place any tool or command on any tool or toolbar in the program to create a workspace that’s tailored to you.
• Print with ease
  Choose from hundreds of templates to accommodate any printing project.
• Convert to virtually any file format
  With support for nearly 50 formats, Paint Shop Pro lets you convert the newest file formats.

Jasc Software's Paint Shop Pro 8.0  improves and expands on what was already the best value in image-editing software. Paint Shop Pro offers a complete suite of image-editing and special-effects tools. Version 8.0 sports a revamped and simplified user interface and adds several new features that make the product more competitive with Adobe Photoshop 7.0, including a script editor, support for JPEG 2000, and improved multilayer image tools. This version also includes some unique features, such as a one-click Photo Fix button, an easy-to-use red-eye removal tool, and an excellent template-based printing feature, that simplify common tasks for users new to photo editing.

Full-featured photo-editing programs can be difficult—if not downright intimidating—to learn. Thankfully, this is not the case with Paint Shop Pro. The software's Learning Center feature uses predefined scripts to guide you through complex tasks with a few clicks of the mouse. For example, the Straighten a Crooked Photo script helps you correct for camera tilt or for a crooked scan by letting you set a straight rule on which to line up a horizontal or vertical line in the image. Other scripts show you how to remove red-eye, resize an image, and add text and borders.

Paint Shop Pro began life as a simple image viewer and file format converter. Over the years, it has evolved into a full-featured image editor, while maintaining its bargain-basement price. Paint Shop Pro 8.0 offers an appealing combination of features, ease of use, and price. It's worth having either as an addition to your image-editing toolkit or as your complete toolkit.

Pentium® processor or equivalent
Microsoft® Windows® 98/98SE, NT4 SP6, 2000 SP4, ME, XP
128 MB of RAM
400 MB of free hard disk space
16-bit color display adapter at 800x600 resolution
Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.0 or later (Windows 98 requires Internet Explorer 6.0 or later)