Review by Matt Morgan

I have used several versions of PaintShop Pro (just PSP from here forward) in the past, though I have consistently returned to Corel PhotoPaint (which comes as part of the CorelDraw suite) for the ease of use and the power it provides. I have no issues with PSP, I just have gotten very accustomed to PhotoPaint and have not felt compelled to switch. With this version, Corel makes a good argument for making a move to PSP.

PSP employs the same typical interface paradigm as many other Corel products including the likes of Pinnacle Studio. The overall color scheme is black and gray by default and the functionality is broken down into sections and separated by a set of tabs at the top of the screen. For PSP, those sections are Manage, Adjust and Edit, each explained below.

The Manage portion of PSP is a file previewer and organizer. It is a good photo portfolio and it includes a file manager for navigating the file system, a thumbnail view of the photos in the chosen directory at the time and a breakdown of information about each photo including EXIF information and geotag data. This is primarily for viewing and organizing and you can’t do editing functions in this area. You can get a bigger view of any given photo by double clicking on it, and you can delete photos, but that’s really about all.

The Adjust section is for quick edits and transformations. Here you can tweak light levels and contrast, apply color filters, enhance shadows and more. One of the most useful functions here is the provision of quick filtering effects such as sepia coloration in multiple levels, portrait effects, blurs, retro effects and more a couple dozen of these. These effects are applied immediately to the preview image and update nearly instantaneously when single-clicked and they apply to the main image with nearly the same speed with a double-click. These effects are offered to the user as thumbnails, not just simple menu choices, so there is some idea of how the photo will be changed when a chosen effect is selected. This is where most people are likely to spend the majority of the time making modifications to their photos.

The Edit section introduces a full-function photo editing suite with much more power and capability than the Adjust section offers. It is here where you can make more fine-tuned color adjustments, making manual adjustments with the eye-dropper tool or using a brush to make edits directly to the image. There is a good selection of brushes, pens and other drawing tools for making more creative tweaks. You can work in layers here as well which is good for making gradual adjustments. All of the effects from Adjust are available through the menus, too not as friendly as thumbnails, but just as effective.

Corel includes 32-bit as well as 64-bit versions of PSP in this package so it should work on any system running a reasonably recent version of Windows. I converted from Windows 8.1 to Windows 10 and PSP is content under both operating systems.

Corel also provides video tutorials, accessible online and available through the menu system. Interestingly, the tutorials are not necessarily specific to PSP. There are a few tutorials available and they cover an assortment of topics under general photography including natural lighting, DSLR cameras and working with layers. If you click on the PaintShop Pro X8 link in the tutorial viewer it tells you to view the tutorials for more help, but it doesn’t give you any links to get there and the few that are in the overall viewer aren’t all that PSP-specific.

Having worked with PS in the past, X8 is not completely new territory for me. It is a very good and powerful photo editing application that makes tweaking photos easy and fun. It is by no stretch of the imagination a PhotoShop clone but it is closer than the last few versions and it is a lot less complex. If you’re looking for an easy photo editor that brings a lot of functionality without the insane complexity, give PSP X8 a look.