Previously, I posted about GIMP, the Open Source Graphic Editing Package.  I love GIMP for its features and price (FREE!).  However, I occassionally have the need to use other graphic editing packages.  When I am not using GIMP, my editing package of choice is Paint Shop Pro.

Paint Shop Pro is a commercial software package originally from JASC which was purchased by Corel.  Paintshop Pro runs from $39 to $99 at most retailers.  I picked up the latest version on sale at Best Buy for $39.  While it is not free like GIMP, it is substantially more affordable than Photoshop (which costs around $700).

I like Paint Shop Pro for its ease of use and wide variety of supported file formats (over 50).  Other features I use include …

• Easy Import and Organization of photos from Cameras and Memory Cards.  In my classroom, we take and catalog a large amount of photos for our yearbook and website.  Paint Shop Pro allows us to import and organize the photos by date.  This comes in handy until we are able to re-organize and catalog the photos by topic.
• Import photos and documents from an attached scanner.  Paint Shop Pro is tremendously better to use than the typical free junk that comes with most scanners.
• Basic touch up options like red-eye removal.  Working with yearbook and web photos, this comes in handy almost daily.
• Easily add a visible watermark to a photo.
• Create collages from a group of photos.
• Easily crop an image.  With this feature, you can use the outline tool to select the section of the image you want to keep.  The rest of the image is discarded, leaving just the outlined area.
• Erase the background of an image.  This option will let you take a photo of a student in front of a wall in the classroom, use the background eraser to remove the wall from the photo, and place another background onto the photo.  Thus we can create a photo of a student standing on a mountain without leaving the classroom.
• Clone parts of an image.  The cloning tool allows you to take part of an image and copy it to another area of that image.  For example, we recently cleaned up an aireal photo of our school where some of the grass areas were dying.  We used the clone tool to clone the greener areas, thus giving us a photo of a wonderfully manicured lawn around the school.
• Paint Shop Pro has hundreds of other features like artistic affects, cleaning up poor quality images, resizing images, adding text, and the ability to work with layers.