VERDICT: Plenty of core new power for the digital camera user – but Paint Shop Pro Photo X2 is still playing catch-up.

Over its long history Paint Shop Pro has built up a great deal of bitmap editing power, but it has also come to seem dated and increasingly out of tune with the times...

New developer, Corel, is determined to address the problem and in particular to ensure that Paint Shop Pro focuses on the all-important digital camera-based market – hence the unwieldy “Paint Shop Pro Photo” (PSPP) rebranding.

The focus in this latest release is firmly on photography

This focus on digital photography is evident throughout this latest X2 release beginning with PSPP X2’s striking new graphite interface. It’s a look pioneered by the likes of Adobe Lightroom and it’s very of-the-moment, but it’s not just a cosmetic improvement: the neutral gray background really does make a difference when it comes to accurate colour correction. Again imitating the high-end Lightroom, PSPP X2 also expands its support for raw format files produced by top-of-the-range cameras. Realistically, the program’s non-professional target audience is far more likely to be working with JPEGs and so will derive more benefit from the new ability to combine bracketed exposures to create raw-style images with greater dynamic range. Even more welcome is PSPP X2’s introduction of a poor man’s version of non-destructive editing. Now when you edit an image you can automatically save the original in a hidden sub-folder; regret your changes and the new Restore Original command lets you start again.