CONS

• Inconsistent interface
• No macOS version
• Some operations slow

Getting Started With PaintShop Pro

Corel PaintShop Pro 2022 Ultimate Crack runs on Windows 10 (recommended version 1903 or later with the latest Service Pack (64-bit editions). You first install a small downloader program that completes the installation. You have to choose whether you want 32-bit, 64-bit, or both—the last means you’ll be compatible with both 32-bit and 64-bit plug-ins. After this step, the program asked me to enter an email to create an account, which only requires confirmation by responding to an automatically generated email.

Corel offers downloadable effect packs, too, such as ParticleShop brushes and ColorScript color effects (for $14.99 and $4.99, respectively). I installed PaintShop Pro on my test PC running Windows 10 Pro and sporting a Core i7 6700 CPU, 16GB RAM, and an Nvidia GTX 1650 graphics card.

What’s New in Corel PaintShop Pro 2022 Ultimate Crack?

Corel puts a lot of effort into improving and adding features to the venerable image editing software, taking feedback from user advisory boards and program telemetry to decide what people want. New features for the 2022 version include AI Background Replacement, AI Portrait Mode, and a much-improved AI Style Transfer. It also adds support for the HEIC and HEIF file types that iPhones use and an updated Welcome and startup experience. New brushes, color palettes, gradients, patterns and picture tubes, and a Frame tool for placing images inside shapes round out the updates.

The Ultimate version adds a Highlight Reel video slideshow-creating feature (similar to the one in Corel VideoStudio), MultiCam Capture Lite for screen and webcam video presentations, Painter Essentials 8 for simple drawing, sketching, and painting on the PC.

New Added Features

In 2022, Corel PaintShop Pro Ultimate Crack added a touch-friendly photography mode that includes a split before-and-after view, handy for seeing the effects of your edits. (I’d still like to see a side-by-side option like Lightroom’s.) Also arriving in that version were AI Upsampling, AI Denoise, AI Artifact Removal, AI Style Transfer, and the HDR Studio plug-in. A big tool from this update is the Sea-to-Sky Workspace (only in Ultimate). It’s applies appropriate fixes to underwater and aerial shots, such as those from a drone.

Other recent updates added a slew of tools as well. The 2020 version added SmartClone for blending multiple image selections; Refine Brush for selecting complex objects like hair or tree lines; new brushes, color palettes, gradients, patterns and picture tubes; Text tool enhancements; and an improved Depth of Field tool. Available within the Crop tool, Depth of Field lets you position the focus area with a five-by-five grid of squares. The 2019 version added 360-Degree camera support, an improved crop toolbar, stylus and tablet support, and a more-customizable UI.

The PaintShop Interface

Corel PaintShop Pro 2022 Ultimate Crack Welcome screen shows your recent files, product news, tutorials, and add-ins for purchase. Pick an image to work on, and the program starts up in one of four workspaces you choose: Photography, Essentials, Complete, and Sea-to-Sky. Only three tabs grace the top of the Complete program window: Home, Manage, and Edit. Aside from the simple Photography workspace, the others each take you through an interface tour wizard to show you what’s what.

Photography workspace

The Photography workspace is simple and touch-friendly. I appreciate the ability to use a touch screen more and more as threat of carpal tunnel syndrome from excessive mouse usage looms.

In the Photography workspace, you find basic tools like Rotate, Crop, Brightness, Color adjustments, One Step Photo Fix, and White Balance. You also get some of the fancier tools, including AI Upsampling, AI Denoise, AI Artifact Removal, and AI Style Transfer. There’s an arrow offering even more tools, like the useful Local Tone Mapping tool, High Pass Sharpen, Fill Light/Clarity, Vibrancy, and Fade Correction. I’d like to see adjusters for highlights and shadows here, too, but they’re MIA. A Fill Light control makes up for the lack of a shadows slider, but the Photography view offers a handy split-screen view to see your edits’ effect. You can adjust the text and icon size and workspace colors, as well.

Another thing I’d like to see in this Photography mode interface, aside from highlights and shadows, is an easier, one-button way to get to the program’s other, more-advanced workspaces—Essentials and Complete. You can switch to any mode from the File > Workspace menu, but buttons would be quicker. A minor interface feature I like to see in photo apps is having sliders snap to the default position when you double click.

PaintShop’s templates

From Welcome, you can also start with project templates. PaintShop’s templates are similar to the Create dialog that appears when you first run Corel PaintShop Pro 2022 Ultimate Crack. The New Image dialog’s Blank Canvas tab is rich with choices like Photo, Paper, Web, Mobile, and Social. One thing I don’t see, which Photoshop has, is a Clipboard choice that sizes your new project to an image you’ve copied. The New From Template tab, like Photoshop’s, offers several document types, including calendars, collages, cards, business reports, and social media. Most of these are in-app purchases—in both programs—though you can create your own custom templates.

Customizable Interface

The interface is customizable when it comes to color and the size of elements such as icons and scroll bars. These options get their own main menu option: User Interface. From here, you can, for example, enlarge menu text so that it doesn’t look tiny on a 4K monitor. (It also worked well for my QXD 2560×1440 display). The main window’s side panels can also be undocked or dismissed. The program includes sample images, so you’re not starting from zero. Additionally, the Complete workspace still includes the right-panel Learning Center, which helps you along with many image-editing procedures.

You can zoom in or out to any magnification you choose, with a simple spin of the mouse wheel. There are 1:1 and Fit Image to Window buttons in PaintShop, or you can zoom simply by spinning the mouse wheel.

Unlike in Adobe Photoshop Elements, which has a separate Organizer app, you do everything in PaintShop in the same window, but you switch modes for different functions.

360-Degree Photo Editing

When you first try to open a 360-degree image file shot on a camera like the GoPro Max, a dialog asks whether you want to edit it as 360-degree image or to open for adjustments and effects. The latter doesn’t affect the geometry of the photo. Instead, you can manipulate just the lighting and color effects, as though it were a warped 2D photo. Doing so keeps it in 360 format with your lighting corrections, so you can still upload it to Facebook or other 360 viewers. Corel helpfully includes a few sample 360 files for experimentation.

Opening an image in 360-degree mode presents a separate editing window and an explanatory dialog showing what you can do with the file type. There are really just four editing options: Straighten, Remove Tripod, 360-to-Panorama, and Planet effects. The last two convert the image from 360 to a standard format, such as JPG, after applying the effect.

Useful Tool

The most useful tool is Straighten, which worked well in my testing. This option removes the unnatural curves of your 360-degree photo and lets you pick a viewing angle for the resulting image. You can pan around with the mouse or use slider controls for Pan, Tilt, Field of View (zoom), and Rotate. Then you save your work as a standard 2D photo in the format of your choice.

Remove Tripod switches your view to facing down, where a tripod normally would appear. You select the tripod with a circle, a free selection tool, or a square, and then apply Magic Fill to match the surrounding terrain. The Panorama option is mostly just a crop tool—it didn’t convert the image to a natural looking panorama, as the Straighten tool does.

Conclusion

Corel continues to add new photo editing possibilities to its Corel PaintShop Pro 2022 Ultimate v24.1.0.27  Crack software, making it a worthy Photoshop alternative on Windows for a budget-conscious, one-time price.