Paint Shop Pro, Macromedia Fireworks, TwistedBrush

Trial

119 $ to buy

Windows 2K/XP

20.4 MB

Paint Shop Pro X 10.02 Update description

Paint Shop Pro is a comprehensive painting and image manipulation package, Paint Shop Pro will enhance the image editing power of business and home users with speed, ease of use and affordable functionality.

Finally, the wait is over! And it's been well worth it. This is the best Paint Shop Pro ever! Not only have your favorite photo editing and graphic design tools been improved, there's a whole array of new ones. Plus, there's a brand-new integrated learning system that's easier to use than ever before.

So whether you're new to Paint Shop Pro or have been using it forever, you can learn all the things you never knew how to do. There's so much, you'll have to download it to believe it.

You must have 10.01 to install this update

Here are some key features of "Paint Shop Pro":

· One-Step Photo Fix. With just one click, the One-Step Photo Fix command automatically adjusts the color balance, contrast, clarity, and saturation of an image. It also sharpens the image.
· Background Eraser. The Background Eraser tool lets you easily erase unwanted backgrounds while retaining the fine detail in your photos. It's a perfect first step before copying and pasting elements from one photo into another.
· Raw file format support. Paint Shop Pro X continues to support the Camera Raw file format. You can open, enhance, process, and convert images that were saved on your digital camera in the Raw file format.
· Picture Tubes. A longtime favorite, the Picture Tube tool lets you paint on your photo with a collection of professionally-designed artistic elements. For example, you can add butterflies and beetles to a picnic setting, fill an aquarium with fish, or frame a picture with holly. Picture Tubes are available in a variety of themes, including Animals, Artistic, Embellishments, Nature, Photo Objects, and Plants and Leaves. You can also create your own picture tubes.
· Scripting. A Paint Shop Pro powerhouse, scripting can save you tremendous amounts of time, especially when you are working with batches of images. You simply record a series of commands and then play them back to process an image or batch of images.
· Batch Processing. You can easily process batches of images with Paint Shop Pro. The Batch Process command lets you use scripts to apply fixes to batches of images, and you can also convert batches of images to a different file format.
· Lens Correction filters. Paint Shop Pro continues to provide excellent Lens Correction filters that help you correct common photo distortions, such as fish-eye, barrel, and pincushion.
· Perspective Correction tool. With this tool, you can easily fix buildings, landmarks, or other objects that appear to be leaning away from you in photos taken at an upward angle.
· Straighten tool. This tool lets you quickly align crooked photos by just pointing out a line that should be horizontal or vertical but isn't.
· Scratch Remover. The Scratch Remover tool instantly removes scratches, wires, and other linear flaws from photos. This tool is particularly useful for removing scratches or cracks when restoring old photos, and is also an incredible tool for reducing face wrinkles in photos.
· Clone tool. The Clone tool lets you cover flaws in your photos by copying detail from a neighboring area. You simply choose a source location and then draw over the flawed area of the image. This replaces the flaw with detail from the source location.
· Motion Blur. You can add Motion Blur to a photo to create the illusion that the photo was taken while the subject was in motion.
· Distort photos. The Warp Brush lets you create caricatures of your subjects by distorting pixels in a particular area of the photo.

What's New in This Release:

New photo features
· The Smart Photo Fix feature automatically corrects color, brightness, sharpness, and saturation while also letting you fine-tune the suggested settings.
· The Makeover tools lets you retouch the faces in your photos to remove flaws, just like the airbrushing done by magazine photo editors for their models. You can choose among the Blemish Fixer, the Toothbrush, and the Suntan Brush.
· You can quickly zap red-eye from your photos with the click of a mouse using the Red-Eye Remover.
· The Object Remover makes it easy to remove an unwanted portion of a photo and it uses portions of the remaining photo to fill in the area removed.
· With one click, the One-Step Purple Fringe Fix lets you remove the purple glow that surrounds high-contrast edges of objects in many digital camera photos.
· Paint Shop Pro X now offers the High Pass Sharpen command - a new, powerful way to sharpen digital photos.
· With Black & White Film and Black & White Infrared Film effects, you can simulate IR film or black and white film taken with colored filters.
· The One-Step Noise Fix feature lets you remove digital camera noise or film grain with one click.
· Paint Shop Pro X supports 16-bit-per-channel functionality, which lets you work with thousands of shades per color channel rather than the 256 shades per channel allowed by the 8-bit RGB color model.
· The Color Management engine lets you read and save color profile data with your photos and improves screen-to-print color matching. Paint Shop Pro X also supports color-managed CMYK TIFF output, which is useful when working with commercial printers.
· Improvements to File Metadata lets you add copyright data and other IPTC information. Paint Shop Pro X also reads EXIF rotation data inserted by many digital cameras, allowing portrait-mode photos to be automatically rotated.

New user interface features
· The new Learning Center guides you step-by-step through common photo-editing tasks to ensure that you can easily get the job done - even if you are just starting to use Paint Shop Pro.
· The Browser has been enhanced to offer more options, such as a Zoom slider for quickly adjusting the size of thumbnail previews, EXIF editing, an option to download photos from a digital camera, and the ability to dock the Browser in different workspace locations.
· The redesigned Layers palette provides thumbnail views of each image layer, making it easier to use and understand.
· With the new Pick tool you can select, move, resize, and rotate both raster and vector objects.

New performance features
· Paint Shop Pro X offers faster start-up speed so you can view your photos in a flash.
· Now that Paint Shop Pro saves undo and redo data, you will benefit from faster Undo/Redo of multiple steps.
· Using File Open Pre-Processing, you can run an automatic script to save time when opening single images or batches of photos.

Requirements:

· 500-MH processor
· Windows 2000 (SP4) or Windows XP
· 256 MB of RAM
· 500 MB of free hard-drive space

Limitations:

· 30 day trial

Screenshot:

Trial

299 $ to buy

Windows All

88.5 MB

Macromedia Fireworks 8.0 description

Macromedia created Fireworks as a complete graphics applications aimed towards Web designers.

It offers more advanced image control than existing packages, such as Photoshop or CorelDraw, for work that specifically relates to the Internet. Fireworks enables web designers to produce high quality images, export them in a variety of file formats while retaining excellent file size compression.

Fireworks surpasses other rivals as it also enables you to edit text, graphics and effects at any stage during production. Fireworks also simplifies the process of making JavaScript buttons with mouseover effects, all combined with automatic HTML generation.

This products is obviously aimed squarely at web designers who are currently restricted by the limitations of Photoshop and the endless workarounds that are necessary to convert images accurately to the web.

The combination of excellent vectors and bit-map tools, exporting capabilities and powerful Web-specific features ensure its success with Web designers. Though its interface suffers from a mass of palettes and toolbars, like Macromedia’s other product Dreamweaver, this can be easily forgiven considering the remarkable features that it offers.

Screenshot:

Demo

29.95 $ to buy

Windows All

9.13 MB

TwistedBrush 8.0 description

TwistedBrush - digital paint software with complete natural art tools. Software for artists without the complexity of other art programs. Compare us to the other "natural media" art programs.TwistedBrush is a software that helps you paint and draw with complete natural art tools.

Fine Artist Tools:
Oil paint feels thick with color.
Airbrushes feather their spray the further they are from the page.
A variety of blenders range from dry dust to wet to semi dry smudging.
Chalk and charcoal are...well...chalky.
Oil pastels mix and smear.
Soft pastels cover the page with texture and feel nice and dusty.
Oils paints with individual brush hairs that blend into the wet paint on the canvas.
The list goes on with, pencils, pens, crayons, felt markers and a collection of unusual tools.

Easy to use:
Your work is saved automatically when you turn the page or change books.
User interface designed with natural usage progression.
Preset system makes working on a piece streamlined.

Create:
Art should be a fun and creative activity. Pixarra TwistedBrsh puts the fun back in using electronic paint programs.

Incredible brush effects:
Use the random brush generation feature to create an unlimited number of brushes, from subtle to completely wild. Or manually create a brush with multiple levels of brush effects that act like a graphic synthesiser.

Photographic filters:
Over 50 filters to quickly enhance your original artwork of photos.

Picture Cloning:
A full cloning ArtSet with 60 brushes to turn any photo into a work of art.

ArtSets:
100's of preset brushes grouped into ArtSets covering traditional media such as pastels or colored pencils, specialized tools like masking, themes like the Landscape or SpaceScape ArtSets or one of the other ArtSets covering a huge range of different brushes.

Advanced Features:
TwistedBrush is easy to use, but the powerful tools are there for those inclined. Tools such as layers, masks, brush creation, scripting etc.

TwistedBrush - creating art the way it should be, simple and fun!!

Here are some key features of "TwistedBrush":

· Performance: Pixarra's attention to performance is a top priority. As an artist draws and paints the tools should disappear from thought and allow focus on the creative process rather than waiting for the tool to finish its job. In addition the responsiveness of the brush tools should be quick and show marks on the page instantly to allow the artist to enter the "zone".
· High Precision 64 Bit Brush Engine: Most graphic programs offer at most 32 bits of color resolution. TwistedBrush represents all image data internally at a full 64 bits of color resolution. This allows for super smooth color mixing and alpha blending.
· Brushes: TwistedBrush has hundreds of different brushes available. These range from very simple color dots to realistic representations of natural artist tools to very wild brushes
· Paper Textures: A wide variety of paper and canvas textures can be selected so that brush strokes respond with the texture as they are placed on the paper or canvas
· Filters: Over 50 filters can be used to quickly alter and adjust your image.
· Tracing Paper
· Cloners
· Masks
· Layers
· ArtSets
· Scripting
· Undo/Redo: Yes there are multiple levels of undo and redo. Up to 50 levels in fact, memory permitting.
· File Formats: Most standard image formats are supported. This Include, JPEG, GIF, PNG, TIFF, TGA, PCX, PSD, BMP, PCD, WMF and EMF.
· Sketchbook Paradigm
· Drawing Tablet Support
· Brush Effects System
· Random Brush Generation
· Photo Editing
· Free Upgrades Forever.

Limitations:

· You are welcome to evaluate this software for 15 days after which time purchase is required.
· Watermark.
· Can not export.

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