There’s no apparent rhyme or reason for why it’s organized this way.įor lightweight editing, you can stay in the simpler Adjust workspace, which has a surprising range of tools-from exposure adjustments and Instagram-style effects to a clone brush. Some tools, such as cropping, red eye, and straightening appear in toolbar form under the histogram, but you have to access Smart Photo Fix, white balance, fill light, and others from a textual list below. Here again, though, Corel’s interface instincts strike a sour note. Among other difficulties, browsing photos by people is difficult because you see tightly cropped faces only, not the entire image.įor a fast, lightweight editor, head over to the Adjust workspace, which houses about a dozen common tools Corel deems useful for lightweight editing and as go-to tools for novices. They also give you access to a face recognition mode, but it’s perhaps more trouble than it’s worth. They let you tag photos for easier retrieval, and they load more quickly as well. If you don’t use Corel’s “collections,” though, you’re missing out. You can avoid the Manage view entirely, if you like: The program doesn’t force you to import photos into a proprietary library, so you can always navigate through existing folders. You can turn various panes, palettes, and toolbars off and rearrange things to your liking. Although this view is perhaps the most crowded and confusing, it’s all highly configurable. You inspect photos, review metadata, and enter ratings and keywords there.

The Manage workspace is sort of like a light box mode. The Manage workspace makes it easy to review and edit metadata, as well as index your photos into “collections” for faster searching and browsing. You access the three workspaces-Manage, Adjust, and Editing-via tabs at the top of the screen.

PaintShop Pro’s relatively unchanged interface puts efficient design second to displaying lots and lots of tools. The ship needs a new quartermaster, though.

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