Conclusion

PaintShop Pro continues to be a highly versatile image editor and a real alternative to Adobe Photoshop. Its Manage and Adjust workspaces are genuinely useful, and these aren’t even the highlight of the software. That honour goes to the Edit workspace, which not only offers a huge range of powerful features, but is also surprisingly easy to learn and use thanks to integrated Learning Centre tool guides and tips.

Flaws are few, but even running on very powerful hardware, we did notice some sluggishness when completing fairly simple tasks. Talking of effects, the lack of customisation for the effect presets included in the Adjust workspace limits their appeal. It’s also frustrating that so many of the new text presets and templates contained in the New From Template section are premium paid downloads.

This wouldn’t be so frustrating if it weren’t for the fact that the text presets and New From Template feature are two of the most important new additions to version X9. The export edit history, gradient fill, and screenshot capture tools are nice to have, but they’re hardly game-changers.

Then there’s the question of price. Sure, when Photoshop used to cost seriously big bucks as a one-off payment in the pre-Creative Cloud days, paying a fraction of this for PaintShop Pro was very tempting. But now a year’s subscription to the Creative Cloud Photography plan (Photoshop and Lightroom) will set you back just over £100 (at the time of writing), which isn’t a great deal more than the £59.99 standard version of PaintShop Pro X9.

But, PaintShop Pro’s simple no-strings, one-time payment pricing model is still attractive for those who don’t want to be tied in to a subscription. PaintShop Pro is also the more accessible product if you’re new to serious image editing, yet it’s got enough depth to match the vast majority of Photoshop’s most useful features.

If you’re already a PaintShop Pro X9 user, you can probably skip this release and not miss out on much. But version X9’s relative lack of compelling new content doesn’t dent its overall appeal for new users, as it’s still superb value and an extremely competent image editing suite.

Ratings (out of 5)
Design	4.5
Features	4
Ease-of-use	4.5
Value for money	4.5

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