- Q.I'm involved in historic
restoration and annually shoot a couple of hundred
images. I'm looking for a simple (and inexpensive)
software that will allow me to take the photos and do
markups for comparison. What do you
recommend?
A.Contributing editor Joe
Stoddard responds: For most Windows users, I
recommend (and use) Paint Shop Pro. It does
everything you need to do and costs only around
$100. Some useful features are a thumbnail browser,
advanced screen capture, easy resizing, easy text
markup, touch-up tools, and good compression
filters that make it easy to get images ready for
the web. As a bonus, most Adobe Photoshop plug-ins
will work with Paint Shop Pro, so you're really not
giving up much by choosing it over Photoshop
(around $600). With your savings, you can buy a
digital camera.
The only situation I can think of where
Photoshop would be necessary is if you're doing
advanced color-matching or separations for
commercial printing. Most contractors aren't going
to do that in house anyway, and since Paint Shop
Pro can save files in the various formats a graphic
arts house would use (.eps, .tif, etc.), you're
covered.