Task 3: Laying It On
Support for layers is essential for an advanced image editor, because they let you edit different parts of a picture independently. We wanted to create three layers in this project: the speaker at the podium, the room with the windows, and the sky in back. With layers, you can adjust the colors in these images separately, resize them, and then merge them together into a single image.
Layers clearly separated the better image editors from the pretenders. SmartDraw Photo has no layer support at all; we had to select the speaker and podium, and then copy and paste the selection into the background image (the room with the windows). This work-around was problematic: SmartDraw merged the images, so we couldn't edit the components separately. Roxio PhotoSuite 5's selection tools were limited: While adjusting one "cutout" (layer), we could not hide the others. That made it difficult to gauge our edits and also created a strange ghosting effect on the selected area.
Working with layers in Corel Photobook felt counterintuitive, and features were hard to find. Like PhotoSuite, it has limited selection tools. Using layers in Print Shop Pro 20 required a lot of back-and-forth because its image editor doesn't support layers. We had to use Print Shop's graphics program and import our images into a photo collage project, a cumbersome process. Neither Print Shop Pro 20 nor Corel Photobook offered an eraser to help us get rid of the background, so we had to draw a freehand crop around our subject in order to do so. Even then, when we imported the cropped image into our project in Print Shop Pro 20, the erased background wasn't transparent, but opaque white.
To vary a layer's opacity in Jasc Paint Shop Pro, you have to open a dialog box, while Photoshop Elements and PhotoImpact provide a layers palette with a slide bar in the header. You see the opacity changing on your image, not in a dialog box.
To replace the overcast sky in the windows, we used the magic wand tool to select the sky in each of the window panes, varying the tolerance to avoid including any of the ground in the lower part of the frame. Then we punched out the sky using the delete key and added the new sky image as a layer behind them so it would show through the transparent areas we created. Though difficult in Roxio PhotoSuite 5, it was easy with Photoshop Elements. Finally, we added the podium from the first image as a layer in front of the room.
At this point, our composition was nearly complete. We wanted to select our subject's face and brighten it a bit. But manually correcting the color in an image like that of our speaker can be difficult and time-consuming; you often need to move the sliders for red, green, and blue in small increments, eyeballing the results. That's why we appreciate programs with good, one-click automatic color correction like Paint Shop Pro, PhotoImpact, Photoshop Elements, and Digital Image Pro.
Similarly, a variations tool is handy: Photoshop Elements, PhotoImpact, and CorelDraw show your image in various iterations, each with a slightly different color cast. Also, PhotoImpact and Photoshop Elements show proposed color adjustment in the actual image window, while CorelDraw shows them only in a tiny preview window.
Sharpening the foreground and blurring the background were both simple in the compositions built on layers, since adjustments to one layer don't affect the other. Print Shop Pro 20 required opening a fixed-size dialog box to perform this task.
All of these applications have fairly powerful text tools for adding a caption. In most cases you just select the text tool, pick a font and size, and start typing. And while it's not a big deal, we were disappointed whenever we had to enter our text into a dialog box, as you must with Paint Shop Pro, PhotoSuite, and SmartDraw, instead of typing directly onto the image. The dialog box complicated our task of positioning, sizing, and editing the text, since we couldn't see what the results would look like as we typed and manipulated the text.
A Final Step
The last step of our project was to crop the completed image so it would fit in an 8-by-10-inch print. The better applications let you choose specific dimensions, like 8-by-10 or 5-by-7, from a menu, and then resize the crop box while it keeps the correct proportions. That way, you know exactly what's going to come out of your printer. Most of the programs had great cropping tools with easy-to-pick presets for common print sizes, though PhotoStudio and SmartDraw Photo didn't.
PhotoStudio gives its crop dimensions in pixels, so it's impossible to size your crop for a 5-by-7-inch print. Similarly, you can drag SmartDraw Photo's crop box wherever you want, but there's no dialog box to set fixed dimensions. Corel Photobook is sheer frustration: It crops the image the instant you draw a crop box, with no opportunity to resize or reproportion the image. You can't even do that with Print Shop Pro 20--it only crops individual images, not multilayered compositions.
Best Buy: Power and Ease
Jasc Paint Shop Pro 8 is easy to learn and puts a lot of photo editing brawn at your fingertips. Highlights include customizable red-eye removal and an accurate background eraser tool. The program easily juggles multiple layers, and it offers flexible tools that enable you to grow with the program instead of forcing you to work in accordance with rigid wizards. To save time, you can use One Step Photo Fix to make multiple adjustments simultaneously--and this hit the bull's eye on our test shots.
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