Corel Paint Shop Photo Pro

The short summary: Corel’s Paint Shop Photo Pro® (“PSP”— $100, $70 upgrade from a previous version; Windows only) is a full-featured photo editor that’s easy and friendly even for users new to digital photography. It’s well suited for people who consider the art and craft of photography mostly incidental to the memories they’re capturing and sharing. It’s also a good choice for scrapbookers and others who use their family photos as a starting point for artistic projects.

Despite many powerful features that should make it a cost-effective tool for people interested in the art and craft of photography itself, PSP has some frustrating and longstanding basic deficiencies. If you want to use color spaces beyond sRGB, exploit the full power of raw camera files, or edit in 16-bit color, Adobe’s comparably-priced and similarly-featured Photoshop Elements® would be a much better choice, if you don’t want to pay $650 for the full version of Photoshop®.

Some History

I’m very ambivalent about Paint Shop Pro. Beginning in 1999, I happily used four versions of it over nearly seven years to prepare the pictures on this Web site. I found it an affordable alternative to Photoshop that offered plenty of image editing power in a well-designed and very usable package. Jasc Software, the original developer, seemed to be gradually driving PSP toward becoming a serious competitor to Photoshop. Then Corel bought Jasc in 2004.

In September 2005 Corel released Paint Shop Pro 10 (called “X ” even though it’s not available for Apple’s Macintosh OS X). The advertising touted color management, support for color spaces beyond sRGB, and 16-bit-per-channel editing. The absence of these features had been a longstanding weakness that limited PSP’s usefulness for the professional or serious “prosumer” photographer who wants the best and most consistent color. So I eagerly bought the upgrade.

I only gradually discovered that those new features were unfinished, with undocumented deficiencies and limitations that made them unusable for me. Even worse, Corel seemed to have prematurely released Paint Shop Pro X as “beta” software, suitable for public testing but not yet a finished product ready for sale. When I wrote to Corel’s technical support staff, they promptly acknowledged the problems. But they could provide no information about when, or even if, they planned to correct them. So with some reluctance I decided to buy Adobe’s “industry-standard” Photoshop CS2 (which I subsequently upgraded to CS3).

Corel released Paint Shop Pro Photo XI in September 2006. It looked like a disappointingly insignificant upgrade primarily intended to serve Corel’s marketing needs. Perhaps its most impressive accomplishment was that it beat Adobe’s Elements 5.0 to market by about a month. And it added the word Photo to its name, presumably to better define it as a photo editing product. Some of XI’s new features were useful, including improved Curves and Levels tools, limited editing of video clips, and a new “image organizer” that replaced PSP X’s widely-disparaged “browser.” Other features looked like gimmicks thrown in to give an unimpressive upgrade some marketing buzz: A “skin smoother,” a “color changer,” filters that simulate different types of film, and a “time machine” that simulated the look of various antiquated photo technologies.

Starting with XI, Corel also added a “feature” that their marketeers understandably don’t crow about. Installing PSP also stealthily installs Protexis Licensing, an “anti-piracy” system that runs continuously in the background thereafter and remains even if you uninstall PSP. The link describes the Registry edit necessary to remove it.

XI did not correct any of X’s deficiencies (which I’ll discuss at length). So what I say about PSP X also applies to XI (and to X2 and X3). And following X’s precedent, XI was released as “beta” software with some significant bugs, including broken PNG transparency and the inability to save 16-bit files in any format other than its native pspImage. Corel fixed those bugs four months later in the 116-megabyte “11.11” patch.

Right on schedule, Corel released PSP X2 in September 2007. It fixed 70 bugs in XI, but had 35 new “known issues” identified in its release notes. Again, it added enough gimmicks to give the marketeers something to tout, but nothing that really justified buying an upgrade. X2 added an “express” workflow for processing batches of images, a new “theme” for its user interface, some improvements to layers, and visible watermarks. It also continued the PSP tradition of “borrowing” features from Photoshop. This time it was adjustable color filter settings for black and white conversion (inspired by the new black and white conversion tool in Photoshop CS3), and a tool to combine multiple exposures of a contrasty scene into a “High Dynamic Range” image (first introduced in Photoshop CS2). But I do have to acknowledge the sheer brilliance of the marketeer who dreamed up the only genuinely original feature in X2: Thinify™, a tool that’s supposed to make people look thinner!

But in September 2008, instead of the expected X3 “beta,” Corel split X2 into two editions. The “Standard” edition was last year’s model at a lower price (and presumably with the 12.01 update patch). The “Ultimate” edition was the same as the “Standard,” but with two useful additions: Raw file support for “more than 250” cameras— they’re apparently counting Canon’s Rebel XT, 350D, and Kiss Digital n as three different cameras— and a “background remover” plug-in. To bulk up the “Ultimate” package, the marketeers also threw in some rather dubious fluff: A “creative content pack” with frames, edges, and “picture tubes;” a version of the Corel Painter drawing software “to turn photos into paintings in 3 easy steps”; PhotoRecovery LE, basic data recovery tool similar to what’s bundled with all but the cheapest memory cards; and a 2GB USB flash drive (available for $10 from mail-order vendors).

Corel finally released X3— renamed PaintShop Photo Pro— in January 2010. It seems a fairly minor update to X2, mainly to support Windows 7 (along with Vista and XP). It comes in only one “edition.” The list of new features isn’t particularly impressive. The highlights include basic high-definition video editing, a new object extractor, and a “Photo Project Creator” aimed at the scrapbookers who have long been important users of PSP. It’s also bundled with a new version of Corel Painter.

Probably the most significant improvement in X3 is a new Camera Raw Lab that processes raw files from 335 cameras (if I counted them correctly). It looks to be better than the raw support in previous versions; but it’s still less capable than Adobe Camera Raw, even in the simplified interface of Adobe Elements that omits some “advanced” controls. Corel apparently uses the open-source dcraw conversion engine, which explains the support for some very expensive professional cameras (Hasselblad, Leaf, Leica, and Phase) whose owners probably would not be PSP users.

However, X3 still does not correct the deficiencies that I found to be showstoppers back in 2005, which I’ll discuss at length. Corel (perhaps wisely) chose not to publish a list of fixed bugs and “known issues” as they did with X2, so I can’t comment on whether it’s “beta” software.

Strangely, no “professional” review of PSP I’ve seen in the paper or electronic press even mentions the shortcomings. Did any of the authors actually use the program? So I will discuss the deficiencies at some length, to help potential buyers and upgraders make an informed decision.

A Full Toolbox

How does PSP compare with Adobe’s Photoshop products? I’d call it comparable to the $99 Photoshop Elements. Though similar in capability to Elements, it has some useful features Adobe omitted: notably scripting, tool presets, channel mixer, and a fully-functional Curves adjustment (Elements 5.0 finally included a lobotomized version of Curves). But it lacks the commercial printing, pervasive 16-bit color, and fully-functional color management capabilities of CS4.

Corel has tailored PSP for the user who is new to digital photography, emphasizing a friendly and easy user interface. An “Express Lab” quickly makes common corrections. A “Learning Center” guides novices through more complicated tasks. There is also digital camera noise reduction, red-eye removal tools, and basic support for video clips. The “Learning Center” can be turned off if you don’t need it.

Since its debut in 1991 (as a tool for converting between image formats), PSP has continuously “borrowed” a rich subset of Photoshop’s advanced features, including the myriad flavors of layers, palettes, tools, and filters. When I made the transition from PSP to Photoshop CS2, I found that the learning curve was more about adjusting to a different approach, interface, and details than about learning new or different ways to do common tasks. Much of it was amazingly familiar.

PSP includes a full set of classic Photoshop-inspired manual adjustment tools (Curves, Levels, Histogram, Channel Mixer, Hue/Saturation/Lightness; most of them are also available in adjustment layers) along with a suite of automated and semi-automated photo enhancement tools to easily adjust color balance, contrast, and saturation. The manual adjustments aren’t complete implementations of their Photoshop counterparts, but they’re close enough.

There are also handy tools to straighten crooked horizons (much easier than Photoshop’s Ruler and Crop), correct common lens distortions, and remove scratches and red-eye. PSP X added a set of “Makeover Tools” for beautifying portraits and people pictures; and “Object Remover,” a very useful enhancement to the Clone Brush that replaces unwanted objects with a background you designate.

Some of the Photoshop-inspired tools are more powerful and convenient than the Photoshop equivalents. The Unsharp Mask tool, used for sharpening, is a good example. The PSP version includes a check box to select luminance-only sharpening. That option ignores color information, so it allows more sharpening without halos and artifacts and often yields more efficient JPEG compression. Photoshop’s Unsharp Mask lacks this option, so luminance-only sharpening is unduly complicated: After using Unsharp Mask, you have to select “Fade Unsharp Mask” from the “Edit” menu, scroll down to the bottom of a large pull-down menu to select “Luminance,” and finally click “OK.”

Most tools let you save adjustment settings as “presets” to use later for similar images. The presets are perhaps the simplest example of a scripting facility that lets you record and name a sequence of operations that you can play back whenever you need it. Unless you’re a programmer, you don’t need to know that PSP stores the presets and recorded sequences as scripts in the Python programming language. If you are a programmer you can edit the scripts or create them from scratch.

Clarify, and Some Bells and Whistles

One unique and valuable photo enhancement tool is “Clarify.” Ever since it first appeared in version 7, the PSP documentation has been rather taciturn about what “Clarify” actually does. It seems to redistribute brightness and contrast throughout an image to improve the subjective and intangible properties of “snap,” “clarity,” or “impact.” The effect is similar to the local contrast enhancement technique that uses Unsharp Masking with a large radius, but there’s more to it than that.

With some images, “Clarify” can almost miraculously improve shadow detail while toning down overly bright highlights. Other images turn garish and blotchy, with odd halos and hidden noise glaringly revealed; this is particularly a problem with outdoor scenes that include sky. You can often avoid these problems by masking out the sky in the picture before trying “Clarify,” but there’s no way to predict what you’ll get. “Clarify” is worth trying on every image after you’ve finished adjusting the color balance and histogram. The result will either delight or horrify. Corel describes “Clarify” as an alternative to other sharpening effects, but I find it’s still necessary to sharpen the final image.

For Photoshop users, Pixel Vistas’ PhotoLift plug-in ($40 for Windows or Macintosh) provides an effect similar to “Clarify,” and with much greater control and flexibility. It works with Adobe Photoshop CS, CS2, CS3, and Elements 5, 6, and 7. It’s not compatible with PSP. It probably works with newer versions of Adobe software, but Pixel Vistas have not updated the product or their Web site since December 2007 (the latter discusses their “2008 Development Roadmap”). This prolonged lack of activity raises questions about the company’s viability, and makes me hesitant to recommend PhotoLift.

For monochrome aficionados, PSP includes a black-and-white conversion tool that simulates the colored filters traditionally used to emphasize specific tones in the picture. It’s easier than doing the same thing with the Channel Mixer tool. A related tool simulates the look of infrared black and white film, turning green vegetation a ghostly glowing white and adding a specified amount of grain. Though it clearly belongs in the “bells and whistles” category, “Infrared Film” can be quite effective for certain pictures (and I’ve found that it works better than any infrared-simulating plug-in or Photoshop action I’ve seen). Licorice Moss at Point Vicente looked intriguing in the viewfinder, but I couldn’t make it work as a satisfying color picture. “Infrared Film” was just what it needed. With Emerald Bay in Infrared, it provided a fresh perspective on a much-photographed iconic location at Lake Tahoe.

PSP allows nearly limitless customization of the user interface “workspace” to organize all those tools the way that’s best for you. There are seven pre-loaded toolbars, but if you keep them all open you’ll clutter the screen needlessly. It’s better to use the “Customize” tool to add, delete, or move the commands you use most often in the standard toolbar and pull-down menus. For example, I removed the icon to open a TWAIN scanner, but added an icon to reduce a 16-bit image to 8 bits. The standard toolbar includes an “Enhance Photo” button that contains a pull-down menu for putting photo-related tools in one convenient place.

The Complaint Department

The new 16-bit and color management features of PSP X looked compelling enough for me to buy the upgrade the day after Corel announced it. With any software, the impulsive early adopter inevitably risks volunteering for an unpaid job as a tester. PSP X demonstrated this risk more than most software. The implementation of those features was frustratingly incomplete, and remains so in PSP XI, X2, and X3.

Most tools for adjusting color balance, density, and curves work with 16-bit images, as do most types of adjustment layers. But some essential tools do not, including the Clone Brush, Histogram Adjustment, Edge-Preserving Smooth, Salt and Pepper Filter, and Chromatic Aberration Removal (PSP XI, X2, and X3 only slightly expand the list of 16-bit tools). You need to convert the image to 8-bit color before you can use them; otherwise you’ll get a warning and an option to do the conversion with one button click. You might be able to work around the limitations by using the tools that do support 16-bit color before reducing the image to 8 bits and using the other tools, even if that’s not the order you prefer. An article in Corel’s support knowledge base lists the commands and features that support 16-bit color.

Corel hasn’t implemented 16-bit color or color management for plug-ins in PSP X, XI, X2, or X3. Plug-ins are “grayed out” on the Effects menu and unavailable when editing a 16-bit image. Plug-ins do work once you’ve reduced the image to 8 bits. More significantly, color management doesn’t work at all with plugins. I accidentally discovered this undocumented limitation when I noticed that the color and contrast of the window in iCorrect EditLab Pro looked different from what PSP showed. By trial and error, I discovered that if I changed the color space to standard sRGB, the colors matched. PictoColor’s technical support told me that EditLab defaults to sRGB if the host application doesn’t provide color management information, and Corel’s technical support later confirmed that PSP doesn’t provide it. That turned out to be the main showstopper for me, because it makes EditLab all but useless. Duplicating EditLab’s functionality with native tools is unnecessarily cumbersome.

Another significant flaw in PSP’s color management is the lack of a command to convert images between color spaces. When you’re working in Adobe RGB (or another color space other than sRGB), you can’t easily convert an image to sRGB so it will look right in Web browsers, e-mail clients, and other software that doesn’t support color management. Saving files for Web or e-mail use is such a common scenario that Corel really needs to “borrow” some form of Photoshop’s “Convert Profile” command.

But there is a kludgy workaround. Save the file as a TIFF or pspImage file with an embedded profile (along with JPEG, those are the only formats for which PSP supports embedded color profiles— another undocumented secret). Then close the file, reset the color profile in PSP to sRGB, re-open the file, and select the “Use embedded profile” radio button when the color profile mismatch warning appears. That makes PSP convert the Adobe RGB image into sRGB when it opens the file; any versions you subsequently save will be in the sRGB color space. Just be careful not to overwrite the original file, and remember to reset the color profile when you’re done.

To their credit, Corel’s technical support representatives quickly acknowledged the deficiencies when I asked about them. One of them even pointedly noted that “color space support is new to Paint Shop Pro X and we are still working to iron out any discrepancies.” But Corel doesn’t seem in any pressing hurry to finish the ironing. Color space support in PSP XI, X2, and X3 remains wrinkled.

I’ll summarize all this by noting that PSP is clearly intended for the vast majority of digital photographers who shoot JPEG files in the Web-standard sRGB color space. So the shortcomings might not matter for most users, but you should be aware of them. They’re a showstopper for for me because I use raw files exclusively, edit them in 16-bit color in the Adobe RGB color space (and sometimes ProPhoto) on a color-managed system, and convert the finished images to sRGB for Web use.

There is considerable controversy in on-line photography forums about the merits of raw files and color spaces other than sRGB. I’ll only say that using them happens to suit my working style and preferences, but I’ll never claim that my approach is best for everyone. Photographer and writer Ken Rockwell makes compelling arguments for JPEG and sRGB, with which I mostly disagree. But many of his pictures are technically and artistically beautiful, which is ultimately what matters. I’ll certainly agree with his frequently-stated assertion that it’s the photographer who makes the picture, not the camera— and not the file format, color space, or image editing software.

Why All the Secrecy?

In PSP X, a number of useful features added in PSP 8 and 9 are inexplicably hidden in the “Customize” tool under the strange heading of “Unused Commands.” Automatic Saturation Enhancement, Automatic Contrast Enhancement, Manual Color Correction, and several other tools from those versions are still available— but only if you’re privy to their undocumented “undisclosed location” and you specifically install them in your toolbars or menus. They don’t support 16-bit color. The new Smart Photo Fix (which integrates color balance and histogram adjustments) and Color Balance tools provide some of the functionality of those “unused commands,” and they do work in 16-bit mode. But they require more tweaking and don’t work as well.

The downloaded version of PSP doesn’t come with a printed manual. I didn’t think it came with a soft-copy manual either, until a private beta tester pointed out on Corel’s PSP X newsgroup that one is in fact buried in the “C:\Program Files\Corel\Corel Paint Shop Pro X” directory as PSP_User_Guide.pdf. There was no indication that it existed in the installation package, the release notes, or anywhere else. But I don’t think I would have missed much (beyond 6 megabytes of disk space) if I hadn’t found it. Compared with the informative 438-page manual that came with PSP 8, its meager 106 pages offer little more than a “getting started” guide for users new to both PSP and digital photography. It provides a cursory description of some features, but omits any discussion of the most powerful photography-oriented tools. XI’s “manual” is 111 pages, with the extra five pages presumably devoted to identifying a few new features.

The drastically cut-down manual means users have to rely on PSP’s help system (the link is to a Web version for X3). While it contains basic instructions for using PSP’s many features, it’s nothing like a complete user manual. There’s also nothing like the many encyclopedic third-party books about Photoshop, perhaps an inherent problem with using any software that competes with an “industry standard.” Corel provides some tutorials, and the “Learning Center” and “Express Lab” gently hold new users’ hands. But the documentation Corel provides may not be enough for users who grow in sophistication to take full advantage of PSP’s more advanced tools.

One of the major deficiencies in PSP X was the shamefully incomplete help system. It was missing an index and information about many features, contained numerous errors, and clearly hadn’t been proofread or copy-edited. Suzanne Shook and several other dedicated PSP users compiled a Documentation Errata Web site that identifies and corrects a number of errors in the help system and provides the missing index entries. I have mixed feelings about it. They absolutely deserve kudos for providing an essential resource to the PSP community. But they were effectively rewarding Corel with a substantial donation of free labor. If Corel’s executives get the idea that they can now rely on volunteers to finish their half-baked products for free instead of paying for their employees to do the job right, I suspect there will soon be a mass resignation of volunteers. The help file for PSP XI looked better, perhaps because Corel availed themselves of the hard work that went into that Web site.

PSP users will find it useful to periodically browse Corel’s support knowledge base. Under the “Product and Services” pull-down, select “Paint Shop Pro” for the product and “Paint Shop Pro X” (or XI, X2, or X3, as appropriate) for the sub-product. Then click the search button to see a list of all the entries pertaining to the version you chose. The knowledge base is where Corel reveals the undocumented secrets of PSP— but only for those who know to look there. So now you’re in on the secret!

And buried elsewhere on Corel’s Web site is a PDF-format Paint Shop Pro X Color Management Overview that reveals some of what they neglected to include in the program’s official documentation. It still applies to XI, X2, and X3, since PSP’s color management features (and limitations) remain unchanged.

Paved With What Intentions?

Corel Corporation bought Jasc Software, the original developer of PSP, in October 2004. When I first heard about that, I updated this review to express my reservations about PSP’s future. Corel is something of a hospice or mortuary for a diverse collection of products acquired from troubled companies. WordPerfect, once the dominant word processor, is probably the best-known example. Corel acquired it from Novell, whose management got it from the bankrupt original developer and then all but destroyed it (and their company) in an inept scheme to challenge Microsoft. Thanks to its remaining loyal users, WordPerfect hangs on with a marginal share of the “office suite” market that Microsoft thoroughly dominates.

Corel had its own soap-opera history of brushes with bankruptcy, until a venture capital firm acquired the majority of its stock in 2003 and apparently stabilized its financial condition. In 2008 there was talk about selling Corel, but that hasn’t happened. Instead, the venture capital firm acquired the rest of Corel’s stock and now fully controls the company.

The acquisition of Jasc and PSP coincided with the near-simultaneous release of PSP 9 and Adobe’s Photoshop Elements 3. The new Elements added (limited) 16-bit support, Photoshop’s renowned Adobe Camera Raw plug-in that reads raw files for a wide range of digital cameras, and a revamped user interface. PSP 9 was essentially a minor update to PSP 8, apparently rushed to premature release so Corel could announce a new product with the merger. So I had every reason to expect that PSP would meet a fate similar to that of WordPerfect, especially considering that Corel was already selling several competing image-editing programs. I concluded my comments by noting that “what Corel actually does (with PSP 10?) to meet Adobe’s challenge should provide a good indication of their intentions.”

With the release of PSP X nearly a year later, Corel’s promotional materials made it look like they intended to actively promote and improve PSP, giving Adobe some serious competition. After I saw the prematurely-released and poorly-documented software, I’m not so sure. The venture capital managers may still be trying to figure out where they want PSP to fit in the market, and maybe even where it should fit within Corel’s own menagerie of graphics and imaging products that continues to grow— they bought Ulead in 2006 and added its line of imaging and video software to the zoo.

With PSP X, Corel quietly killed Paint Shop Pro Studio, introduced with version 9 as a simpler and lower-priced photo editor and organizer for casual digital snapshooters. Corel filled that place in the product line with a new version of Corel Photo Album. Along with basic image editing functions, it provides tools for cataloging and archiving image files along with “creative projects” like scrapbooks and greeting cards. Those functions complement PSP’s, so Corel included a somewhat stripped-down version of Photo Album in the PSP X bundle. I never installed Photo Album, so I can’t say anything about it.

With PSP XI, Corel introduced Snapfire. Corel’s Web site unfortunately didn’t make the distinction between this and Photo Album very clear. Like Photo Album, Snapfire offers basic photo editing tools for family snapshots, an image organizer, and various templates for calendars, collages, and “creative” projects. PSP XI included a stripped-down version of Snapfire rather than Photo Album. Corel later released that version of Snapfire as a free basic imaging program. For some unfathomable reason, the free release reportedly also installs Protexis Licensing.

Just to keep everyone confused, Corel re-branded Snapfire as MediaOne Plus in 2007. PSP X2 included a stripped-down version without DVD production capabilities.

PSP versions 5 through 9 included Animation Shop, a separate program for creating and editing animated GIF files. Beginning with PSP X, if you need those features you’ll have to buy Animation Shop separately for $40. That version is the same as the one that came with PSP 8 and 9, which means it apparently no longer integrates seamlessly with PSP.

Recommendations

If you make your living from digital graphic arts and work with commercial printing— or if you’re a Macintosh user, as PSP is available only for Windows— you’ll definitely need to spend the $650 for Photoshop, plus $200 or so every 18 months for upgrades. (By the way, that CD of Elements bundled with your camera, scanner, or printer might qualify you to buy Photoshop at half price under one of Adobe’s promotional offers. That’s what I did.)

When I got started with digital photography in 1999, PSP was the only real option for anyone who wanted most of Photoshop’s features at an affordable price. It’s still a fine choice if you’re like most digital photographers, who use JPEG files from the camera in the Web-standard sRGB color space. PSP offers all the features you’re likely to need, in a very friendly package.

But since them, Adobe came out with Photoshop Elements. They’ve continually improved it to the point where it’s now fully competitive with PSP in features, usability, and price (though you’d have to do without Thinify™ and the related tool for whitening teeth). I’d give the edge to Elements because it includes a fully functional version of Photoshop’s color management system, along with the excellent Adobe Camera Raw converter (though with a simplified user interface). That would make it the best choice for users interested in using their camera’s raw files and getting the most out of them, and for anyone with a properly-calibrated monitor.

Potential advantages of Elements include a closer resemblance to Photoshop, which should make the transition easier if you decide to take that plunge. Adobe has a much better track record than Corel for timely updates of raw file support for new cameras. And, if it matters, Adobe seems a much more stable and grounded company than Corel.

I enjoyed using PSP for nearly seven years, and I really do like many of the improvements Corel made in X. I wish I could continue using it, as in many ways it’s more pleasant to use than Photoshop. If Corel’s executives ever decide to finish the color management features, I think PSP just might be the Photoshop alternative that gives Adobe’s executives insomnia. That is, unless the venture capital experts decide to position PSP as an entry-level product, strip it of advanced features that compete with their other imaging products, and leave the “prosumer” market to Adobe. They might come up with a coherent strategy some day. Or maybe not. The only thing I can say with certainty is that Corel lost me as a customer.

Pixmantec RawShooter Essentials

Pixmantec was a Danish company that developed and sold RawShooter, an innovative viewer and converter for digital camera raw files. RawShooter Essentials was the free version, powerful enough for professional use. RawShooter Premium was the paid version that added a number of useful features.

Adobe bought Pixmantec at the end of June 2006. They made a public relations blunder when they abruptly “vaporized” RawShooter Premium, greatly angering its loyal and vociferous users. After several weeks, Adobe announced that Premium owners would receive a free copy of Lightroom 1.0 when that was released. The marketeers seem to have done a brilliant if belated job of converting the Pixmantec customers they carelessly snubbed into eager gamma testers for the first Lightroom release.

Adobe took down the Pixmantec Web site and the official RawShooter downloads in February 2007. But you can download Essentials from this unofficial Raw Shooter Resources page. If that page isn’t available, type RawShooter Essentials 2006 download in a search engine to find other sources. The final release (with support for Canon’s 30D) is “version 1.2.1 build 72.” The Resources page also has the final version of Premium, but that’s effectively useless because it’s no longer possible to buy a new registration key.

Essentials remains a great raw converter at a great price (free) if you have an old camera that was on the market at the beginning of 2006 or earlier. But the list of cameras it does not support grows every day. That list includes Canon’s 5D, 40D, 50D, 7D, 500D/Digital Rebel T1i, 450D/Digital Rebel XSi, and 400D/Digital Rebel XTi; Nikon’s D40, D40x, D60, D80, D90, D3, D3x, D300, and D300S. There’s also no support for any current Olympus, Pentax, or Sony Alpha models. Both RawShooter versions can read DNG files, but that won’t save them from obsolescence. The implementation is incomplete, so it works only with cameras for which it can read native raw files.

Raw Shooter Essentials requires on-line registration with a Pixmantec server that no longer exists. Each time you start an unregistered copy, it will display a nag screen while it attempts to contact the registration server. While there’s no official solution to this problem, the Raw Shooter Resources page includes a “Fixup Utility” that “writes a key to your registry to indicate that RSE has been registered.” I haven’t tried it, but I would recommend making a complete system backup before running it.

Adobe assimilated some of Pixmantec’s innovations into version 4 of Adobe Camera Raw, used in Lightroom, Photoshop CS3, and Elements. Those include the adjustments for “Fill Light” (which selectively lightens shadows) and “Vibrance” (which selectively adjusts the saturation of unsaturated colors). But Adobe clearly intends for the “legacy” Pixmantec products to fade quietly into oblivion.