Keyword view deserves special mention, since it provides another way to organize your photos. You can create your own custom set of keywords according to who's in the picture, special events, travel, etc. which you can then use with the Search function to find exactly the pictures you need.

Click on a folder to see the pictures inside, and when you double-click on a particular image, you can perform some basic editing functions. Unless extremely advanced editing is necessary, you might find that Photo Album 5 does everything you need. You can zoom in, rotate, crop, adjust color balance, add text, and fix redeye problems caused by the camera flash.

It's perfect for quickly cropping photos to use on eBay, for emailing photos to friends, etc. There's also a cool slideshow feature, as well as an option that does a very good job of stitching up panoramic images. I tried it out with a few closely related images from one of my favorite artists and got some very nice results with a minimum of effort. Creative users will find ways to mix and match images of family and friends, or even different vacation photos to create some fun new ideas.

Unlike the "pick up and learn" Photo Album 5, Paint Shop Pro 9 is a much more advanced program that'll require a good time investment to learn. That investment is well worth it if you want to create some spectacular images and really get the most out of your financial investment in a digital camera. At first, many of the terms and tools really baffled me (what's a layer anyway?) but as I threw myself into the program I slowly started realizing just how powerful it is.

When you first open up the program you'll see the standard menu bar, along with a row of icons down the left side of the window and a few subwindows on the left. In Figure A, you can see a sample of the main window.

FIGURE A


Paint Shop Pro's main window puts all the necessary tools at your mouse-click. Roll over picture for a larger image.

You'll find that the tools on the left will be the most frequently used; Jasc did a good job of gathering everything up and grouping them in a logical manner. Most of the tools have small arrows to the right; clicking on the arrow will show you a list of related tools. For the Perspective Correction tool, the related tools are Deform, Straighten, Perspective Correction, and Mesh Warp. Choose the Paint Brush tool and you'll see options for Paint Brush, Airbrush, and Warp Brush.

There's no way I could possibly go through every single tool in this review, but I can give you a basic idea of how Paint Shop Pro 9 actually works. I chose the Mesh Warp tool to play with, since it produces such fun effects. As soon as you select a tool, you'll see that the bottom tool bar changes to reflect the settings and options for the tool. In the case of Warp Mesh, I can select from a variety of presets, confirm or undo my changes, choose how finely detailed the mesh should be, change the edit mode and draft quality, and choose whether I want the final application to be "best" quality or not.