Paint Shop Pro has been around a long time, and as the name implies, it started life as a paint program that allowed users to create their own computer graphics and sketches.

In recent years, though, it has shifted its focus almost entirely towards digital photography, something that's reflected in the rather convoluted name the latest version, Paint Shop Pro Photo X2, carries.

There aren’t many new editing features in this upgrade. Instead, the emphasis is on simplifying and speeding up the editing process so that the user can plough quickly through large numbers of photos.

The main new feature is the Express Lab, which provides a simplified editing space where photos can be previewed and basic editing can be done very quickly. The program’s normal editing window is quite cluttered, with several toolbars and palettes taking up space on screen.

However, when the Express Lab button is pressed, the workspace changes completely. A larger preview of the photo takes up most of the screen, with just a single toolbar beneath it containing basic editing tools such as Crop, Rotate, and Brightness correction. There’s also a preview area running along the bottom of the screen that displays thumbnail previews of other photos so that it's easier to find one to work on.

The idea here is that it's possible to quickly step through a batch of photos and make simple changes to tidy them up. If the pictures still need more precise editing then they can be returned to the main editing window. The Express Lab mode does speed up simple editing tasks, although, by implication, it admits that the program’s main editing interface isn’t as tidy or as efficient as it could be.

But while the Express Lab helps to speed up the editing process, it’s a little disappointing that there are so few new editing tools in this upgrade. There’s a Thinify feature that can compress any part of a photo you click on, making it narrower. This can be used on portrait photography to make the subject look a bit thinner (though you’ll probably be shot if anyone finds out that you used it on them). There’s a variation on the standard red-eye removal, and you can also add effects such as drop shadows or reflections to text and graphics that are being added to an image.

These are useful enough, but there’s nothing really eye-catching in this upgrade that makes it stand out from its many photo-editing rivals. Paint Shop Pro Photo X2 does provide a powerful set of photo-editing tools at a very reasonable price, but it’s a shame that Corel didn’t take the opportunity to make a more ambitious upgrade and really challenge its arch-rival Photoshop Elements.

Vista compatible: Yes