These days, I’m in heavy scanning (see also On Time) mode, which means that I’m using Windows a lot (and also, should you be a regular reader, that there are too many photo essays in your future). The downside is Windows’ egregiously ugly choice between cartoon-bright and battleship-grey colours, plus this idiotic notion that each Window should carry its own menu around so you can see eleven at a time each wasting precious screen real-estate even though nobody can possibly deal with more than one at a time... but I digress. The nice thing about this process is that I’m spending some quality time with Paint Shop Pro, a totally excellent and ridiculously cheap software package from JASC (of which company I know nothing). Should you be a Windows user and by some chance not already have Paint Shop Pro on your computer, run not walk to your nearest Web Browser and buy it already. In terms of putting what you need to do all the time under your fingertips and letting you do a whole lot of serious photo engineering in a big hurry, nothing comes close. In particular, Adobe Photoshop (and I’m not gonna put a link here, because Adobe’s Web site doesn’t make it easy to link to it, what’s wrong with them?) doesn’t come close in ease of use. Having said that, Photoshop has some seriously cool stuff that’s probably cost-effective for me given that I’m trying to get serious about photography, but in terms of easy-to-get-the-job-done, it’s poor by comparison. Anyhow, in case it’s not already clear: Windows + Pictures = Paint Shop Pro. Go get it.
