Corel Paint Shop Pro Photo X2

You wait ages for upgrades to beginnerfriendly photo-editing suites, then two come along at once. Paint Shop Pro from Corel also sports a smart grey interface and more photographer-friendly tools. The new software, which we’ll call Photo X2 for convenience, is a spookily similar proposition to the latest Elements, with a strong emphasis on managing and storing shots – there are only so many image tweaks that the target market will want to make, after all. So be careful when you install the software, as it almost immediately wants to roll up its sleeves and start sorting out your photos.

As with Elements, there’s a lot of handholding and one-click photo fixes, with the new Express Lab mode coming in handy for simple tweaks to lots of shots. Despite gimmicks like the new Thinify tool, Photo X2 is certainly not dumbed-down, and comes with a surprisingly effective HDR Photo Merge feature for getting the best high-dynamic-range effects from a couple of shots. This saves time when working with landscapes, though don’t overdo it or the final image can look overcooked.

There’s a bewildering array of Layer Styles too. As well as conventional layer editing, these enable you to add effects to images. It all works, but still feels clunky compared with working with layers in Elements 6. We were more taken with the photography-centric tools, such as the efficient noise remover and good range of watermark creation tools.