Tech Tuesday: Software Updates and Improvements from Corel and onOne

September 2, 2014

By Laura Brauer

We’re expecting a lot of hardware news out of IFA and Photokina, so it’s pleasant to report a couple of software updates (new features from Corel and onOne’s software improvements) to offset the new cameras that should be announced in the coming weeks.

Released a few days ago, Corel PaintShop Pro X7 and X7 Ultimate shows the continued maturity of this image-editing software, bringing it closer in line with other more advanced applications.

COREL 20140826-UltimateX7Box800

First up for new features is Magic Fill, which uses content-aware fill to replace one area of an image with another. Also new for X7, is Color Harmonies, which allows you to create your own color palettes with suggestions from Corel based on the color sampled from an image. Importantly, PaintShop Pro X7 now supports XMP, reading and importing data from the files.

corel color harmone 20140826-ColorHarmonies800

Along with other enhancements and new features, including the ability to drag and drop layers from one image to another, you’ll also find an estimated 30-percent increase in brush speed (paint brush, airbrush and photo-retouching brushes), making this software application more sophisticated than ever.

Corel PaintShop Pro X7 and X7 Ultimate are available now for $100 (full) or $60 (upgrade).

Announced this morning, onOne Perfect Photo Suite 9 brings with it improved performance and a number of new and enhanced features for a faster and easier workflow. One notable update is to the Browser module, with new organizational and filtering options as well as what onOne calls “lightning-fast” RAW file previews.

ONONE suite10A-final

Smart Photo lets users re-edit images, which allows you to go back and change previous adjustments even after the file has been saved and closed.  Enhance selection tools, a new Quick Mask brush, noise reduction and the merging of Perfect Layers and Perfect Mask into a single module are only a handful of version 9’s impressive updates.

Right now, onOne estimates that onOne Perfect Photo Suite 9 will be available late October in two versions: Premium and Basic. Premium will have an introductory price of $130, while the Basic edition (which is standalone-only) will cost $80.