Way back in 1992, Paint Shop, as it was then called, first saw the light of day as a Windows shareware application, before going commercial and later winding up as one of Corel Corporation's graphics applications, such as CorelDRAW and Painter. Soon renamed PaintShop Pro, it received a steady stream of updates but was never positioned as a "Photoshop killer," a role Corel PhotoPaint at one time aspired to before finding its rightful place as a member of the CorelDRAW Suite.

Recent versions of PaintShop Pro have evolved it into a tool primarily aimed at digital photographers, something it seems to have succeeded at, given the existence of a magazine devoted to it. The scope of the application is actually quite ambitious, providing a complete RAW workflow and respectable abilities to manage, adjust, edit and share photos. Edits can be made via the automatic fixes of Express Lab or with tools that include HDR photo merge, local tone mapping, curves and levels adjustments, and perspective correction. There's even an introductory version of Corel's excellent natural media application included, Corel Painter Photo Essentials.

New in version X3 (13, in other words) is an updated integrated Organizer providing tools for rating, tagging, locating and quickly touching up image files; the ability to make editing changes to multiple images; support for more than 350 RAW formats and the ability to adjust such settings as white balance, exposure, brightness and saturation before processing; Smart Carver for removing objects and scaling without distorting the image; an Object Extractor for masking fine details; and High Definition video editing capabilities.

PaintShop Photo Pro X3 for Windows can be purchased on the Corel site for $99. A bundle is also available for $149 that includes the recently-released VideoStudio Pro X3 for video editing. A trial version is available for download.