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When it comes to any software recommendation the reader of the information must take any recommendation along with a grain of salt. Which graphics package is best for a teenager to use? Here hold the salt will you? It is Paint Shop Pro. Why? To begin with, it is the least expensive of the major graphics software packages available. I know there is free graphic software out there, but you do get what you pay for. Most free graphic software will get a person started but only just.

Once the financial consideration is out of the way, it comes down to usability and features, oh and teenagers. I don't know if I have an answer for the third item, so I will assume that the teenager in question wants to ... create graphics.

Paint Shop Pro has a wonderful workspace that lets the user customize it however he or she wants. The user can set up multiple workspaces for creating within whatever specialty they are working on, whether that is photo editing, WEB graphics, cartooning, animation, computer game backgrounds, portraits and various other graphic enterprises.

What is available in Paint Shop Pro? If it has to do with graphic creation, it is in there.

Because of digital photography, the big hot button lately seems to be photo adjustment, and Paint Shop Pro has it, from fixing "red eye" to air brushing flaws. With a scanned digital copy of an old photo, damaged and torn images can be repaired. Darkened photos can be lightened and of course you can crop out elements that you do not want in a photo. If your picture has already cropped out Uncle Chuck's head, unless you have another image of his head, there is probably not much you can do, except maybe take another picture.

Vector graphics and layers are major wants in any graphics software and Paint Shop Pro has a user interface that is easy to learn and to use. You can cartoon, caricature, and create banners for any occasion.

Paint Shop Pro has a WEB tool bar that allows and helps a user to create the HTML code for image maps.

Paint Shop Pro reads and creates images in just about any desired format and allows the user to read an image in one format and save that image in a different format.

Finally it comes down to, is there any help out there? I Googled "Paint Shop Pro Tutorials" and I got over a million hits. Add some additional key search words and you can find out how to do most anything you need.

I started using Paint Shop Pro at version 3 because it was the cheapest product available. I have continued to upgrade through the years because if I want to do graphics, Paint Shop Pro has met my needs. And it is still the best buy for the buck, which doesn't hurt.

Learn more about this author, Gene Poschman.
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