This is the inaugural article of a new series on the Holy Crop! blog. This series, Crop Tools, is going to highlight some basic cropping tools found in both hardware and software. These just aren’t any tools, however, these are some of my favorite tools. I am always looking for a tool that does the job easier, better, quicker, or more accurately than the rest of the image editing pack.
Corel acquired PaintShop Pro from Jasc somewhere around version 7 or 8. “EDIT": This was at Version 9 which was sold under both the Jasc and Corel names.” The current iteration is version X3. I use and teach in PaintShop Photo Pro and absolutely love a couple of its tools. One of those tools is specifically related to the cropping process. PSP X3 has a very intuitive perspective correction tool. I love correcting perspective-especially difficult perspectives in PSP-PX3. And, as you recall from previous articles, perspective correction is part of the crop as it removes pixels from your image.
The Perspective Correction Tool is found on the Toolbar hiding under a very intuitive straighten tool.
This example image features a low-angle extremely wide capture that is badly in need of some perspective control. Let’s click on the PSP-PX3 Perspective Correction Tool and see what happens.
A rectangle with four handles drops on top of your image. Your job is to move the four corner handles to align the tool with what should-have-been a rectangular portion of your image. Here, I used the four corner handles to draw a line along the fence posts which should have been vertical. Once I have placed the four handles and, by extension, the four lines, I double-click on the tool and PaintShop Photo Pro X3 corrects the perspective.
The PSP-PX3 Perspective Correction after apply
You can see from the corrected perspective that we lost quite a bit of our image pixels from the edges. That is why perspective correction is a crop by default. One of the things I love about PSP-PX3’s perspective tool is that after it corrects, it leaves the tool in place so you can fine tune it if you missed by a bit. For example, I could go back after perspective by zeroing in on the gate this time and taking another stab at it.
If you are working with buildings, doors, windows, fence lines-just about any man-made object, this Perspective Correction Tool is tailor-made for easy use. In a world full of sometimes hard-to-use slider controls, it is refreshing to use a tool that says: “Find something that’s supposed to be square and put these corners on those corners and voila!”
The Photoshop tool is fairly intuitive as well but it falls a little short of PSP. It leaves you with a non-rectangular image which still must be cropped and it doesn’t leave the perspective correction tool behind for an additional correction.
The PhotoShop Perspective Correction Tool after ‘apply’
If you are looking for an inexpensive pixel-based editor with loads of friendly features, I highly recommend Corel PaintShop Photo Pro X3.
Rikk Flohr © 2010
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Paintshop Photo Pro X3 tool seems a lot like Dxo perspective correction.
It would be great if you could add also Dxo to your comparison 🙂
I am uncertain how long that Dxo has had their perspective tool. I know the tool has existed in PSP back to the Jasc days which is at least 2004. In any case, I find when I poll students in my image editing classes that there are many PS, PSP, PSE, Picassa and Gimp users (in decending order) but few Dxo users (I have never actually knowingly met one). I may be including Dxo in future editions of Crop Tools, however.
Thanks for the comment.
Just a couple of points, if I may.
First Corel bought PSP from Jasc when it was at version 9. The first Corel branded version was PSP X.
The Perspective Correction tool has a setting to automatically crop the image or not. There are times that you don’t want the image cropped automatically when a bit of cloning can first be applied to save some details.
You always may, Gene.
You are right about V9. I looked it up and 9 came out in Mid 04 and Corel bought Jasc in September of that year.
As for the Auto-crop setting. In 5 years of using it, I have never found a reason not to want to crop immediately. I can see why you might want to clone from those discarded areas but can’t recall ever actually doing it.
I downloaded the trial and the perspective correction feature is indeed clever.
Unfortunately, where the software falls short (rendering it almost unusable for me) is the horrible interface.
Hopefully Corel will adress this issue as PaintShop has potent features
Where do I pay?? This worked great! I have been looking for this tool for a long time and it was there all the time. Thanks.