Like a depth-of-field tool, the new Selective Focus option enables you to specify an area of your image that should be in focus; the tool feathers the selection and then blurs the rest of the image. Selective Focus would be useful for mimicking the function of your camera's aperture setting, except that it doesn't allow you to draw a precise selection around your subject before applying it. The effect can be very dramatic looking, in part because of the exaggerated saturation setting that PaintShop Pro X4 adds by default.

But should Corel include settings for common adjustments anywhere users might need them, even at the expense of cluttering things up, or should it put them only in one logical spot and rely on users to find them as needed in a relatively spare interface? I vote for the latter.

Footprints and Making Prints

Corel says that PaintShop Pro X4 contains more than 75 performance updates, including GPU optimizations, that improve on its predecessor, . The application never crashed on me, and it seemed very stable. However, I found the application a little lethargic on my fairly powerful PC. Sliders would respond to my first click, but then I had to wait while the application applied the interim change before I could make further adjustments. During these operations, the screen didn't go blank, but it often looked as though I had zoomed in all the way in and then back out. Corel says that this effect on higher-performing machines is a result of the company's gearing the application to lower-performing computers. I found that the trait hindered my ability to make quick, precise adjustments.

According to Corel, PaintShop Pro X4 has a smaller processing "footprint": Depending on which parts of the application you install, it may require 200MB less hard drive space. The app also supports editing 16-bit images with more tools than before (important for editing RAW files).