Paint Shop Pro by Corel Corporation
Paint Shop Pro kind of fell off my radar when it went from being developed by JASC to being part of the software acquiring Corel Corporation. It's always been a solid independent contender against the Adobe Photoshop empire, with the advantage of also supporting Photoshop plug-ins. From the image editing basics, to custom masking and image enhancements, there is very little you can't accomplish using Paint Shop Pro. The interface is fairly intuitive, eliminating some of the poking around to figure out how stuff works I have found in many of the free image editing solutions. If you're into High Dynamic Range (HDR) photography, PSP is among the easiest tools I've seen for building HDR images. One of the strongest features of the X2 Ultimate version is it's background removal, which allows you to creatively replace the background on almost any image. [Windows XP/Vista $79.00 or $99.00]
I tracked down a $40 discount which expires Midnight 08/03/09, making X2 Ultimate cheaper than the standard X2 version. Download Paint Shop Pro Photo X2 Ultimate.
