Category Archives: Reviews

Paint Shop Pro Reviewed

Paint Shop Pro is a relatively inexpensive tool for editing digital photographs and creating both raster or vector images. The software has a wealth of features in a package that’s easy to use and is ideal for the digital photographer looking to get the very best from their images.

Review of Paint Shop Pro
Rated as 5/5 on May 29 2007 by David Hollingworth

5/5


Thumbnail of Paint Shop Pro 9

Warning: this is a fairly long review; but then the product has a lot of features.

This review is based on Paint Shop Pro version 9, the last version to be released by Jasc Software before they got bought out by Corel. Corel don’t (or didn’t at the time) allow online purchases using American Express cards and so prevented me from upgrading, though I did trial version 10. More of that later.

I do a fair amount of photography in my spare time and so need a tool that will allow me to edit images and prepare them for printing or display online. I also do a bit of design for web sites and so I need a tool to create and manipulate gif, Jpeg and png images. I use Paint Shop Pro (PSP) as my tool of choice.

PSP has a full set of image editing and manipulation tools for the digital photographer. Once you’ve opened your image there’s a simple “One Step Photo Fix” button for inexperienced users; but there’s also full control over all aspects of the images composition including:

  • Brightness and contrast
  • Saturation, hue and luminance
  • Colour balance
  • Sharpness, softness and blur

Within each category there’s a number of different tools and approaches you can use depending on your level of experience and personal preference. For example within brightness and contrast you can, amongst others;

  • Do an automatic contrast enhancement
  • Use sliders to control brightness and / or contrast
  • Use curves
  • Correct shadows, mid-tones and highlights
  • Use a full histogram (see the image at the start of this review)
  • Use levels

Other sub-menus give a similar level of choice. So much choice is there that it can be a little confusing for a beginner; but even the “Enhance Photo” menu lets you perform each step in the “One Step Photo Fix” manually so you can see what effect each step is having. This is a great way of learning how the different tools affect the image.

As well as adjusting images there’s a number of cropping and selection tools. The latter include lasso (Freehand) and edge (Magic wand) selectors. You can create and save selections and masks either to file or to the alpha channel.

Defects in your photographs can be simply edited out using the clone tool. One issue I face taking photographs in towns where I live is that all the electric cables are on poles strung across the street. I’ve spent many a happy hour cloning these out of choice photographs. This is also very useful for removing dust specs from an image. There’s a great red eye removal tool too for those ghastly flash images.

In addition to all the photo editing features you can use Paint Shop Pro for creating raster or vector graphics from scratch. I’ve only dabbled in this area; but I have created by own business cards using this software and I think they’re quiet acceptable. There is also an “Art Media” image type that allows you to ‘paint’ images. Again I’ve not used this extensively as I found it very processor hungry; but I did have great fun producing an oil painted version of a photograph of my daughter. Given more time I think this tool could be used to produce some very attractive ‘painted’ images.

How do I think Paint Shop Pro stacks up against the other image editing contenders? I’ve tried other software packages and this is how I feel PSP compares;

  • Adobe Photoshop – PSP seems to have all the features of Photoshop and many are much easier to use in PSP. For example PSP has a live preview feature so you can preview the changes to the image before committing them. I couldn’t find this feature in Photoshop. Also Photoshop is vastly more expensive that PSP.
  • Adobe Photoshop Elements – A version of Photoshop with fewer features and so also fewer features than PSP. OK for a casual photographer; but check the price against PSP which has many more features.
  • The Gimp – is free under the GPL, it has a host of features; but I found the user interface to be very difficult to use and it was a struggle to find commands like image resize.
  • Microsoft Photo whatever – great for novices, hopeless for anyone with even half a clue what they’re doing.

If I had a criticism of PSP it would be poor handling of raw files. It did open my Canon CR2 files after I upgraded my camera; but required a huge computing resource to do it and then did a very poor job on converting them. This may have improved since version 9.

Which brings me on to version 10. When Corel bought Jasc Software I wondered what plans they may have for PSP, I even thought they might dump it in favour of their existing products; but they came out with a new release reasonably quickly. What a disappointment!

Corel had managed to completely dumb down the user interface in an attempt to make the product appeal to a less experienced audience. As far as I could see there was only one new feature for the experienced user and the rest was a tacky attempt at automating the image editing process. The results were pretty awful. This offered me nothing at all.

In summary Paint Shop Pro version 9 gives me all the non-raw image editing capabilities I could want in a package that’s a fraction the price of Adobe Photoshop. The same features are in later versions, you just have to fight a little harder to get to them.

Because it’s so well featured and such good value for money I give Paint Shop Pro five stars.

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Goalpro6 Reviewed

For many years Goalpro (version 5 and then version 6) was the bedrock of my personal productivity system. The software provides facilities to manage everything from goals down to tasks and time too; but there are some facilities lacking and I feel the product has reached its end of life.

Review of Goalpro 6
Rated as 3/5 on May 23 2007 by David Hollingworth

3/5

Thumbnail of Goalpro6 screen shot
I came upon Goalpro (5 as it was then) when I first started to look for some software to manage my personal productivity. At that time many software packages only offered a very simple to-do list with limited or non-existent nesting of tasks. So I was very impressed with Goalpro’s feature list which allowed me to set goals, break these down into tasks and then to schedule these tasks in a built-in calendar that synchronizes with Outlook. It seemed to have everything I needed.

When you first start the program you’re introduced to the subject of goal setting through a Goal Setting Wizard. This takes you through the stages of setting goals and the defining the support structure for the goals. The support structure includes defining the tasks that will accomplish your goals and also adding a rounder definition of the goals by identifying the challenges and resources that will be required if you’re going to achieve your aims. Finally you can add personal and corporate mission statements and values to your plan.

Having set up your goals using the wizard you’re free to add or modify these at any time using an outline tree of all of your goals and tasks. As part of your daily routine there’s a configurable set of reports you can display or print, a management screen that displays tasks that have passed their due date and a very useful “Sufficient Support” wizard.

The concept of Support in Goalpro is that every goal and sub-goal must have a number of tasks assigned to it in order to achieve the goal. By default, when you create a new goal, it is set requiring at least two sub-goals or tasks. If a goal doesn’t have the required number of supporting sub-goals or tasks then the Sufficient Support wizard will flag this goal as requiring attention. You then have to create new tasks for the goal or reduce it’s required support. This is a great way of ensuring that all goals have a valid next action assigned to them.

There’s various motivational tools built into Goalpro including a chart that shows how efficient you are at maintaining your Goals support, completing tasks on time and doing your daily reviews. It’s a great boost to get those lines up to 100%. You can also create goals that are activity based, like “Run 2 miles a day” and then track your progress against your targets.

As well as the whole goal and task setting and scheduling side of things Goalpro also has a built in journal with topics and a very useful scratch pad for doing brain dumps. Items in the scratch pad can then be highlighted and turned into goals or tasks at the click of the mouse.

Goalpro6 has a great many things going for it and there’s not much I don’t like about it. One of the things it definitely lacks from a GTD point of view is that there’s no contexts. Tasks are just tasks and there’s no simple way of splitting them according to where they can be done. Whilst you can filter the task list by major goal you can’t filter the tasks by context.

Another thing that’s a bit of a turn off for me is the rather cludgy interface; it really doesn’t look like a modern Windows application. It works OK; but I don’t find it very appealing to look at. It’s also very restricted in terms of data interchange between applications. You can synchronize with Outlook OK; but there’s no import / export features to exchange data with tools such as MindManager or even MS-Project.

Another mark against Goalpro6, and this is a big issue for me, is that there doesn’t appear to be any on-going development. This version has been out for some years now and even though there’s been a couple of maintenance releases in that time there’s not been any new functionality added to the product. Based on what I’ve seen I have to ask myself, “Has this product reached the end of its roadmap?”.

The final criticism I have of Goalpro6, and I feel this really underlies the previous point, is that I reported a very annoying bug that causes the application to crash whenever I lock my desktop. You don’t loose any data because everything appears to be saved as you type it; but it’s still very aggravating to have to restart Goalpro every time I leave my desk unattended, which is pretty often each day.

All round it’s a very useful tool and stood me well for a long time and I’d probably still be using it today if there were better import / export facilities, the user interface was nicer and I thought the product was going somewhere. However, based on these criticisms, I can only give it three stars.

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The Journal Reviewed

The Journal is an excellent tool for recording just about anything you might want to refer to in the future. Use it as a traditional journal or to keep notes, recipes, addresses, anything. Then find the information using comprehensive tagging or search facilities. A very versatile tool.

Review of The Journal
Rated as 5/5 on May 12 2007 by David Hollingworth

5/5

I’ve been using The Journal from DavidRM Software for many years, so many years ago that I can’t recall the original reason for downloading it. Since then it’s become a true companion with a wide variety of uses.

The Journal has two main layouts. Firstly there’s the traditional calendar based journal which you can configure to create entries as page per day, a page per week, a page per month or, in fact, just about any date range you can think of.

For example one of my main uses for The Journal is as a weather almanac. In here I have three calendar journal categories. First journal has daily entries as a brief summary of the weather each day. Secondly I have a weekly category that has one entry for every week starting on a Saturday. Finally I have a category for the monthly climate reports that creates an entry on the first of every month.

As well as the calendar based entries The Journal also has looseleaf entries that can be used for general note taking or, in fact, to record any information that isn’t particularly date related. These entries can also have sub-entries to create a nested structure for organizing your information.

The Journal comes with a host of additional features. These include:

  • Stop watch & count down timer for timed writing exercises
  • Colour coded ‘topics’ for categorizing and filtering information
  • Posting direct from The Journal to a number of popular blog engines
  • Full rich text entry into the journal with ability to create your own format styles
  • Spell checker and thesaurus
  • Full search capabilities
  • Set events, tasks, appointments in the calendar and get pop up reminders

The list is pretty much endless so I suggest you go try The Journal for yourself. You get a huge 45 day trial period and the eventual purchase cost is very low.

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Book Review: Getting Things Done by David Allen

After a few years implementing the ‘Getting Things Done’ (GTD) methodology by picking bits up here, there and everywhere online I thought it was high time I bought and read David Allen’s quintessential volume on personal productivity.

I thought there might be some snippets in the book that I’d not picked up before. I was not disappointed.

The book contains a huge wealth of information about implementing a GTD process for managing your (my) life, from the big picture down to handling the details.

From the stuff I’d read online I did think the book would take me on a minimalist crusade and have me setting up a productivity system using index cards, rubber bands and spring clips. This was not the case. Whilst Allen does mention the relative merits of electronic and low-tech tools the book seems to go out of it’s way to avoid discussing any particular method of implementing GTD. At points this might leave the reader wondering, “Just how to I do this in practice”, though in general the examples and suggestions are sufficient to allow the imagination to reach it’s own conclusions on how a particular chapter might be realized.

The book is divided into three main sections. The first deals with an overview of the concepts that lead to the GTD methodology. It introduces the reader to the idea that you can get your life and all its inputs under control. One of the most useful chapters for me was on planning projects. This was information I felt was missing from other productivity books I’ve read recently that seemed to be more focused on the tasks. Here Allen was encompassing the big picture too in a way the feeds directly into a GTD system.

The second sections is a step by step process for setting up your trusted GTD system. Here again I discovered a lot about the GTD system. One of the big things for me was the importance of creating a trusted filing system that’s simple and fun to use. This is an area of my life that is currently total chaos and is desperately in need of a make over. As well as the practical aspects of this system Allen reinforces the idea of getting all the open loops out of your head and into a ‘trusted system’ in order to free up the mind to be more receptive and creative.

The final part of the book revisits some of the concepts introduced during the practical sections earlier in order to reinforce the power of the simple constructs. So there are chapters on the power of the Collection Habit, Next Actions and Outcome Focusing that look deeper and the reasons why these practices work so well.

There’s so much in this book that I know it demands at least another reading, if not more. A full blown GTD system may not be for everybody; but I think that anybody who has more than a few tasks or projects to organize would be better off using a trusted system to manage the tasks than relying on the vagaries of memory alone. I certainly am.

I give this book five stars: * * * * *

Mapping The Mind

I’ve been an avid fan of mind maps since I saw a colleague use one for recording meeting minutes. The way all the notes seemed to fit an organized structure, rather than just being a list, really spoke to me.

When I asked him how he’d produced the map he pointed me at MindManager ® from Mindjet.com. After using the trial version for a short period I just knew I had to have this tool in my armory.

What can you use Mind Manager for? Here’s some ideas drawn from my own experience;

  • Collating large volumes of data. I love the ability to view the big picture and then drill down to concentrate on specific branches.
  • Goal setting. Put your goal as the central topic, add an inspirational image, then brainstorm all the topics you can think of that will get you to your goal.
  • Planning a novel. Put your idea at the center, add your characters as branches and develop their personalities off these. Add your plot lines as other branches and link your characters into the plot.
  • Career development. Put yourself at the center and add branches for your skills, knowledge and desires. Identify strengths and areas where you need to improve.
  • Blogging. Add information about your blog postings on themed branches. Create links between topic where they refer to each other. Use the information to plan the development of the topics within your blog.

The list is, literally, endless. There are other mind mapping tools out there and Mind Manager isn’t cheap. So why do I think it has the edge over other products?

  1. A good supply of map templates and styles as well as regular newsletters providing more suggestions and templates.
  2. Great export facilities so that I can save mind maps as PDF files or import them into My Life Organized (more on this fellow in a later post).
  3. If I were a Microsoft ® Office ™ user I could synchronize with Outlook or export maps to Word, Excel, PowerPoint or Project. As it is I can export to a very nice HTML format.
  4. Plenty of built in images and icons to help visually enhance the information.

All round it’s a very professional package and highly functional. So I was delighted to hear that Mindjet are going to be releasing version 7 of Mind Manager at the end of May. I’ve had a sneak preview and it looks divine; but I’ll have to wait to see if the beauty of the new version goes deeper than just skin deep. Either way I can’t see my life now without Mind Manager.

Book Review: Mind Maps At Work by Tony Buzan

I’ve been using mind maps for some time after seeing a colleague use them for organizing a brain storm session. They seemed to fit:

  • my desire to see things visually
  • to have the data organized and not in some visual chaos
  • the opportunity to use a really cool piece of software (MindManager from Mindjet.com)

So I had been doing mind maps for nearly two years when I saw Tony Buzans book ‘Mind Maps At Work’ and decided I’d better read up on the subject to make sure I was doing it properly.

The book begins with an introduction to mind maps and how to lay them down on paper before giving a brief introduction to the areas that mind maps can enhance. This was fine, I learned the importance of using images on my mind maps to help reinforce the visual associations with the topics.

The rest of the book attempts to show the reader how mind maps can be used in a number of situations in the work environment. I feel that this was where the book began to get under my skin. I found the tone of the book to be condescending; it was almost as if the prose was directed more at a child’s intellectual level that an adults. I’m finding it very difficult to put my finger on exactly what I didn’t like about this book; but I came away at then end of it with a feeling that I’d been talked down to by the author.

So I shall continue to use mind maps in both my work and personal areas of my life for planning, note taking, brain storming, collating data and all the other things they’re good for; but I don’t think my experience of mind mapping has been enhanced any by reading this book.

I award this book only 2 stars: * *

Book Review: Do It Tomorrow by Mark Forster

I must admit that I first got hold of Mark Forster‘s book last September (2006) and only finished reading it just before Easter this year. This has less to do with the content of the book and more to do with the turmoil that was going on in my own life at the time. “Maybe if I’d read the book straight off there’d have been less turmoil?”, well that’s a possibility. The reason I mention this is because I can recall little about the first 50% of the book that I read piecemeal; but the rest is very fresh in my mind. Anyway, here goes the review.

The main thrust of Mark’s book seems to be concerned with handling the constant flow of incoming tasks that bombard us daily from email, telephone calls, colleagues, family and friends. How do we manage all these new pressures on our time? Mark’s premise is that anything that arrives today is to be done tomorrow (unless you’re working in an industry that requires an immediate response). This recognizes and respects that a day is a finite resource and that you can’t do more in a day than you have the time and resources to do. So anything new is for tomorrow.

So far I don’t think this is particularly radical as it appears to be what anyone doing GTD would be doing; anything new goes into an In-box unless it can be done in under 2 minutes. However where I feel Mark’s book adds value to GTD is with the suggestion of using a Closed List. Whereas GTD maintains a number of open ended action lists Mark suggests that these are counter productive because they are continually being added to; there’s never a chance of finishing a list and this can be demotivating. As you can only do a set amount in a day Mark suggests making a daily Closed List of the things that you are going to do that day. A heavy line is drawn under that list and (within reason) nothing is added above the line.

For me this is a very useful exercise. It means that every evening I have to review all the things I want to get done in the near future and make a conscious decision about which ones I’m going to do tomorrow. Then I start tomorrow knowing that I’ve a fixed amount to get through and not an open ended list of stuff. It gives me a great sense of achievement to complete my daily Closed List.

Finally I promise I will go back to Mark’s book and re-read it straight through to make sure I haven’t missed anything from the first half.

I award this book three stars: * * *