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Getting to grips with my Win 7 64bit laptop and my new larger and more powerful desk PC is a bit of a learning curve. Much faster yes and with the large 23″ high definition screen very much easier to see what I’m doing. The 64bit causes some problems certainly with the trial of Paintshop Pro x4 I am toying with and it may well be that I’ll revert back to my old stalwart v9.
This a new image managed with PSP v9 on 64bit with some of my favorite filters which seem to have new life with the 64bit instead of 32bit. In fact some hidden features appear to have been activated which makes it a real joy to use.
Tete-a-Tete in Dresden
This painted style started off life as a color photograph, then altered to a simple color sketch. Applied to that after saving in the new art format I set about using some PSP filters and plug-ins to create a more painterly style with added brush strokes. I kept the right handed brush technique as it is what I do in real painting so it has a familiarity that I find comfortable. The saturated colors used highlight the paint effects nicely and in fact I’ve packed in a whole range of impressionist colors to give added depth and contrast to the picture.
So what’s the verdict on PSP x4?
Not good I have to say in all honesty. With my PC and laptop I found it was very unstable when managing more involved image manipulations, it crashed often and it would or could not handle around 50% of the Plug-ins and added filter sets that work just fine on previous versions. The good news is that my old Paintshop Pro v9 works perfectly on Win 7 and 64 bit and ALL my Plug-ins and add-ons work faultlessly – so no extra costs, no costly re-registrations and codes required – in short I am one very happy guy!
