Author Archives: David Hollingworth

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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Making Goals SmartER

I’ve already made a number of posts about making goals SMART; but I read recently on businessball.com a reference to SMARTER goals.

The SMART bit was basically the same as I’ve already described, which left me wondering what the ER was. Well the E stands for Ethical and the R for Recorded.

The Ethical bit I’m not convinced by. As I’ve also said in another post; your goals are ultimately defined by your values. Now if you have the values of, say, a bank robber then you’re goal may be to rob a bank. Not very ethical; but the SMART part still works very well for this goal as it does for any other.

Maybe the E should stand for Enthusing. If the goal doesn’t fill you with enthusiasm then you have to ask yourself, “Why am I setting this goal?”.

The R for recorded I’m much more in favour of. This means write your goals down and record the steps you take in achieving them. Not only does this give you a record of what you’ve done but every time you write about your goal you’re reinforcing it in your mind.

So make your SMART goals SMARTER by adding Enthusiasm and Recording them.

(By the way if yu want something digital to record them in then I’d not hesitate to recommend The Journal from David RM Software).

Bat Update

I’m very pleased to say that last Tuesday’s (22nd May) encounter with the bat has not been repeated. So either

  • The bat went out the way it came in and hasn’t bothered making a return visit
  • It’s still lurking behind one of the book cases.

The latter is possible; but there’s been no aroma of expired bat about the place. Believe me if you’ve ever had a rodent expire in the ceiling you know something has died for several days. I think a dead bat would create a similar fug!

I guess its also possible it’s still alive; but I’m sure it would have made another appearance by now if it was.

So, fingers crossed, it’s, “Bye, bye bat”.

Achieving Long Term Goals

Many goals we set are relatively short term. Things like; wash the car, dig the garden, bath the kids. These everyday tasks may not seem like goals; but they are none the less. Anything we want to achieve is a goal to be attained, these are just short term goals that don’t need a lot of planning because, for the most part, they make up part of our daily or weekly routine.

Then there’s the long term goals, those things that are going to take months or years to complete. This is where we turn our dreams into reality by setting our dreams as goals. How do we manage these long term goals?

How many of you have set a goal for, say, 12 months time only to realize in 11 months that your target is only 1 month away and you’ve nothing done? What feelings does that engender in you?

Long term goals require more organization to ensure they get done, and the longer the time scale the more organization that is required.

Let me give you an example. Suppose you’re going to reach retirement age in 15 years and you’ve a goal to retire to a cottage by the sea. That’s a pretty long term goal; how easy would it be to set that goal, write it down, and then recall at your retirement party that you had some dream of retiring to a cottage by the sea?

Long term goals need organization if they’re to become reality!

In my next post on goal setting we’ll look at how that organization works. In the mean time here’s an exercise for you:

Make a list of your dreams. No, not the sort you have while your asleep, the dreams you have for your life. To this list add anything you already have as a long term goal – that is anything you’ve set a target date of over 6 months to achieve. This will become the basis for achieving your goals!

Realize Your Dreams

Do you day dream?

Do you day dream of walking down deserted golden beaches under a tropical sun?

Do you dream of buying a new car, or a house with a nice view?

Do you dream of a rewarding career helping others?

Well stop dreaming and write these things down! If you’re serious about wanting these things then these aren’t just dreams; these are your goals!

Many of us go through life dreaming of how things could be different; but unless we make those dreams real they’re very unlikely to happen for us.

Start today. If you don’t have a list of your dreams then write one today.

Make it a goal for today – don’t write them on the back of an envelope; try and find a note book to write them in. It’s the first step to making them reality!

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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Going Bats

As a bit of a departure from the usual posts I thought I’d recount a scary encounter I had last night.

First you have to get a mental picture of my “office”. The room is about 15 foot long by about 12 foot at the very widest; but most of the room is a lot narrower than that. My desk and computer are up the wide end of the room under the window, that’s my “office”; whilst the dish washer and machine machine are up the narrow end – that’s the “utility room”.

So last night I’m sitting at my desk writing my journal about 11pm. It’s well dark outside and I’m aware that there’s a number of moths flying against the window attracted by the lights. Sometimes the moths manage to get in as I’ve the window is locked slightly open to allow some ventilation.

So I’m typing away when a shadow falls across my screen, “Oh!”, I think, “There’s a moth after getting in”.

Then the shadow passes across the screen again, “Hang on! That’s a very big moth”. I swivel round in my chair and there’s this great, black bat flying straight at me!

I don’t have to tell you that I didn’t stop to measure its wing span!

Now it could have been a Barn Swallow (Hirundo rustica) or a House Martin (Delichon urbica) as we’ve both nesting around the house at the moment and it looked a similar size. Except for the fact that I didn’t see any white or other colouration on it this thing then did a disappearing act and vanished which is a thing I think a bat would do whereas a bird would probably keep flying about. There’s a huge number of crooks and crannies a bat could hide in behind book cases and appliances. Maybe it even went out the way it came in.

Before you ask; no, I didn’t imagine it. Mrs H. saw it make a pass of the kitchen the instant before I saw it.

So somewhere in here with me now there probably lurks a bat. I’ll have to wait and see if it comes out again tonight.

Certain Beliefs

As we go through life we can develop certain beliefs about ourselves that contribute to the image we have of ourselves. Often these are negative or constraining beliefs that might be based on a single incident in our childhood and yet we continue to believe these things are us. These are our limiting beliefs.

Our limiting beliefs hold us back from achieving our full potential because we believe them to be true. Examples of limiting beliefs might be; I can’t remember peoples names or; I’m no good a spelling. So we don’t engage with people because think we won’t remember their names, or we don’t write because we think we can’t spell.

Here’s an exercise; list down ten things you believe about yourself that are limiting your potential. If you can’t think of ten that’s OK, just list as many as you can.

Now take the three that you feel are having the most impact on your life and write these down separately. Here’s three from my own stable of limiting beliefs:

  1. I can’t remember things in exams, I go to pieces
  2. I am a poor presenter
  3. I am an introverted person

Got three for yourself? Good.

Now for each of your limiting beliefs write the most positive, affirming statement that you can devise. Again here are my three:

  1. When taking exams I remain calm and in control and the information I need flows into me
  2. I am an excellent presenter and an accomplished public speaker. When presenting I find the information I need comes to me when I need it.
  3. I am an outgoing person who mixes well with other people.

Finally take a separate card and write out your new beliefs. Place the card where you’ll see it several times a day and when you do say the affirmations to yourself. Say them over and over again and you will come to believe them. The process isn’t instantaneous, after all it took some time for the original limiting belief to become ingrained and so it will take some time for the new belief to take root; but stick at it because they will become your new reality.

Litter

One of my pet hates is litter.

Litter seems to be an endemic problem in Ireland. I live in a rural environment; but if I walk up the lane outside our house I find it littered with plastic bottles, drink cans, crisp packets and all manner of rubbish.

I live near Clonakilty in West Cork. A picturesque town that has recently won awards for being Ireland’s tidiest town as well as an international ward for its floral displays. Yet its streets are littered with dog excrement!

Two events really prompted me to post this,

  1. I was driving home one evening from work when a crisp packet was thrown out of the window of the car in front.
  2. Mrs. H. and I were sitting in our car in the car park at a local beach. The car park backs onto a small grassy area at the edge of a wetland reserve. Another car pulled in and child (aged about ten) got out, threw an empty coke can onto the grass and got back into the car. They left a few minutes later, no one else got out of the car.

What does this blatant disregard say for the Irish respect for their environment? OK, I know I shouldn’t generalize; but the level of litter in general makes me think this is a general problem.

Now I’m going to extrapolate. I believe that respect for the environment is a reflection of respect for the self. If I don’t respect myself then I’m not going to respect my environment and if I’m not respecting my environment it’s because I’m not respecting my self.

So what does all this littering say about the way the Irish respect themselves?

Whatever Happened To insighta.com?

I first read about insighta.com in one of Gretchen Rubin’s posts on Drawing On The Right Side Of The Brain.

Towards the bottom of the posting (great sketches by the way Gretchen) she mentions the site insighta.com which I duly surfed off to investigate.

The site appeared to be a social site devoted to personal development topics. You could link in your blog postings for other members to vote on. If you got enough votes you’d get the article posted on insighta.com’s front page.

It seemed cool so I thought I’d give it a try. That was back in mid-April so I thought I’d check out how things were going after a month. I was most surprised to find the site replaced with a photography site.

Does anyone know what has happened to the personal development insighta.com?