Category Archives: Tools

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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Choose What To Do

A recent article from Mark Forster came up with a useful idea for those of us who tend to get distracted away from the items on our to-do list by other less productive pursuits.

Mark suggested that rather than use a time log, to record everything we’ve done; use an “event log” to record everything we’re about to do.

What advantages does this have over a time log? Basically if you have to stop for a second and write down what you’re about to do before you do it then you have to make an active choice as to what it is you’re going to do. So when I complete this posting I might write down:

21:57 – surf on over to gamestar

and I must just stop and think, “Hang on, I still need to sort out the laundry. Gamestar will have to wait”.

You get the idea? I’ve made an active choice as to what I’m going to do rather than just let the fancy take me where it will.

In the next day or so I’m going to give this a try and I’ll report back how I got on.

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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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.

Taking A Break

One of the most difficult things for me to do is to take a break from the keyboard. When I’m in the zone I just want to keep typing; but over the years this has had a detrimental affect on my neck and shoulders.

I even had a little message pop-up occasionally to remind me, “Every hour take a 15 minute break.”.

Did this work? Did it heck!

Then I came across Workrave. This little program is designed so that I have to take a break when it tells me to. It’s very flexible and can be set up so that:

  • You periodically take micro-breaks of a short duration.
  • Less frequently you have to take a longer break where you do some stretches or take a walk around.
  • It will even limit the total amount of time you can spend on the computer each day.

So now I have a set up where:

  • Every 8 minutes I have to stop using the keyboard for 30 seconds. This is a micro-break.
  • Every 45 minutes I have to take a 10 minute rest break.

Because my day is very open ended at the moment I have switched off the ‘total time allowed each day’ facility.

When the break time arrives you get a audio and visual (pop-up window) reminder. If you ignore these then the pop-up starts to flash, first orange then red. However there’s no escaping your break because if you continue typing Workrave will add on the extra seconds you need to complete your stoppage.

The rest breaks advises you to get up from the computer and do something else. It will even pop-up a series of exercises to perform to help relieve fatigue and muscle stress.

You can, it you choose, postpone or even skip a break if you simply must; but then that rather defeats the purpose of running Workrave. I’ve been using it for less than a week and I can already feel my shoulders are less tense.

Oops time for a micro-break….

Tools vs Systems

I’ve seen some debate recently on the question of the tools we use to get things done and the systems we use to get things done.

Leo, in his ZTD Habit 1:Collect expounds the virtues of simple tools (paper and pen) over complex tools (PDA, organizers).

Over on lifedev.net Glen rounds off a posting on ZTD with the comment:

…the tool isn’t going to make you any more organized.

It’s all about the system, baby.

I actually believe it’s about both and that you need both to be productive.

Suppose I have two pieces of wood and a screw I want to use to join them together.

Firstly I need a tool to do this task (someone hands me a screw driver at this point); but the tool is no good without a system.

The system is that I put the pointy end of the screw driver into the recessed head of the screw and turn it in a clockwise direction.

So the job gets done because I had a system (turning my had in a clockwise direction) and a tool to implement it through.

I agree 100% with the idea that the simpler the tool the more likely it’s going to be used and that’s why I have a small notebook for dumping my tasks into as they spring into my head. That tool supports my system.

Big Rocks!

Over on Zen Habits Leo has proposed some interesting variations on the GTD methodology, calling it Zen To Done (ZTD). I’m not going to reproduce Leo’s material here; but I would like to expand on the areas I’ve found the most use.

One of these is in the area of choosing which tasks I’m going to work on. I’ve felt that one of the shortcomings of most of the productivity stuff I’ve read has been that they’re very hot on getting the stuff into your trusted system; but not so hot on getting it out again.

By that I mean they don’t offer a lot of advice on how to decide what to do next.

Leo’s suggestion is to look every week for the Big Rocks. These are the projects or tasks that I have to get completed over the next week. These are the things that I choose to focus on and these become my weekly goals. So at each weekly review I look for 2 or 3 Big Rocks and then at the tasks that are contributing to these. It’s those tasks I have to get done next week.

Next comes an interesting part. As part of my weekly review I used to block in time for the tasks I wanted to get done so I knew from my calendar each day what I should be doing morning and afternoon. GTD recommends the calendar is only for the “hard landscape” that is things that are immovable like meetings, appointments etc.

As I’ve been adopting GTD over the last 12 months I’ve also followed this suggestion and worked off my Closed List instead of my calendar. ZTD, on the other hand, is suggesting I should go back to blocking in time for my Big Rocks.

I think, for now, I’m going to avoid using my calendar for scheduling Big Rock time and continue to work off my Closed List. I’ll let you know if this changes and why.

Now, where did I leave those rocks?

My Tool Box

One of the recurring themes of this blogs is going to be about productivity tools. What I find useful and why and what I don’t use and why. For me productivity is part tool and part method – tools are great but you’ve gotta know how to use them!

So what’s in the tool box this week? One of my favorites is Google Reader. I’ve tried a few feed readers over the last couple of years including:

OK, not a huge list, I’ll give you that. However none of these readers have inspired me enough to persist with feed reading like Google Reader has.

What do I like about it? One of its big pluses is that it’s right there in my browser – no need to launch another application. Also its simplicity of design and execution have made it very user friendly (to this user at any rate).

So that’s my number one tool for the moment and using it I’m discovering a huge amount about productivity, happiness and getting things done. If you think Google Reader sucks or if you have a strong leaning in another direction then share your preferences here.