dpackard67,

That is okay, thanks to your updated post I found your reply.

You do not have to use the selection tool to use the brushes, they will work on whatever element they are designed to affect. the Dodge and Burn Brush work on highlights, mid tones, or shadows. If you set the brush diameter value small enough you can hand paint the effect over the element in question. Using the Selection Tool to select the desired image element gives you much more personal control over the later effect tools.

Michael G

dpackard67,
You can make selected corrections is PSP X-7, you would select the specific element in the image, add 3 – 6 pixel feathering to the edges, and apply the correction.

The other option is to use the Brushes like Dodge – mid-tone to lighten softly shadowed elements.

If you had a person’s face in light shadow, you could select the face, apply 3-pixel feathering, and then use the “Fill Flash” tool to lighten the face.
Do you have to use the selection tool in order to select the area? Lightroom you can just paint over the area with the correction. Seems to be a lot easier... Your thoughts?
Michael G

Lightroom does allow the use of plugins, I use Topaz plugins myself, but you can buy many plugins and/or presets for Lightroom.

Lightroom does parametric editing, meaning it applies parameters to the original file to get the look you want, the original file is never changed.

Lightroom is also a top of the line digital asset management system. Every image you import into the catalog is in a database, a database based on metadata like keywords, shutter speed, iso speed, aperture, camera make & serial number, lens used, etc.


It really shines in managing your images, giving you sorting and searching capabilities as you would expect from any high end database.

Lightroom is also Adobe Camera Raw - a very good raw converter and editing system.

I would guess that it would be easy to make use of Lightroom and to add Paintshop Pro as an external editor so you could easily go from Lightroom to Paintshop Pro for specific editing tasks, the same as going from Lightroom to Photoshop.