Corel Paint Shop Pro Photo is one of the top video editing applications in the world, second only to behemoths like Adobe Photoshop in popularity. Corel has a history of providing intuitive, powerful photo editing tools, and while many of Paint Shop Pro Photo's features are essentially cloned from Photoshop, features like the Express Lab make this a better program for casual users and amateurs in many ways.

If you want to make basic adjustments to your photos, you can scan through Paint Shop Pro Photo's dozens of tools to find effects, filters and other essentials that give you full control over your photographs. There are also nifty tools like Smart Carver, which allow you to easily cut out parts of your image. It's not quite as seamless and awe-inspiring as Photoshop in this respect, however.

The Express Lab leads you through a series of screens that help you optimize your photographs. It works extremely well and teaches uses the basics of photo editing and optimization. If you're interested in photography but you don't know much about editing, the Express Lab is arguably Corel Paint Shop Pro Photo's best selling point. There's also a nifty Integrated Projects mode, which makes it easy to add your images to slideshows and other specialized creations.

At nearly half a gigabyte, Corel Paint Shop Pro Photo is enormous. It's certainly packed with features, but we wonder whether or not the designers could have cut it down a bit. Overall, Paint Shop Pro Photo is a winner thanks to options like social media sharing, advanced tools and the Express Lab. It's an excellent program for photographers of all skill levels, although extremely advanced uses and imaging professionals will probably prefer Photoshop overall.