CNET Editors' review
This compact program edits images and animations in the most popular formats. Despite its small size and light footprint, Saint Paint Studio has all the essential image-editing features, including tools for cropping, resizing, correcting colors, applying various effects, and drawing with a brush or pen.
Similar to full-fledged graphic-design packages, the program supports layers and lets you create simple animations. Saint Paint uses all the standard hot keys found in other image editors. However, the interface is crammed with tools and is outdated compared to other, similar products. On the plus side, mouse-over labels make it easy to figure out what each tool is, but the overall aesthetic feels drab and could use a redesign.
The program no longer comes bundled with Talking TimeKeeper, a great improvement, although the nag screen still exists for trial users. Considering its small size and decent capabilities, Saint Paint makes a nice pick for those who don't need the advanced features in more expensive image editors, but it doesn't offer enough to make it unique or a must-have.
Publisher's Description
From Mark Judge:
Saint Paint Studio is a paint package designed to be the essential base tool for editing photos, Web graphics, icons, images, and animations. Developed initially for use in the games industry, it comes with the most vital tools needed by professional artists, designers, and programmers, but is suitable for users with any level of experience. It's also extremely well suited to making fun, doctored photos. Many file formats are supported, including GIF, JPEG, BMP, ICO, TGA, and AVI. When saving, each format's attributes are fully explained to avoid loss of image quality. Among its many features are animation editing; layers and alpha channels; batch-image conversion; photo sharpening, blurring, embossing, and despeckling; a red-eye filter; controls for brightness, contrast, and gamma; image resizing; color reduction; a full set of essential color-palette-manipulation features for true-color, 256-color, 16-color, and 2-color.
What's new in this version: Version 17.0 optimized for Windows7, and includes more intuitive tool selection.
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All versions:
3.8 starsout of 59 votes
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Current version:
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"A cut above Paint or other basic programs"
Version: Saint Paint Studio 16.1
Pros
Tools are easy to learn. And allow all the basic stuff. I'm too lazy to learn the complexities of Photshop.
Cons
Can't cut and paste between two open files.
Summary
I use it dam,n near every day for cleaning up pics people send me or I download. Its quick and easy and does the basics well. Similar to Irfanview in most respects. It just isn'r Photoshop and that is fine with me and my needs. The owner who wrote it is easily accessible and open to any corrections or suggestions you may offer him. How cool is that?
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"Very friendly"
Version: Saint Paint Studio 15.0.3
Pros
Don't use too much
Cons
Same reason
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"Very strong and good program"
Version: Saint Paint Studio 15.0.2
Pros
many time i look for editing images program. after see and try
many, many programs, finaly find: "Saint Paint Studio" !
Very strong program, can make all what you want! Easy for use.
Many thanks to authors by this realy good programCons
i don't like that, about this exellent program, is not known enough.
what that weak programs advertise, and about this really good program
are silent -
"great easy program,fun good to start on!"
Version: Saint Paint Studio 15.0.2
Pros
Spent an hour looking 4 it,after I lost my laptop-can go to bmp & upload to myspace etc- nice smooth transition.zUser freindly,figured it out without intructions,but will look to see other perks!-dreamcat
Cons
Did not find anything yet-haven't bought yet-will
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"Excellent"
Version: Saint Paint Studio 15.0.1
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"a few nice features but no were near photoshop"
Version: Saint Paint Studio 15
Pros
this editor does some neat things like anamation (actually slide show) . & makes AVIs .. i like some of the key shortcuts. i would love to encourage work like this but alas this is not yet a usable photo editor .. it would be handy for editing solid graphics like charts and cartoons .. its a well done interface and seems to be fast at what it does .. it has the potential to become a really nice tool but needs a lot of work to do that ..
Cons
saint paint lacks many features necessary to do anything but the simplist changes to photos. for instance :
1. rotate will only do flip and 90deg .. you need variable rotate to straighten a photo.
2. there is no way to mark an area for selective editing .. like a face that need brightning .. (lasso / magnetic lasso in photoshop)
3. the red eye reduction feature was very poor on 8 out of 10 samples
4. the magnifier did not work properly at first .. it would enlarge just a little then suddenly the whole screen became just a few pixels .. this seems to work ok using the + and - keys (only on the keypad) but repeat didnt work when the mouse was held clicked ..magnifying / demagnifying was very slow using the mouse .. ok with the key pad
5. there is no cloaning tool as such .. there is a capture / paste tool that is not as convenient or workable and it doesnt have soft edges.
6. worst of all that makes this unusable as a decent photo editor is that nothing has blended edges ..not the pen tool, not the paste tool . .. nothing . this makes harsh transitions whereever edits are made .
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"nice"
Version: Saint Paint Studio 15
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"online"
Version: Saint Paint Studio 14.1
Pros
I m very like it becau it easy and fast
Cons
i like every thing
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"great program"
Version: Saint Paint Studio 14.1
Pros
good features
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"Its pritty good, but it needs better line bending tools, colors need easy."
Version: Saint Paint Studio 12.2.2
Pros
It is simple to use. the picture import quality is good. I zoom in alot and there is not much distortion in line quality.
Cons
color blending needs more tools. line bending needs more tools, no different paint brush styls, you need them.
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