PhotoImpact 5 was released in Sept of 1999, but there are still a number of people using PI 4. At the Ulead site you can download a 30 day free trial of PI 5. There are a number of new additions and some of the tools have been improved. The tutorials written for PI 4 are still applicable but some of the functions look a little different. For example, instead of pulling out horizontally with only icons, the menus for the tools on the left side of the window drop down and have the names of tools as well as an icon. One caution, the UFO files have a new format and cannot be opened by version 4.2, so if you have 4.2 already and try out 5.0, don't save anything with it as a UFO that you might want to open with 4.2.
Shortly after they released PI 5.0 they issued a patch, be sure to get this, best way is at the FTP Updates Site. There are also free additions to the Web Component Designer every month atTemplates. I also recommend that you try the Photo Explorer 6.0 beta which is a non-time limited beta. I find Photo Explorer is a very useful tool, you can view all the items in a folder as thumbnails (the size of which is adjustable) and can open an image into PI from the right click menu. The new beta has even more functionality than the previous versions.
First thing to do when you open PI for the first time is to go to File, Preferences and set your levels of undo to at least 50, I have mine at 99 which is the max. Undo is your best friend. This may sound like a lot of levels, but if you are doing something like painting out an unwanted background or making a lot of small selections, each time you lift off the mouse will be a separate level so they can add up rather quickly. Undo is up on the toolbar and to its right is the redo, you can toggle between them to see whether you like something better with an effect or without. Ctrl Z will also Undo. This is very handy because you can "do" with your right hand and undo with your left.
IMPORTANT!!! In order for all the good things in PI to work right your image has to be the right data type. This includes Frames and all the Effects. Gifs will not open to the right data type. One thing that will tip you off to the fact that you don't have the right data type is that you will try to go and use one of the commands under Format or Effect and they will be greyed out. You change the data type by going to Format, Data Type. You can see below how this was in Indexed 256 color (a gif) which is greyed out. I have highlighted the True Color 24 bit that I want to change it to. Look at the check mark down next to Create a new image. If you leave this checked it will create the new image in a separate window. If you don't want this, uncheck it first. In PI 4 it defaults to checked, in PI it stays the way you had it last.
