New to PSP - Really need some help!!

I am a complete beginner to enhancing my digital photos and have started using Jasc Shop Pro 8 for the first time. I felt my holiday photos just needed to be lightened and made more sharp, so I used the Automatic Colour Balance, Automatic Contrast Enhancement and Unsharp Mask (not sure what this really is, but read something about it once and thought I'd give it a try! - it made my photos look really clear). After just using these options, I thought the photos looked really good on screen, but that was until I started printing them! They came out tinged with an orangy colour on the darker parts, perhaps shadowy areas, e.g. on top of the heads of people. Some also looked a bit like negatives but in colour. (Sorry my non-technical jargon - I did say I was a beginner!!) So what have I done wrong? I hope someone can help as I really want a good set of photos to show family/friends. Any advice would be most appreciated.

It's difficult to say what could be the problem.

First make sure you have the correct printer chose on the Print Dialog and that it's driver is installed.

Sometimes though under the Options Menu of the Print Dialog Box (the box that pops up after you do File>Print.) will show that Negative box is checked. (see the image below.) If the negative box is checked, uncheck it.

I would also check the Color on the same dialog box page. Sometimes CMYK printing separations will drive a printer crazy.

If this doesn't help come back, we can try to narrow it down.

Oh, and do a print test before you print your photos. Most printers have a way to do this from their own software that comes installed with the CD shipped with the printer.

To get good color you also need to use the correct driver for your monitor and not just a generic one because of convenience. Many desktop printers come with software that when used can set up pretty closely to your color on your monitor so you can get a good output.

Remember that on screen you have 72 or 96 dpi (that's dots per inch) but to get photographic quality you want to print at 300 to 600 dpi and then also you have to use good glossy photo paper: Epson, HP or Kodak are good.

The automatic fixes are interesting but don't improve all photography as you have found out. The best way to learn is to find tutorials for Paint Shop Pro on the web and do them, and print out the results. You will be able to learn to use the real tools. I don't really like using the automated ones.

On your pictures which came out too orangey you could try turning the saturatioin down and adjusting the hue or trying lighting change more towards fluourescent.

To combat an colocast which is orange you could create a layer which is the complimentary color, adjusting the transparency and probably using the blend mode of hue or color to make the correction. The complimentary color for orange would be blue, however, orange comes in many different hues, so you could try also green, purple has too much red in it. Green might work best in fact.