Photoshop vs PaintShopPro, which one to get??

[Jim Stinson]

Or consider Corel PhotoPaint (stick with v. 12 now -- X3 --13, get it? -- is still a bit dicey). My wife and I sit side by side, she with Photoshop and I with Photopaint. Our consensus is that her software is maybe 5% more versatile overall, and mine cost waaay less than half as much.

[sallybode]

Yeah, 12 has nearly all the capability of X3, if you know how to color correct your photos, the image adjustment lab isn't necessary nor is the auto adjust, although it is interesting. Shadows really behave in a quirky manner when you separate them from their object.

I finally got tired of the problem with the object palette not letting me separate the shadow, that I found the button you can add to the tool bars to do it. It works right away.

Yes, I agree, overall, there isn't much Photoshop can do that PhotoPaint can't and I've used both of them extensively. Unless you are working very large and need the ability of a program to manage its memory better, Photoshop is better at that and smoother when trying to work with an enormous file.

As far as PaintShopPro, the tools are really good, in fact to prove it could be done, I did my too eldest sons High School Graduation portraits using PaintShopPro. It is a matter of if you can imagine what you want the program to do and then just use the tools. It isn't the software any longer that limits people, it is getting the inspiration.

I have a lot more inspiration when I have money left over for pizza and my house payment. So when ingenuity wins out in the end to be practical, its like whether you eat Cherrios or the store brand. In tastes tests, you are just paying more for the box.

In the industry, if you don't use Adobe, there is often snobbery, that your work isn't as good.

Any software that allows people an opportunity to have gainful employment is marvelous. And if you can work and get paid and don't hate your job, it is marvelous. What isn't marvelous it paying through the nose for it.

There are a number of things that PhotoPaint does that one should take note of: it has an excellent moire pattern removal filter, compared to the one Photoshop doesn't have, it is a ton better, I've tried the ways you are supposed to do it in Photoshop, I'd rather use a tool which does it better.

I approach all software more or less as a plugin for me, not a plugin for a certain program. If therei is a program that best does what I need to do, then I use that one for what it does best.

If I however, can find a way to keep more in my pocket while doing the same work, I am all for that.

And while we are at it, Xara does excellent as a retouch tool, despite it being vector, I have not yet seen its limits, and it costs is right there around Paint Shop Pro and even with its simple interface, there really isn't anything it can't do, if you use your imagination.