Corel announces PaintShop Pro X5

Well you'll be pleased to know this is probably my final word on Raw Files and the Canon G1X..... I have just received the following "explanation" from Corel Customer service which says in part ".....As I mentioned, PSP just decodes the RAW file faithful and the vignetting will show up in some specific focal length. For LR, they had "Auto Lens Correction" function and will apply correct lens correct to the raw file but PSP/ASP not. The reason is why we said it's not an issue but a lacked feature. Sorry for making confusion and hopefully you can accept my explanation...."
Not what I was told before...(they said it was a bug they could fix)...but anyway if you want to use it with a G1X... maybe you should foreget about RAW files and use JPEG !!!

The Program has worked okay for me. I had issues when I first installed it. It does not come with extras included on the CD like past versions of the program did. But a Corel technician helped with that, by allowing me to down load all the files I needed.
Oh, the Digimarc plug-In will only work from Image>Watermarking>Embed Watermark now.
In the past, you would go to Effects> Plugins> Digimarc but Digimarc
does not support the program anymore.

Awful program. Interface is kludgy and poorly designed, not as bad as Adobe, but trying to imitate that app destroyed what was Paint Shop's best feature -- ease of use. One of the most buggy apps I've ever used. Almost as bad as Pinnacle, in that class in terms of bad code. Won't load, takes forever to load, freezes, won't let you save work. A total mess. I thought X2, X3, X4 were bad. This is the worst. I've quit Corel and moved to Photoshop, which I detest. It's that bad.

Updaqte as at 29th October re Corel Paint Shop Pro X5 and AfterShot Pro. Both products still exhibit drastic vignetting / distortion when downloading wide angle RAW files taken with Canon G1X. Finally Corel have closed this file , as they said "...due to no activity for the last 10 days... Interesting !! there was no communication from Corel during tha t time that any action from their end was contemplated. I have tested both Lightroom 4 and Photoshop Elements 11 - these two Adobe products appear to handle these files correctly. I'd be interested to hear of anyone else who've experienced similar problems with these Corel products.
p.s. A letter (not email) was forwarded to the company's head office some time ago - at the time of posting to this forum (surprise, surprise) I have received no response.

Paintshop Pro X4 is just buggy! First it takes about 20 seconds to open up, when it does open up correctly, then occasionally, it will not completely load and crash.
Seeing from other users here, why should I take a chance with X5?
Since I purchased X4, I have not seen one update to correct for the bugs, and I have not read that X5 corrected these bugs.
I may buy it second-hand on ebay, when people start selling it, if it's cheap enough.
P.S. I run WinXP on a virus-free Quad speed cpu desktop and have 4gb of memory and plenty of room on my hard drive!

This software (X5 Ultimate) crashes faster than the Titanic. There's a series of edits that if I do them in a row, the program will shut itself down every single time. It's pretty much useless.

No reply to my email for support. No support phone number. Calling the sales line they say you have to submit your "1 free support request" online. Of course the store won't take back open software so my only recourse is to contact my credit card company and put a refund request on it.

Really sad how this program went downhill so much after Corel took it over. I'm a bit slow, but won't fall for it again.

4 weeks gone bye... Contacted Corel & have opened two (2) Case reports...... Still no answer as to why Raw files from Canon G1X (wide angle lens settings) show marked vignetting and distortion. ( refer to my previous comments a month ago)

Just downloaded PSP X5 and the bug Corel introduced when they first bought JASC is still there. Save a PNG file using inches and when you open it the dimensions appear in cm, and they don't round accurately. Too bad they couldn't have fixed this in six releases over as many years, even when they hear about it as a reported bug year after year after year.

Don't count on any glitch getting fixed given this level of disregard, but if you can use the sofware as is, go for it.

Recently I trialled Lightroom 4 and found no problems in downloading and editing RAW files from Canon G1X. However using both PaintShop Pro X5 and Corel AfterShot Pro, I have encountered unacceptable vignetting and distortion ( most apparent at wide angle zoom ).
The only way I could overcome this was to download my Raw G1X files directly to my computer, use Adobe DNG , convert them before editing in PSP 5.
One can only hope this can be fixesd quickly.
On the other hand I have found the ease of use, and the actual editing features excellent.

I've used PSP X2 previously and quite liked the product. I never got round to X3 or X4 but I thought I'd give X5 a look as I was interested in the ND filters. Having downloaded the trial version I find that ColorEfex Pro 3.0 is not included unless you buy. Not much of a trial if you can test one of Corel's main selling points! However, I did like the single raw feature. Other than that, most of the other changes since X2 seem to just bloat the product and have little appeal to me.

I hope it is now 64bit.

The main gripe I have about Corel Photo-Paint X4 is that I cannot save TIF files with 16-bit color. 16-bit support seems limited to input files and a few select image enhancement features.

Worse, the program actually makes you think that you can save a 16-bit TIF, but if I then take the saved TIF and look at the histogram, I find that there are only 256 distinct levels of RGB information, not 65,536 (using the "wide histogram" plugin in Photoshop, or the freeware application "Histogrammar").

UPDATE: oh wait, I see that this news article is about PaintShop Pro, not Photo-Paint. Never mind...

X4 was a leap forward, this is more like X4.1

There is still one thing that would keep me from buying this as my image editor: Color gamut. Still no Adobe RGB, Photo-Pro, or LAB?

Oh and one other thing, there is no mention if it will support Canon RAW files? Hopefully someone can answer this.

Thanks for alll you posts (b4 mine). I am still using X2. My 1st impressions of X5 was pretty much the same as everyone else's--just more fluff without substance. I was waiting to see if X5 added any major improvements. I'll get X4.

I got an email from Corel offering X5 for $59.99 as an upgrade (I have X4 now.) Will X5 replace AfterShot Pro? Rumor has it that AfterShot Pro may die a slow death. AfterShot is the best RAW converter for the money and much faster and easier to use than LightRoom. I hope ASP stays around. Doubt I'll give X5 a try until they drop the upgrade price.

Its not much of a upgrade from X4 Ultimate . The upgrade price is not worth it yet for ND filters and few brushes and some social networking stuff. I will stick around for awhile , at least until the first service pack.