Please don't start flaming me in the mistaken assumption that I'm
being sarcastic.
I use, and like, Paint Shop Pro, version 8.01. I realize that for
$650 US PhotoShop is going to give it's users a lot more, but is it
worth it to someone who is not doing this professionally?
What would I be able to do with it that I can't do with Paint Shop?
I've been using both programs for many years. If you're just
comparing function lists, one might easily think that PSP is not
that far off from Photoshop, but it's not quite accurate to look at
it that way.
Photoshop is ultimately much more streamlined and the user
interface generally works with you instead of getting in your way.
PSP's user interface has always seemed much busier and less
predictable to me.
Photoshop is also much more responsive in my experience. With a
few specific exceptions where you're doing things like applying a
filter or image adjustment, Photoshop generally reacts to your
input instantly, while on the same machine, I find that PSP often
sort of lags behind. For example, when you're doing something like
moving the paint brush around in the window.
If you want to talk about something more tangible, then one thing
you can do in Photoshop that isn't possible with PSP is use masks
together with adjustment layers. (Unless there's some special
trick I've never figured out.)
That might sound esoteric, but it's actually a really basic image
editing technique that everybody could find useful.
Adjustment layers are a feature that allows you to apply an image
adjustment to the composite of whatever layers are underneath
(within the same group). You can adjust brightness & contrast,
curves, levels, color balance, and more.
A layer mask, of course, is a grayscale bitmap that controls pixel
by pixel if a particular layer is visible or not. A black pixel
means that the layer is completely invisible, while a white pixel
means it's visible. Intermediate gray values indicate the pixel is
semi-visible to some degree.
In Photoshop, you can use a mask with an adjustment layer just like
with any other kind of layer. PSP can only use masks on regular
bitmap layers or vector layers. They cannot be used with
adjustment layers.
What does that mean? Well, using adjustment layers is almost
always a better idea than applying a permanent adjustment to the
original bitmap data when you need to adjust the brightness,
contrast, gamma curve, color balance, etc. With an adjustment
layer, you can always go back and make changes, and you're not
piling up a bunch of destructive edits like you would if you simply
did those operations to a bitmap layer.
But of course, you don't always want to apply such an adjustment to
the entire image. You might only want to increase the contrast in
the sky to bring out the clouds, for example. Or you might want to
use a gamma correction to bring up shadow detail in one specific
area.
With a layer mask, you can have an adjustment layer apply only to
specific parts of the image as needed. Furthermore, you can use
several adjustment layers together. Each one can affect a
different part of the image through proper use of the layer mask.
You can even use several of the same type, each with a somewhat
different setting.
This basically gives you pixel-perfect control over brightness,
contrast, and color balance for the entire image. You can do the
equivalent of nearly every traditional darkroom technique for
adjusting an image and experiment endlessly with different settings
without affecting the original image data.
Mike
