Corel Paintshop Pro Photo XI

[Ruth Taylor]

oh darn lol, I bought it last night online for $69 (
oh well, guess I jumped the gun too fast.
Thanks for your great input

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http://www.pbase.com/reflectionsbyruth

 

[hbx2004]

Likes: Everything - user-interface, features, quality of the
results and even performance (no issues to report here). This
program is almost faultless.

IMO the best money/value ratio. There might be some functions in Photoshop which don't exist in PaintShopPro... for many those there are similar replacement in PSP or these ore very rare needed (for very pro use).

Kepp in mind, that PS success relay on plugins -where most of these are loadable by PSP too.

Dislikes: No Lanczos3 downsizing option. Doesn't keep EXIF when
editing TIFF's. RAW converter and Noise reduction tools are not as
good as dedicated applications such as Adobe ACR and Noiseware.

I've read somewhere that "Smart size" delivers results similar to Lancsoz -would be better if Lancsoz option would be there too, though.
Regarding exif... PSP behaves very poor here, really.

Bogdan
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My pictures are my memories
http://freeweb.siol.net/hrastni3/

 

[Ruth Taylor]

so picture tube is really just like adding clip art?
thats what it looked like to me when I tried it last night
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http://www.pbase.com/reflectionsbyruth

 

[Douglas Brown]

I've been using PSP for years, and it's a great program. I do relatively sophisticated photo editing, and PSP rarely lets me down in terms of functionality and ease of use. PSP XI does run more slowly than IX or X, but I like the fact that many of the dialogs allow you to preview changes on the actual image. This feature is particularly handy when you use a dual monitor setup (as I do). I keep palettes on a second monitor and the image itself on the primary monitor.

 

[Guy Parsons]

so picture tube is really just like adding clip art?
thats what it looked like to me when I tried it last night

Yes, like clip art but a bit smarter and of course you can make your own tubes.

As I said, it's for scrapbookers and card makers and fun stuff. Not a lot of use for gallery works for sale.

In fact I never use it, it's just that my daughters went crazy with it when they found it in PSP8.

My usual tools are....

FastStone Viewer for downloads and quick full screen views and deleting failures. That's free at http://www.faststone.org/FSViewerDetail.htm and I did the suggested donation as this is a good one.

Maybe Noiseware or Neat Image to clean up noise on a few shots.

PSP8 for fixing images up.

Qimage for printing.

I do own a seeming pile of other software but it always comes back to the above few when I want a print. Just a hobby for me but I like to see good results.

Regards........... Guy

 

[Ruth Taylor]

Ah! so you own Q-Image too

So do I but I have to set it up again on my new laptop and try to remember how to set all the settings so I can print with RGB1998 colormangement.

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http://www.pbase.com/reflectionsbyruth

 

[Ruth Taylor]

Hmm havent tried dual monitors yet.

Only time I did was with a Diagnostic Imaging company where the viewers read the patient scans before and after on 3 separate screens.

Never tried it at home.

Glad I'm hear a lot of great reviews from those that have used it extensively.

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http://www.pbase.com/reflectionsbyruth

 

[Richdow]

I've been using it since version 4, back in the heady days of
shareware.

It's an excellent substitute for PhotoShop as it has nearly all the
same functions (including plugins). While there may be few
instructional books available (sheesh, supporting PhotoShop is an
industry unto itself!), you will find plenty of on-line tutorials
created by regular folk. I really value Corel's on-line user
support group.

While the keystrokes, feature names, etc., differ between the two
products, the basic principles involved are the same. If you can do
something in PhotoShop, it won't take too much effort to accomplish
the same feat in PaintShopPro.

I might add that I use psp X and Photoshop elements 2 between the two of them I have almost everything I need. Layers work better for me on PS but color balance is much superior on PSP X. I also like the noise reduction capability’s of PSP X I can not deal with PSP X free hand selection tool. it very unfriendly compared to PS. PS has three variations of the tool to make different task easier.

I have been using Photoshop 5.0 for 8 years and really love it, however it does not handle EXIF files and it paint capabilities really suck.

so each has it's value.

Iamnow looking to buy CS2

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Catman
http://www.richdow.smugmug.com

 

[Rob22315]

and there is no simple equivalent to the Clarify tool.

RG

 

[luc0815]

I can not deal with PSP X
free hand selection tool. it very unfriendly compared to PS. PS has
three variations of the tool to make different task easier.

Have you tried the 4 variants of the freehand tool in PSPx ?:
regular freehand, edgeseeker, point-to-point, and smart edge

 

[Ruth Taylor]

No I haven't, what exactly does it do?

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http://www.pbase.com/reflectionsbyruth

 

[Ruth Taylor]

What does the clarify tool do? I saw it on the menu and used it.

The picture seemed to get even better but I wasnt really sure what it had done

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http://www.pbase.com/reflectionsbyruth

 

[Guy Parsons]

Everyone is a bit unclear about the magic of Clarify. I've never seen a decent explanation of what it really does. It "improves" things by fiddling with contrast around a subject I suspect.

Most times it does OK but on one occasion I had a wading bird against a plain mid grey water background and Clarify added an unsightly shadow effect around the bird. Really made a weird image. So use it with caution.

Just for curiosity I did a Google search for clarify and ended up here at DPReview with an old 2000 announcement about PSP7. There's a few examples of what is used where on this page....
http://www.dpreview.com/news/0007/00070801psp7beta.asp

Regards............. Guy

 

[Jan_Shim]

Reading feedback from posts here, I thought I would download the latest copy just to see if performance has improved in THAT department. I also had the Corel suggested fix done and while start up is quicker as a result, unfortunately my images still take too long to load. Not sure what's up with that but I have once again, uninstalled PSP XI.

Sorry for the name mixup
I actually know a photographer from the art group I belong to called
Jay Shin, so I think thats what my eyes saw first when I started to
reply

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http://www.pbase.com/reflectionsbyruth

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Jan Shim
Web: http://www.shimworld.com
Blog: http://shimworld.wordpress.com

 

[Guy Parsons]

Just experimenting with PSP8 and XI opening an 8 megapixel nearly 5 megabyte jpeg and it seems about 1 second on 8 and maybe 1.5 seconds on XI. I've got AMD64 2 gig RAM etc similar sort of beastie to you, and really XI seems no slower in real use than 8. So not sure what's happening with your PC.

Anyway, word has it that Corel seemed to muck up a nice JASC product and good though X and XI are, old 8 and 9 are maybe a tiny bit better in some ways. Particularly the image browser in 8/9 is good. I'll stick with v8.

Regards.............. Guy

 

[Jan_Shim]

Just experimenting with PSP8 and XI opening an 8 megapixel nearly 5
megabyte jpeg and it seems about 1 second on 8 and maybe 1.5
seconds on XI. I've got AMD64 2 gig RAM etc similar sort of beastie
to you, and really XI seems no slower in real use than 8. So not
sure what's happening with your PC.

Anyway, word has it that Corel seemed to muck up a nice JASC
product and good though X and XI are, old 8 and 9 are maybe a tiny
bit better in some ways. Particularly the image browser in 8/9 is
good. I'll stick with v8.

Regards.............. Guy

Yeah and so I've been told. Having been used to PSP 9'x simple and effective BROWSER, I find XI's Organise quite disturbing and frustrating to use (but would eventually be OK if I persevere though I'm not going there anytime soon). My workflow consists of a few apps not just PSP.

When I am reviewing thousands of images, I would use ACDSee Pro (super handy and very fast on dual monitors). I also use ACDSee to perform batch resizing which it does flawlessly. PSP scripts are slow and inconsistent and have on many occasions froze when resizing thousands of images.

When I combine images from a number of photographers, you have a problem managing the images in a synchronised manner .. we make sure at the very least our camera bodies have synchronised clock. Once all images are copied into one folder, I use BreezeBrowser to sort these images by Date/Time .. something neither ACDSee or PSP seems to be able to handle well. If it takes three separate apps to give me 100% operation consistency I'm OK with that.

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Jan Shim
Web: http://www.shimworld.com
Blog: http://shimworld.wordpress.com

 

[Philip119299]

What I did to get faster action is:

Under File, go to Preferences,File locations, undo/Temporary Files.

I put this undo/Temporary files on an external drive that I have and have seen a marked improvement.

If you have a second drive or an external drive you can do this.
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Philip

 

[Jan_Shim]

What I did to get faster action is:

Under File, go to Preferences,File locations, undo/Temporary Files.

I put this undo/Temporary files on an external drive that I have
and have seen a marked improvement.

If you have a second drive or an external drive you can do this.
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Philip

I have in total 6 7,200-rpm drives. 3 of them are internal SATA-II while 3 IDE ones in USB enclosures. I have tried relocating Temp paths to drives D and E and have not seen discernible improvements.

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Jan Shim
Web: http://www.shimworld.com
Blog: http://shimworld.wordpress.com

 

[luc0815]

the help-file is relatively pretty informative on this occasion; you selcet between the different options in the "presets" selector on the top left .

 

[Rob22315]

it appears to combine gamma and contrast/brightness adjustments. Others believe it is a USM-based local contrast enhancement. Despite the Adobe zealots' belief that Photoshop does everything, it doesn't seem to readily duplicate this.

I like PSP's red eye correction more as well.

PSP X or XI is a great bargain for the amount of functionality you get. Unless you become serious about selling your work or need cutting edge graphics manipulation, PSP XI should meet your needs. The biggest advantage PS has over PSP for the casual user is the community support.

The learning curve IMHO is roughly the same for both programs because the complexity is in learning the basics of image manipulation, not in learning photoshop or psp. The user layout is a little different but if you're willing to consult the manual once in a while, you should be able to get through either one pretty handliy.

RG