Corel vs Adobe vs Gimp

[jbcohen]

I think that there is no one best photo editing software for all people and the major software package (Paint Shop, Photoshop or Gimp) that one chooses depends on what you feel is most important in a photo editing software. Personally I chose Corel and may work with Gimp as well and I believe there are some places where Corel's Photo Shop is a better choice the Photo Shop and there are instances where Photoshop is a better choice then Paint Shop.

Let me start out with the dominant, 80 pound gorilla in the market, Adobe. Personally I think that Adobe is a better bet for individuals who like to work with the dominant software in the industry. This has some advantages, in my opinion, in that addition of new features and modifications to the software packages tend to get better thought out and better placed in the software as Adobe is a lot more visible and has a lot more to loose by not placing new features in the right place.

However there is a down side to Adobe: 1) the software uses multiple modules to get one task done, you open the photos in the organizer then move to the editor to get the editing done; 2) There are several different Adobe software that edit photos and its rather confusing which to use; and 3) Adobe is channeling its customers to renting software via the creative cloud, for some this is a better plan then others (if you are a pro and move around a lot taking your shots (personally I always return to my home PC for editing)). If you are like me then the creative cloud is not really a good idea as it costs more.

Corel, tends to play second fiddle to Adobe and is better for some and worse for others. It's software Paintshop gets all of the editing done in one big module rather than the multiple module approach for Adobe. This does not force uses to lean multiple module to get one task done which can also be bad in that Adobe's separation allows users to use a divide and conquer method to learn to use the software. The problem with Paintshop is that the new features are not as better thought out as Adobe's Photoshop is in my opinion.

Corel's After Shot tends to be the orphan child of Corel's offerings having little documentation written for the software unlike its big brother, however it much better suited for the advanced users.

Gimp is simply stated best for people that do not have much dollars to be spent on photo editing as it is free and from what I have been able to learn just as powerful as the other two software packages that I have mentioned before, I may add Gimp to my software lab at home.

 

[beagle1]

I think that there is no one best photo editing software for all people and the major software package (Paint Shop, Photoshop or Gimp) that one chooses depends on what you feel is most important in a photo editing software. Personally I chose Corel and may work with Gimp as well and I believe there are some places where Corel's Photo Shop is a better choice the Photo Shop and there are instances where Photoshop is a better choice then Paint Shop.

Let me start out with the dominant, 80 pound gorilla in the market, Adobe. Personally I think that Adobe is a better bet for individuals who like to work with the dominant software in the industry. This has some advantages, in my opinion, in that addition of new features and modifications to the software packages tend to get better thought out and better placed in the software as Adobe is a lot more visible and has a lot more to loose by not placing new features in the right place.

However there is a down side to Adobe: 1) the software uses multiple modules to get one task done, you open the photos in the organizer then move to the editor to get the editing done; 2) There are several different Adobe software that edit photos and its rather confusing which to use; and 3) Adobe is channeling its customers to renting software via the creative cloud, for some this is a better plan then others (if you are a pro and move around a lot taking your shots (personally I always return to my home PC for editing)). If you are like me then the creative cloud is not really a good idea as it costs more.

Corel, tends to play second fiddle to Adobe and is better for some and worse for others. It's software Paintshop gets all of the editing done in one big module rather than the multiple module approach for Adobe. This does not force uses to lean multiple module to get one task done which can also be bad in that Adobe's separation allows users to use a divide and conquer method to learn to use the software. The problem with Paintshop is that the new features are not as better thought out as Adobe's Photoshop is in my opinion.

Corel's After Shot tends to be the orphan child of Corel's offerings having little documentation written for the software unlike its big brother, however it much better suited for the advanced users.

Gimp is simply stated best for people that do not have much dollars to be spent on photo editing as it is free and from what I have been able to learn just as powerful as the other two software packages that I have mentioned before, I may add Gimp to my software lab at home.

OK

Adobe for pros, gimp for wimps

 

[tclune]

I have also used PaintShopPro for many years. It is a decent program, but I normally suggest to others that they go with Photoshop if they are going to get seriously into post processing. The main thing that is better about Photoshop is its huge installed base. There are many tutorials and books about using it, and almost all the step-by-step ways of doing something assume that you are using Photoshop. In addition, its raw editor is the best third-party raw editor on the market.

The things that make PaintShopPro "good enough" to my mind include that it supports many of the plug-ins you can use with Photoshop (I use the Topaz suite and FocusMagic, both of which are supported by Corel); it supports 16-bit-per-channel editing; and its raw editor is usable, though clunky. It has layers, which is to my mind the minimum requirement for any post processing software. And it is less expensive than Photoshop.

Gimp is an ideal program for a software engineer who wants to experiment with post-processing algorithms. I did a lot of image processing for my job before I retired, and considered learning Gimp as part of a hobby. But I never actually got around to it, so I have limited knowledge of it. The last time I knew, it only supported 8-bit images, but that was a few years ago and may well have changed by now.

FWIW

 

[jbcohen]

If you chose to go with Adobe then its Photoshop CC for pros and elements for the rest of us.

 

[Mike_PEAT]

I loved using Corel PhotoPaint compared Photoshop, since Photoshop was designed for Apple's one-button mice (you need to hold a key when pressing the mouse button in Photoshop to access certain functions that are done with the right mouse button in Corel PhotoPaint).

Unfortunately I work at a company that's an all-Mac operation so I'm stuck with using Photoshop.

 

[jbcohen]

Have you tried Corel After Shot Pro, that one is aimed at the pros, PaintShop is for the enthusiasts like me. The trouble with After Shot is there is no documentation written for it outside the documentation that comes with the software, however it can do a lot more than the non-pro PaintShop can do.

Personally I have never attempted to work with Gimp however in order for it to make its way front in center in my photo editing it does not need to be as good as Adobe or Corel, for the simple reason is that its free as well as all upgrades, its the Adobe and Corel that need to prove themselves.

 

[jbcohen]

Now I am dealing with something that you are the expert and I am the beginner. What if you use your Mac in Pc mode can't you run Windows native software? Perhaps that runs particularly slowly.

 

[Mike_PEAT]

Now I am dealing with something that you are the expert and I am the beginner. What if you use your Mac in Pc mode can't you run Windows native software? Perhaps that runs particularly slowly.

Actually Macs runs Windows pretty decently. You can either use a program like Parallels so you're running Windows in a window on the Mac desktop, or Bootcamp where it's truly a Windows machine.

However my company wasn't going to pay for the software, and I wasn't certainly going to buy it for my company's machine (yes I have it set up for my MBP, both Bootcamp and Parallels, but it's my personal machine).

 

[tclune]

Have you tried Corel After Shot Pro, that one is aimed at the pros, PaintShop is for the enthusiasts like me.

My understanding is that After Shot Pro is intended to be Corel's answer to Lightroom, just like PaintShopPro is intended to be their version of Photoshop. Like Lightroom, After Shot is made for batch processing and cataloguing images, while Photoshop/PSP are intended for heavy-duty image manipulation. It has nothing to do with pro vs enthusiasts: it's bulk vs final tweaking. But, if After Shot ends up following in Lightroom's footsteps, it will become an ever-more sophisticated app, so that many people end up using it for all the editing that they do. Nonetheless, Photoshop and PSP are still the more capable platforms for full-on editing of individual images.

 

[Bobby49]

I agree, the software that you choose kind of depends on how many images you need to process.

When I was a beginner in the film days, there weren't that many images, so I did OK with Corel PhotoPaint, and I felt that Adobe Photoshop was way too expensive and too complicated.

Eventually, as the digital days brought in more and more images for processing, I could do RAW conversion with Canon DPP, but then I finally decided to try out Photoshop. Fortunately, I was able to acquire it as some kind of cheap competitive upgrade. I spent the next five or so years learning it.

One year ago, my previous desktop computer had to be replaced. Rather than trying to move software from one to the replacement, I bought some newer version of Photoshop, not from Adobe, so I didn't have to pay by the month forever. Photoshop certainly has a lot of power that other software doesn't have, but with that power come the technical demands.

Now I might bring home 20GB of images in one day, so Photoshop will be busy running overnight, especially with tagging details into the image metadata.

 

[chuxter]

JB, this is the Beginners Questions Forum. You didn't seem to ask a question, but rather went off on a personal exploration of photo editors. :-(

However there is a down side to Adobe: 1) the software uses multiple modules to get one task done, you open the photos in the organizer then move to the editor to get the editing done; 2) There are several different Adobe software that edit photos and its rather confusing which to use; and 3) Adobe is channeling its customers to renting software via the creative cloud...

There are three flavors of Photoshop [which is one word]:

• Photoshop CC + ACR+
• Photoshop Lightroom
• Photoshop Elements + ACR-

Two of these clearly have 2 separate programs, but Lightroom integrates ACR into the main program [the Develop module IS enhanced ACR]. The LR "Modules" are not separate programs as with the other two. They simply change the appearance of the screen to something appropriate for the module. That's good, not bad.

Corel also has more than one program. It should not be any more confusing for Adobe to have 3 TOTALLY different offerings. That's good, not bad!

I agree about renting software. At the moment, 2 of the 3 flavors of Photoshop are available outside the CC initiative.

I'll ask a question: Do you understand yet? ;-)

 

[Glen Barrington]

They've gotten the last of my money. One doesn't really support their products and lately, the other supports them badly.

For me, it is ACDSee Ultimate 9. If I ever need anything beyond what ACDSee offers (seems unlikely - but I guess it could happen), I would likely use GIMP.

An Experienced User's Notes on ACDSee Ultimate 9

A brief description of ACDSee's new features.

glenbarrington.blogspot.com

 

[Cincinnati]

Not sure if you're still monitoring this thread. But you can use a std two-button mouse on a Mac. And the right click will work.

I use a Wacom tablet. The pen is a two-button device and I don't have to hold a key down to right click.

 

[tulen]

A few remarks, boys.
If we want to compare things, they must be the same things.
It is not Corel PaintShop Pro what should be compared with Adobe Photoshop. It should be Corel Photo Paint. It has (approximately) the same postprocessing and prepress functionality than Photoshop and they were designed +/- for the same applications.
Interestingly, almost nobody is talking about Photo Paint...

PaintShop Pro is targeted to (mostly) non-professionals. It lacks top end color management etc. but it is (much) easier to work with. From my experience, some Photoshop plugins aren't working with Photo Paint, but they are working quite good in PaintShop Pro.

Then there was a mention of AfterShot Pro. That is not an editor, but high(er) end RAW processor (something like Lightroom substitute). Similarly to the Adobe products, Corel products have some basic RAW import capability, too. It is at similar level like Adobe Camera RAW (that thing you can use for importing RAWs to Photoshop if you don't want to fire up Lightroom). Corel is having "light" version of AfterShot Pro called AfterShot HDR (yes, it has some basic HDR capabilities) included with their CorelDRAW Graphics Suite. That is a bit strange, taking into account CorelDRAW Graphics Suite (which includes Photo Paint) is targeted to pro users but the users of Ultimate version of PaintShop Pro will obtain fully featured AfterShot Pro instead. That means, AfterShot Pro should not be compared with "real" bitmap editors like Photoshop, Photo Paint, PaintShop Pro, GIMP, but with other RAW processing "editors" like Lightroom, ON1 Photo RAW, Capture One, DXO Photolab etc. (when talking about GIMP, Darktable and especially RAWTherapee should be mentioned here).

"the software uses multiple modules to get one task done, you open the photos in the organizer then move to the editor to get the editing done" - never did things that way, always directly opening the files

Comparing the comparable is a key here.

 

[Klaus dk]

[No message]

 

[D Cox]

I loved using Corel PhotoPaint compared Photoshop, since Photoshop was designed for Apple's one-button mice (you need to hold a key when pressing the mouse button in Photoshop to access certain functions that are done with the right mouse button in Corel PhotoPaint).

Unfortunately I work at a company that's an all-Mac operation so I'm stuck with using Photoshop.

Affinity Photo is available for Mac. The raw processor isn't as good as Adobe Camera Raw (no Synchronize button, and it doesn't accept input profiles) but the main program is pretty complete.

Don Cox