Corel PaintShop Photo Pro X3 -Limited Edition ( ONLY NOW) 25 copies left
Corel certainly plays second fiddle in a lot of areas—to Microsoft in office apps, to Adobe in design and photo software, and to Nero and Roxio in multimedia authoring. But, then again, the company's prices are far below those of the market leaders. Case in point, PaintShop Pro Photo X3 sells for a mere $99.99, compared with Adobe Photoshop's whopping $699. To be clear, the app isn't a direct Photoshop competitor:
PaintShop Photo Pro X3 plays in a space somewhere in-between Photoshop CS4, Photoshop Elements 8, and ACDSee, offering some features of each. In fact, many whothink they need the steeply priced Adobe Photoshop CS4 could get by with PaintShop Photo Pro. Corel's suite can perform nearly all the same photo adjustments and enhancements, and it even supports Photoshop plugins.
But pros will still want the industry Adobe standard app, even at seven times the price. Photoshop Elements 8, on the other hand, is more suitable for those just entering the world of photo editing (it's got fewer features than PaintShop, and a much easier-to-learn interface, for one thing). Corel, as a self-described "enthusiast" product, falls somewhere in between. PaintShop trails Photoshop in technological terms, too. The latter supports 64-bit operation and graphics card acceleration, and is much faster even at simple things like loading a raw image file. Despite its wealth of tools, the slowness of PaintShop was its downfall, quite noticeable even on a relatively powerful 3.16GHz Core2 Duo-based PC with 4GB of RAM running 64-bit Windows 7.
In addition to being faster, the Adobe products are more stable—I managed to crash PaintShop a couple of times on a heavily taxed yet powerful machine. At one point I was trying to open an 18MB photo, and the program generated an insufficient memory error, even though I was only using 50 percent of memory on a machine with 4GB RAM. The Adobe products I was comparing it with remained rock solid throughout testing.
User Interface
PaintShop Photo Pro X3's UI is a cluttered with icons and text. Granted, it's got a ton of features to squeeze in, but, even so, it's nowhere near as slick or easy on the eyes as either Adobe image editor. If you don't like where the panels and toolbars, you can customize the PaintShop interface by setting up workspaces of palettes and toolbars, but there are no helpful presets like those in Photoshop for basic editing, analysis, 3D, typography, and so on.
When you first run the app, you see a help column of action suggestions along the left panel, which you can close once you're adept with PaintShop. This is a big help towards getting going, and it's similar to Photoshop Elements' Guided editing view. Choices here include common activities like Get Photos, Adjust, Retouch, Collage, and Effects.
When it comes to importing a RAW file for editing, Photoshop Elements actually has finer control, adding vibrancy and fill light sliders, and its bigger preview and sharpening tab are plusses not offered by Corel.
PaintShop includes a Monitor Calibration Wizard, which takes you through seven screens where you make adjustments to create a color management profile for the monitor. As in Photoshop, you can also set the color working space for print and monitor, you can and configure color management profiles—advanced features not available in Photoshop Elements.
Organizing Photos
PaintShop isn't merely an image editor. It also takes on Adobe Lightroom and ACDSee Pro 3 with its photo-management tool, Organizer, designed to let you easily scan groups of photos, tag and rate them, and open them for editing. I prefer PaintShop's more integrated Organizer to Photoshop Elements', which requires launching an external app, but Paintshop opens images far more slowly than Photoshop, Elements, or ACDSee. There's also a little annoyance with PaintShop's Organizer: When you move between it and the Editor, you're not taken back to your last place in the Organizer's filmstrip. Sounds like a small complaint, but it gets irritating if you're handling a high volume of photos—another interface complaint.
Editing
PaintShop's photo editing and enhancement capabilities rival those of Photoshop and surpass Elements'. And it makes many identical tasks easier than they'd be in Photoshop, though you can still step through detailed operations to get to the end result. Elements makes common operations as easy as PaintShop does, but it doesn't offer the same level of drill-down.
PaintShop offers two photo editing interfaces—Express Lab and Full Editor. The Lab reminds me of a simpler photo-editing tool like Windows Live Photo Gallery; changes available here include adjusting brightness, shadows, highlights, and saturation, as well as rotating the image. For one-click photo correction, PaintShop yielded some of the best results I've seen, even when compared with what you get in iPhoto and Picasa.
The Full Editor's wealth of options approaches those available in Photoshop. PaintShop brings a bunch of tools to the fore that you'd have to burrow for in Photoshop, such as High-Pass Sharpen, One Step Noise Removal, and One Step Purple Fringe Fix. The new Vibrancy control—something photo editors all seem to be getting these days, boosts color saturation on dull parts of the image while maintaining skin tones.
PaintShop lets you do some advanced image enhancements, such as combining multiple shots forHDR images and adding depth-of-field effects. . You can do a few 3D effects such as buttonize, chisel, bevel, and drop shadow, but it doesn't work with 3D file formats such as 3DS or OBJ the way Photoshop does.
Like Photoshop, PaintShop can record a script of editing and formatting options, and then run them in batch mode to perform them on a whole gaggle of image files. Photoshop Elements offers a few canned actions, but you can't make your own. PaintShop lacks Photoshop's ability to take a snapshot at any point in the editing history, and Photoshop's powerful history brush tool. Like the Adobe products, however, PaintShop does offer a history window and the ability to undo any action shown there.—Next: Getting Creative
Today Corel Corporation announced the release of Corel® PaintShop Photo® Pro X3 Ultimate, a new photo-editing software collection combining the power of Corel PaintShop Photo Pro X3 along with new creative tools that allows photo enthusiasts to easily produce professional-looking photos, custom websites, create amazing photo effects and inspiring digital paintings. This special-value package has a suggested retail price (SRP) of just £79.
The new Ultimate edition includes the recently updated PaintShop Photo Pro X3, featuring new performance enhancements, along with a selection of complementary software that broadens any photographer’s creative possibilities. These include: Incomedia™ WebSite X5® Special Edition, web creation software that makes it easy to design, create and publish your website in just 5 steps; Corel® KPT® Collection photo-effects filters; and Corel® Painter™ Essentials 4 for sketching, drawing and photo-painting. Customers who purchase the box version of Ultimate will also benefit from a comprehensive printed user guide*, empowering photographers to take maximum advantage of PaintShop Photo Pro.
The powerful tools and resources within Corel PaintShop Photo Pro X3 Ultimate allows photographers to edit and share their photos in more ways than ever. Photo enthusiasts can edit photos, turn them in to works of art and share using unique printed photo books and eye-catching web creations. For example, a food enthusiast can edit and mix photos along with text to make a personal recipe book of their favourite dishes. Then, choose from over 1,400 templates and options to create a unique website or blog to showcase and share their creations online in just 5 simple steps.
Corel PaintShop Photo Pro X3 Ultimate includes many value added extras:
- Corel® PaintShop Photo® Pro X3: Built on performance and stability enhancements introduced in the recently updated version X3.2, Corel PaintShop Photo Pro X3 brings together professional quality organisation and photo editing tools along with photo projects, backup and high definition (HD) video slideshow capabilities to meet the evolving needs of today's photographer. New tools include the Organizer and Project Creator, along with the dynamic editing of the Smart Carver™, Camera RAW Lab, Object Extractor and more.
- Incomedia™ WebSite X5® Special Edition: An outstanding tool that helps you to create your ideal website or blog including Podcasts and Videocasts. It’s packed with advanced tools and over 1,400 templates to help you create websites with all of the eye-catching features you see on the web’s best sites.
- Corel® KPT® Collection: With 24 powerful Kai’s Power Tools plug-in filters, Corel KPT Collection gives photo enthusiasts a comprehensive set of creative tools for quickly producing fantastic effects.
- Corel® Painter™ Essentials 4: Ideal for exploring digital art, the full Corel Painter Essentials 4 gives users realistic digital painting, drawing and sketching tools along with the unique Auto-Painting palette, making it easy to create a realistic work of art or automatically paint a photo in just three easy steps.
- Comprehensive printed manual: Combined with the unique LearningCenter, the printed User Guide and colour Getting Started Guide gives PaintShop Photo Pro X3 users all the information they need to maximise their photo editing potential. *
All these additional renowned photography tools are designed to broaden the capabilities of the enthusiast photographer and allow them to produce their most extraordinary photos yet at atruly exceptional value.
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