Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 6-10 of 66
 Well Worth It December 10, 2007
Robert Correll
18 out of 19 found this review helpful
A word of caution. Paint Shop Pro Photo is not a "dumbed-down" Photoshop. It is very powerful in it's own right and has a tremendous number of diverse tools and features. It will take time learn if you have not used a program like this before. With Paint Shop Pro X2, you can restore and retouch photos, create your own logos and original artwork, optimize graphics for the Web, draw, paint, create vector graphics, use type, and much more. If you're already a Paint Shop Pro user, you should find X2 familiar and be able to take to it quickly.
I've been a Paint Shop Pro user for quite some time. I've also used various incarnations of Adobe Photoshop (including Elements) for many years, both personally and professionally. I will say, hands-down, Photoshop is the industry standard for a reason. It is powerful and enjoyable to use. Paint Shop Pro is not meant to compete with Photoshop for the high-end professional photo or graphics market. It can come close, but it's not really meant to.
What it does do, and does exceedingly well, is put a tremendous number of very powerful tools at your fingertips at a fraction of the cost of Photoshop. Cost-issues aside, the true value is that the tools work. If they didn't, I would be the first to tell you to go buy or download something else.
When I fired up version X, my first thought was, "Hey, this is pretty powerful stuff. There's not much missing from this." I kept digging and kept being impressed with it. Paint Shop Pro has all the features you would expect from a powerful image editor: layers, color palettes, effects, type, brushes, adjustment layers, masks, the ability to load and save selections, and so forth. There are also vector layers, scalable vector objects, paths, image slicing, image map tools, cool things like tube art, art media (oil brush, chalk, markers, etc.), and more.
I keep current with Paint Shop Pro Photo and remain impressed with version X2. The new gray interface freaked me out at first, but the more I used it the more I liked it. I try to use it in a well-lit room so it doesn't appear overly dark and the photo subjects overly bright. You can go back to the original if you like. The dialog enhancements for the histogram tools are welcome and the new Express Lab centralizes a photo workflow and focuses your thoughts on retouching or restoring them. Those are just a few of the new features.
Is X2 worth it? There are quite a few new tools, enhancements, and other features that make X2 unique from XI. I like and will use many of these features quite a bit. If you're interested in casual or professional photo editing (like me), general graphics use (like me), Web graphics production (like me), or exploring the bounds of your creativity (like me), then this is a great program to try. There are some flaws to the program, of course, but I give it 5 stars because of the tremendous power and real value the package offers.
Do yourself a favor a look into getting a pen tablet as well. They are most definitely worth it.
In the interests of disclosure, I am an author and have a book out on restoring and retouching photos with Paint Shop Pro. I also have a few video tutorials out on different versions of Paint Shop Pro and one on Photoshop Elements. I've also contributed to or been technically involved with some older Photoshop books.
 Paint Shop Pro Photo X2 October 14, 2007
Mr. Curtis A. Ford (USA)
15 out of 16 found this review helpful
I downloaded the trial version and it's pretty cool; however, I own a copy of X1 and don't see enough of a reason to upgrade at this time. I'll probably upgrade to the next version a year from now.
Features I like (new and old) most: Makeover tools, vector graphics, style layers (limited), selection tools, the layers features, the many ways you can copy and paste things, the color adjustment tools, the number of kind of different files this program can read, scripting, powerful undo-repeat-and-redo features, and the improved cropping.
Features I do not like (new and old): the Organizer, the style layers feature is limited, and old bugs are still in the program (Yes I've told Corel about them from the last version and they where present version 8 (the first version I bought) and older - they're old and bugs and Corel is just not going to fix them I guess).
I use this Paint Shop Pro Photo everyday because it's fun.
I've seen comments how this program is harder than other products. There is the online help and the learning palette, but there is another source: just do a search on Paint Shop Pro tutorials. That's how I learned before Corel was nice enough to put in all of this extra built-in help system.
 So far, unimpressed November 11, 2007
Sweet Alyssum
15 out of 30 found this review helpful
I bought this product based largely on the very thorough review by Scott Fisher. I didn't need any special features and was intending the software for limited use, so it seemed like just the right thing. Now I'm kicking myself for not downloading the trial version first.
I bought the software to use with digital copies of film photographs. Since I wasn't interested in major manipulations, something as expensive as Photo Shop was out of the question. I wanted software that could add watermarks and sharpen out-of-focus photos; Paint Shop Pro failed in both areas. While the software can *add* a watermark, it cannot *create* one, making it completely useless for this task. Software that can create watermarks can also add them to the photo, so I don't need this feature in Paint Shop. (I subsequently bought and am very pleased with Visual Watermark.) As for sharpening up blurred images, the option exists but the results do not resemble sharpening as I would define the term. Instead, the image tones were enhanced, making perhaps a more pleasing image, but not a sharp one. I also tried experimenting with noise reduction (to obscure the perfectly sharp, inappropriate so, background) and this did seem to work well. I did not experience any installation or startup problems as described by other reviewers.
Bottom line, try this software before purchasing. It may be just what you are looking for, or it could be a waste of money (in my case, $15 more of a waste than it would have been if I had purchased it today).
*** update, July 2008 ***
I have since purchased a digital camera so have been using this program a bit more. The retouching tools are reasonably easy to use and I've been happy with the results. I'm still unhappy with the sharpening tool, which either does nothing (lowest setting) or bleaches out all the color (high pass sharpen).
My latest disappointment is that the program cannot open a RAW file from my camera, the Lumix FZ50. Um, shouldn't it support file formats from all digital cameras?
Support is AWFUL! January 28, 2008
TheCafeWriter (Chicago, IL USA)
14 out of 16 found this review helpful
I've been a long-time user since PSP version 4, and I've always been a loyal user of this product. And then Corel bought it, and slowly but surely it went from bad to worse. When I buy a software or computer hardware product, support is very much a part of my purchasing decision, and determines whether or not I fell I got value for my money.
The user documentation is incomplete, and the resources Corel provides are skimpy at best. The "contact us" and "email us" links circle you back to the same thin "knowledge base" where the only 'knowledge' is a handful of installation and configuration questions. Worse, they put their stamp of approval on a 3rd-party how-to book that's more marketing than actual how-to's.
I'm done with any more upgrades of this product, even if they gave it away for free. I never thought I'd ever use anything else, but my next purchase will be Photoshop. At least there's plenty of useful documentation for that.
Crashed My Computer February 10, 2008
Lisa Tannenbaum (Albuquerque, NM USA)
14 out of 18 found this review helpful
I'm a mix-n-match user of image editing programs, meaning that I dabble with a bit of everything. I've used PSP since v.5 and agree with many other long-time users that Corel has taken a fine program and largely ruined it. Actually, I can only say that based on my experience with PSP X. After I installed PSP X2 the other evening, I never was able to boot back to Windows -- despite the fact that I'd set a System Restore point before installing it. I had to totally reload Windows. (And no, I don't have an nVidia video driver.)
Corel has recently purchased Ulead's products, including PhotoImpact -- which has always been a tremendous little editor. They've recently released a new version of that as well -- I'm scared to try it, frankly. Don't know if I can go through the better part of a day again any time soon, coaxing my computer to boot up.
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