Paint Shop vs Photo Shop

bmweerman

OK, one last qestion: Which is best, or maybe I should say: which is more mainstream and easier to work with? My daughter already has a copy of Paint Shop, but in the tutorials Photo Shop is used. Got any suggestions?

Thanks, again!

Micah Weber

photoshop.

cmason

bmweerman wrote:

OK, one last qestion: Which is best, or maybe I should say: which is more mainstream and easier to work with? My daughter already has a copy of Paint Shop, but in the tutorials Photo Shop is used. Got any suggestions?

Thanks, again!

I have both. Here is my take: PaintShop Pro is MUCH easier. You can quickly get in, do some autocorrections, and the new 'wizards' are very very nice. It is extremely productive for editing photos. It also has much of the capability of PhotoShop.

PhotoShop on the other hand is not at all easy to do most of your simple tasks and basic corrections. However, it is the standard, and you will find hundreds of books and online tutorials on how to do things, so that you can get to very powerful editting techniques fairly easily. PhotoShop provides unbelieveable control, and it is very easy to mess things up. But there is tons of help, online and elsewhere to learn how to do it correctly. PaintShop does not have much info on how to do some of these editing techniques.

Bottomline, if you want to get you standard photo editing done, choose PaintShop. If you want to be skilled in digital darkroom techniques, choose PhotoShop.

You can download a 30 day trial to PaintShop at Corel. Check it out, see if it meets your needs. I think you can also download a trial of Photoshop.

You may want to consider PhotoShop Elements, but that is going too far in the "easy" category IMHO

Nikolai

PS vs PSP
As a very rough analogy, you can think of PSP (Paint Shop Pro) to be on par with P&S (Point-and-Shoot) cameras (note, there are very good ones in this market).
PS (Photoshop), however, is on par with DSLRs.
It will make you sweat before you are able to do even simplistic adjustments. But once you "get it" - ho-ho, sky is your limit..:):

I originally tried PSP and PSE - didn't like it. With PS I spent a few months, but after that I really didn't have ANY problem doing ANYTHING I wanted...

Bob Bell

Nikolai wrote:

As a very rough analogy, you can think of PSP (Paint Shop Pro) to be on par with P&S (Point-and-Shoot) cameras (note, there are very good ones in this market).
PS (Photoshop), however, is on par with DSLRs.
It will make you sweat before you are able to do even simplistic adjustments. But once you "get it" - ho-ho, sky is your limit..:):

I originally tried PSP and PSE - didn't like it. With PS I spent a few months, but after that I really didn't have ANY problem doing ANYTHING I wanted...

Paint Shop Pro is kind of limiting, Photoshop is what I have, I thought elements was considered a P&S body? I can tell you that I hate Macromedia Fireworks. We have it at work and I just can't get used to it.

The cost of photoshop is steep but I think Its worth it.

cmason

Bob Bell wrote:

Paint Shop Pro is kind of limiting, Photoshop is what I have, I thought elements was considered a P&S body? I can tell you that I hate Macromedia Fireworks. We have it at work and I just can't get used to it.

The cost of photoshop is steep but I think Its worth it.

About the only thing I haven't found in PaintShop Pro is LAB Color mode. Otherwise, most everything in PhotoShop is in PaintShop Pro, but learning to use it is tough, since most online tutorials, and guides here on DGrin, assume PhotoShop.

Bob Bell

cmason wrote:

About the only thing I haven't found in PaintShop Pro is LAB Color mode. Otherwise, most everything in PhotoShop is in PaintShop Pro, but learning to use it is tough, since most online tutorials, and guides here on DGrin, assume PhotoShop.

Is CMYK a color mode in paintshop pro? what about support for 16 bit tiff? Both things I need for some commercial printers I use.

I have a bunch of photoshop actions and plug ins so I am committed but its interesting to see what the differences really are.

cmason

Bob Bell wrote:

Is CMYK a color mode in paintshop pro? what about support for 16 bit tiff? Both things I need for some commercial printers I use.

I have a bunch of photoshop actions and plug ins so I am committed but its interesting to see what the differences really are.

Yes, PSP supports CMYK color mode. (it supports PSD files too, btw) As for 16 bit tiff, I am not too familiar with that, but I can save a file and work on a 16 bit tif file. However, if I want to work in CMYK mode, I have to convert to 8 bit. Hope that answers your question.

Considering the OP had a question about which software for his daughter, I am not sure if 16bit tif and CMYK are what he is after...but maybe. I think if you are producing commercially and especially for the something to be commercially printed, PhotoShop HAS to be your choice,s ince it is the standard in the industry.

Aaron Wilson

photoshop
Is there a good place to take classes? I'm in the bay area of CA. My local college is still on ps 7.0 were I have sc2.

cmason wrote:

Yes, PSP supports CMYK color mode. (it supports PSD files too, btw) As for 16 bit tiff, I am not too familiar with that, but I can save a file and work on a 16 bit tif file. However, if I want to work in CMYK mode, I have to convert to 8 bit. Hope that answers your question.

Considering the OP had a question about which software for his daughter, I am not sure if 16bit tif and CMYK are what he is after...but maybe. I think if you are producing commercially and especially for the something to be commercially printed, PhotoShop HAS to be your choice,s ince it is the standard in the industry.

BigAl

I've been using PSP since v7, and started using it after a run-in with the local PS distributor. I can do pretty much everything with PSP that I could do with PS, and I was pretty much a power user with PS 5 to 7. As cmason said, not having LAB is the only downside. I still use my PS books as well - I've figured out how to convert most things.

PSP is really easy to use - I got my wife editing her pics within 10 mins and this included histogram adjustments. I'd like to see someone do this with PS or even PSE (knowing my wife's capabilities )

PetersCreek

I was an enthusiastic PSP user from its shareware days, up to version 9. While I had long wanted to upgrade to PS, PSP9 dictated the timing. JASC software created an incredible product in PSP but I believe when Corel took over, things started to go south. PSP9 had an unacceptable glitch (JPEGs corrupting during Save) that Corel customer support didn't seem too anxious to help with. They finally suggested a work-around but it was clear that I couldn't rely on them to actually fix the problem. That clinched it for me and I bought CS2 less than 2 months after buying PSP9. I haven't looked back since.

bmweerman

Thanks for all the info. I just found out that my husband, the real bmweerman, has already purchased PS, just hadn't installed it yet. Now, on to the tutorials!