I'm doing some evaluation of these 3 software packages, I may as well note that Corel Painter 11 is also be evaluated but is not being mentioned here except to say the color management is perfect as Painter 11 is a Painting program not an image editor which is more the focus of this post.
So to stir the pot as the say I will note that color management between these applications works very well. All test images display in all 3 application simultaneously identically on the same monitor.
My evaluation is being done in a manner that reflects the mages we see on a more regular basis in production. So called professional captures, non-professional captures and cell phone captures. These come from cameras in the price range of $5,000 down to the 2MP cell phone captures.
When the task is straighten, color correction, noise reduction, automatic correction features and basic image manipulation, Judging from the results I see for the life of me I can see NO REASON to purchase Photoshop CS5.
The better a photographer you are the less you need a powerful image editor and if the lower cost image editors are being designed to automate the tasks for lesser quality images in a manner that's better than Photoshop and clearly PaintShop Pro and Photo-PAINT are I'd say the decisions made for us.
Check out the Corel web site and price CorelDRAW and PaintShop Pro X3, you have the pre-press features that you need in Corel Photo-PAINT X5 and the automated task features in Corel PaintShop Pro.
Hi David,
I had a bit of a moan session some weeks back, complaining that PSP has had so many "modern" features added to it where Photo-Paint hasn't. I'll tell you something funny though.....often what looks good on paper is pretty meaningless when it comes down to reality. It would obviously depend on what type of work you do as to what features would be significant to you....but I saw all these features (proper healing brush type of tool, full screen mesh warp, noise removal that doesn't simply blur the image, object removal tool.....blah blah blah) and thought "wow". After making my post I found time the following weekend to really push PSP properly before the trial expired and I seriously hated using it. It was totally crap compared to PP and it made me realise how spoilt we are with such a great program. A lot of these 'fancy sounding' features are either not that useful in practical terms or were simply not good at doing their job. The program overall was nowhere near as well laid out and efficient to use as PP and the dialog box controls were terrible. Have you tried to use the dialog boxes with eyedroppers in them where you can't even click on the real image? You have to click on the small preview image within the dialog box. Total lunacy. The equivalent tool to PP's Cutout Lab simply did not compare!
I can see why the more advanced users have always called PP the professional program and PSP the enthusiasts program, it is true. Even take something like Photoshop. It has a lens correction set of tools including Perspective Controls. The perspective control within that dialog is very limited in how far it can correct and I can get better results using the Perspective and Distort modes of transformations in PP. So people might say "oh PS has a proper perspective tool and PP doesn't", but PP does have these features, simply not placed in a pretty dialog box...and actually can do a better job in extreme cases that PS's tool. Same thing with the improved masking tools in PS (Quick Select tool and Refine Mask dialog). They are fantastic tools and on images they work properly on they get the job done extremely quickly. However, they are not good enough for many images, images which the Cutout Lab in PP does a great job on. I spent a whole weekend some months back just masking image after image after image. PP's Cutout Lab won by a mile overall. I deliberately picked really nuisance images with wispy hair and varying colours in between them, or backgrounds similar to the colour of the subject being cut out. These were the images PS most struggled with and the Cutout Lab did a far better job. When background colours are very close to the colours of the main subject then obviously both programs struggle.
I think we have a great base program here that needs a lot of work. The first thing it needs is stability. A lot of users will move away if the program keeps on crashing as it does now. Some of the fancy features need to be added, but they have to work and work well. There is no point in adding anything at all if it is going to crash. Remember the Straightening Tool when it first came out? Great tool, but it crashed PP almost every time we used it. Once it was fixed by a SP it was(is) great.
How do you feel about PP vs PSP?
Best regards,Brian.
i like the start of this discussion. i just hope gerard and the rest of development is following this aswell. if not i will make them aware of it.
This is good feedback what we need. :)
Hi Wijnanda,
2 days to go until the big wedding. Now just think, if a Corel user won the job of photographing the Royal Wedding and retouching the wedding photos.....and it was publicised.....it would do wonders for Corel in the UK.
I love using PP, I have been a big fan of it for many years. I have maintained upgrades of PS too for some time, skipping some versions along the way. I prefer working in PP and find it incredibly fast to zip around and everything is where one would expect it to be. PS is pretty well the same in that regard, only in PP we have total customisation which PS does not have, so I have one-click buttons to things I use all the time.
I think there are only a handful of features people would look to PS for if they are proficient in PP. The Healing Brushes, Vanishing Point (cloning in perspective) and a real big one for the graphic designers - layer styles. Most photographers who shoot RAW images have a dedicated RAW program, but if not then PS's RAW editor is excellent and is way ahead of the one in PP. The most lacking features in PP's RAW lab are highlight recovery and shadow recovery. These are 2 of the most important features in a RAW program and PP has neither! Also one of the most important features would be white balance tools; the white balance eyedropper tool has never worked in PP since inception - clicking on a neutral turns it to cyan. PS also has Content Aware fill for filling an unwanted person/object with background so the person/object basically disappears leaving a continuous background. In practice this is largely hit and miss; works some of the time and makes a mess other times. In fairness, it does generally save a lot of time even when it doesn't quite pull things off properly. It does often give you a headstart with less to fix up.
Looking at the MAJOR improvement in the Object Docker in PP from X4 to X5, it would be a fantastic continuation of that improvement to add layer styles in X6. This would also be one step closer to closing the gap on PS. One of the sad things in the forums is that most people do post when they have an issue, rather posting to say they are happy about something. I think MANY people are totally thrilled with the improvements made to the Object Docker, it really is a huge leap forwards.
I look forward to seeing what X6 brings our way.
Good evaluation, David.
I haven't used PSP, but have used both PP and PS for years. I'd say you can do just about everything in PP you can do in PS, including quite sophisticated adjustments, depending on your workflow.
If you're a button pusher PS has a bunch of canned filters, but many of us have found them incomplete or even destructive and avoid them. We tend to rely on LAB curve adjustments, and those work beautifully in both programs.
"The better a photographer you are the less you need a powerful image editor..."
I don't think so. These apps are really pretty cheap for 'photographers' most of whom only need PS.
The interactive magnifying glass in PS needs to be checked out for patent issues.