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.
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.