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David Milisock said: Brian,
Brian,
I've been playing around uisnd a combination od Paintshop Pro and Photo-PAINT X5 and now can't live without both. Now that i have a granddaughter and get phone images and all others having both works well. Th hue map is great in PSP but i stil need PP.
Hi David,
what are the main features you like to use in PSP which you prefer over, or don't find in PP? I have looked at each trial version of PSP in the last 5 years or so and it always seems to be packed with new features. A lot more than PP, sadly. However, I always end up just sticking with PP as I much prefer the layout, the speed at which I can do things and the more logical placement of features. I didn't like the layer palette in PSP (3 separate componentsfor one layer is such a space-waster compared to a single layer in PP or PS which still shows a thumbnail, title and clip mask icon). I also found the menu items less intuitive:there are 3 menu items which are normally covered by only 2 in other programs. I also found the controls in dialog boxes to be fiddly and the dialog box previews to be small and hard to use. For example, from memory, if you want to use an eyedropper to take a reading in say the Levels diaog - you cannot click on the image on the page to do so! You have to click on the relatively small preview window image and this is unacceptable for me. I also found if you select 'preview on image' (instead of only getting a small preview in the before and after window) the program was relatively slow. Having said all that PSP did have some great features such as a proper full screen Mesh Warp, a really good noise removal tool, lens correction tools, a proper healing brush and several others.
I guess it will vary from one person to the next. For what I need to do - I correct colour/brightness/contrast, manipulate body shapes (digital weight loss or relocation), smooth skin, add special effects from time to time, separate a subject from its background to then change the background, etc. I find PP is very fast to get the job done. I have found nothing better than PP's Cutout Lab for separating a subject from its bacground. PS's new masking tools are good, but not as good in most cases (even though they are very fast to use at times) and PSP's similar tool was not as accurate or featured when I tested it on the latest trial of the program. The tool that removes unwanted elements from an image was nowhere near as accurate as Alien Skin's Image Doctor plugin or PS's Content Aware Fill. Also, I find PP's tone curve tool to be fantastic and better than the competition.
What is the Hue Map feature you mentioned? I don't remember seeing that one.
Best regards,Brian.
Brian said:what are the main features you like to use in PSP
You may have guessed this but as you know color is something that I'm doodling with so the features I'm looking at first have to do with color. BTW color management in PSP X3 is application based because it's geared toward home users but you easily get IDENTICAL DISPLAY in Photo-PAINT X5 or older, PhotoShop 7 or later and PSP X3.
I don't want to bull$hit you PSP X3 is a $100 tool and as that a damn fine one but guys like you and me will need both PSP X3 and PP X5 and since one of my Christmas presents to the family is scanning some old family photos and framing a few but providing print sheets of many others having the TWO TOOLS has improved my satisfaction wit the end results. Some of the tools in PSP X3 are not real sophisticated in their appearance but they are geared toward simplistic use, but a user with a calibrated display can get some fine results, some not obtainable without PSP X3, some not obtainable without PP X5 and some not obtainable without having both.
Under the adjust menu
Color / channel mixer - fade correction (is real nice for old pics) and then red green blue
brightness contrast has many available sub menus the curves are not as sophisticated as PP.
Hue and saturation has colorize (?) hue saturation and lightness is nice, v ibrancy is a bit lacking as I believe you shouldhave that and saturation in the same dialog and the hue map is weird to ge tused to but with some exploration it becomes a quick fix for BAD SNAP SHOTS.
There are a tone of features and I mean a ton such as smooth skin, red eye removal (which I think works better than PP) digital noise removal. IMO for $100 it's a no brainer just get it.
maybe I need to revisit PSP again? It is a tough one for me in that I don't find anything lacking in PP for the things I do with images. On rare occasion I use PS for the Healing Brush and then immediately return to PP to keep working. If only they added a proper Healing Brush to PP (in addition to the current Retouch Tool which has other very useful purposes) then I work never need to leave PP. PS has some very sophisticated tools, but they are tools that I personally rarely ever use. Another good useful tool it does have is Auto Align Layers. That would also be a nice touch for PP.
Brian said: If only they added a proper Healing Brush to PP (in addition to the current Retouch Tool which has other very useful purposes) then I work never need to leave PP.
Hi B,
Like yourself, I use PP as much as I can.
There are some tempting features in PS, hopefully Corel develops similar equivalents to things like perspective edits, layer styles, a better color replacer effect (in meantime I use this free plugin for PP), and a healing brush that works like PS's.
Other hopes I have are easily savable tools that can be accessed from hotkeys (numpad). I find myself fiddling with parameters too much, and want one key press access to saved tools.
Jeff Harrison said:Like yourself, I use PP as much as I can
I think th eprograms need to stay specialized, PP is great for print but for the hobiest PSP has the ease of use features and the soft display.