paint shop pro

Phil1923 said:

However, the drop shadow tool in PSP is better than the one in PP.

Hey there Phil, I have Paint Shop Pro, X4 I believe, Photoshop CS5 and Photo-PAINT (now using X6).  I use all the tools and find that while there are reasons to use all three, for the most part Corel Photo-PAINT is my tool of choice and I guess I'll list the reasons.

Paint Shop Pro's tools are jerky, inaduaquate for professional use, specifically for N color space and real color management.  It's a great hobbiest tool and that's about it.

Photoshop has tools galore, overkill in my opinion, as is the price and the training/support cause the user to develop work flows that are awful causing many and I mean many issues.  Worst of all is the fact that it started out as a professional level photographer/color correction pre-press tool that due to Adobe developing an image display that caters to the hobbiest now we see serious issues with oversharpening and therefore ruining of the image causing mories in the output. Photoshop in the hands of the skilled user is a great tool, unfortunately skilled users are very rare and problems abound, it's too bad but Photoshop has really gone to the hobbiest in the last 5 years..

Corel Photo-PAINT certainly does not have the tool set of PS, however it supports N color space transparency, spot color support and quite frankly the absolute best display in the industry.  Yes this display requires a user to understand what they are seeing but you don't get oversharpened images from Photo-PAINT unless you really work at it.

Color correction in Photo-PAINT is just awsome and when teamed with Corel Aftershot Pro I'm as happy as one can be.  Quite frankly the tool set is more that adaquate for large/grand format and press printing. Color management is second to none and in my opinion better than Adobe, specifically the ease of use and LAB color model soft proofing.  I use it for sign work, press work and everything else only using the others to open their native file formats or to use a filter that Photo-PAINT does not have, returning the file to Corel Photo-PAINT for final processing.

Phil1923 said:

PS: What’s N color space.

True Adobe RIPs originally only saw 7 colors RGB, CMYK so any other color had to be mapped to one of the 7, for production that always meant one of the CMYK colors.  If memory serves with PS level 2 N color was introduced to support color other than one of the 7.  N color space transparency would be spot color, 9not just the Pantone) duotone, tri-tone transparency ECT.  So you can properly seperate a CMYK and multiple spot color job.

CorelDRAW itself didn't support N color space transparency until I believe X3 and then not properly, in X4 for sure properly and I believe all lenses are handled as N color space since X4 or X5.

In my opinion Photoshop is an overdesigned application and nearly useless to me.