The two offerings are described here:
http://www.sonymediasoftware.com/products/showproduct.asp?PID=989&keycode=3425

The only down-side to Paint Shop Pro X (now owned by Corel) is that it's a dumbed-down shadow of the earlier versions of Paint Shop Pro. It seems to be aimed at users who want to correct flaws in digital photos, rather than to function as a robust drawing (graphics) tool as it once was (eg., vers 6 and 9.)

As a "picture fixer" it works well. As a drawing program I find it confusing to use, with weak help menus and little by way of an intuitive user interface.

I imagine the change has been made so that it won't compete with Corel Draw, and I suspect that we'll see the end of the PSP product line shortly. Just my hunch.

Jack

Jack W
"The only down-side to Paint Shop Pro X (now owned by Corel) is that it's a dumbed-down shadow of the earlier versions of Paint Shop Pro. It seems to be aimed at users who want to correct flaws in digital photos, rather than to function as a robust drawing (graphics) tool as it once was (eg., vers 6 and 9.)"

I use Paint Shop Pro 8. Are your comments (about PSP X being dumbed down) applicable to just the version incorporated in the bundle under discussion, or do you believe even the "free-standing" regular price version to be dumbed down as well ?

Tinle:

I'm speaking of the "stand alone" version. I haven't used vers. 8.0, only 6.0 and 9.0, and have no familiarity with the bundled materials. My impression of the bundle, however, based on the adds I've received via email, is that the PSP in the bundle is no different than stand-alone vers. X

My impression of vers. X after using it for a month is that the focus is on photo enhancement rather than drawing. It does a good job of enhancement, in my opinion. The auto enhancement has been improved over vers. 9.0 and the tools for manual manipulation of the photo image are great, but I still tend to retreat to vers. 6.0 when I have serious drawing work to do.

My comment is entirely subjective, of course. We all tend to stick with what works for us, and I'm no exception. I find vers. 6.0 to be a very effective graphics tool for what I do, vers. 10 less so.

Jack

I have to say that in earlier versions that had a 'one stop photo fix' button, the improvement to photos was pretty good, usually. With PSP X, the one stop photo fix just seems to make everything over-bright with a horrible yellow tint.

I have the Corel Draw 12 suite (not sure how that fits in with the buyout etc) and I'm happy with it.
http://www.corel.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=Corel3/Products/Display&pfid=1047024307335&pid=1047022690654

d/l the trial version and give it a spin

Corel Draw has hardly anything to do with the Paint / Photo editing applications. It's a vector-based illustration / layout application. I use it daily, and have done so for over 10 years. I'm waiting on my upgrade to version 12, I've been content with 10 for awhile now.

Photoshop has always been my raster editor of choice, but I've been tempted to try Painter IX (9). I have never even installed Paint Shop Pro when installing the Corel Draw suite.

PumiceT:

I think you are replying to my comment (maybe?) although I'm not sure how you are attempting to come across. FWIW the Corel Draw 12 suite has Corel Photo Paint 12 in the bundle and that's the reason I mentioned it in this particular thread. I was speaking more to the overall tone of the thread and giving options to the original post.

Cheers

KB

Boomhower...

I was actually referring to this:

"I imagine the change has been made so that it won't compete with Corel Draw" which someone else posted (no time to check who it was at the moment). I don't think there was ever a chance that Paint Shop Pro would compete in any way with the Draw element of the Corel Suite.

Believe me, I LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE Corel Draw, and wouldn't use Illustrator unless my career depended on it (which so far, it hasn't).

I don't know enough about Corel Photo Paint to comment on it, I'm assuming it's very similar to Adobe Photoshop. If it's anything like an SAT (test), I wonder if Illustrator is to Draw as Photo Paint is to Photoshop. Meaning, cheaper yet better. I may never know, I'm too hooked on Photoshop.

As to the analogies made to Corel Draw and Illustrator, PhotoPaint is the equivalent to Photoshop.

I have used Photoshop on occasion but still prefer PhotoPaint. I haven't seen anything in Photoshop that I can't do in PhotoPaint but the PP interface is easier - at least for me.

Interesting! I have all major versions of Paint Shop Pro from 3.14 to X. The painting aspects of it are really pushed down in the UI and help. Some of the wizards I think are substantially better than the versions in 8 and 9, but I hate, and I mean hate, the Corel Photo Album browser which took the place of the utilitarian browser built into 9 and prior versions. I was hoping at first that this would turn into a route for me to upgrade Vegas 5.0 to Vegas 6.0 +DVD. Corel seems a little more generous in direct upgrade sales offers than Sony has been. Regrettably, it is only the dumbed down versions of Vegas in these bundles.

As a side note, Interesting that these two should do business together. I have to wonder if Corel is looking to jump into the audio and video space to compete head to head with Adobe. (Premiere and Audition, formerly Cool Edit Pro) Or more interestingly, is Sony looking to get out of the PC software business and courting a buyer publicly?

Joe

Sounds to me like this is just a package deal... not really any type of workflow deal.

No matter what program you use to alter a file... once you save it, Vegas reckognizes the new version. I would like to see Vegas reckognize .psd layers and break them up individually/automatically or have some type of After Effects communication.

Automatic Duck is (supposedly) working on a Vegas communication tool but I haven't heard much about it yet.

PumiceT:

No worries....

I really like the suite as well. As has been mentioned in this thread, Photo Paint is very powerful and a bit more user friendly (to me anyway) than Photoshop. And when you compare $$ to $$ you get much more in the suite versus spending much more on just Photoshop without the graphics capabilities.

KB