Corel Paintshop Pro X4 v/s Adobe Photoshop Elements 10

[ashish]

Hi,

I need some help in deciding between Corel Paintshop Pro X4 & Adobe Photoshop Elements 10. I have been reading mixed reviews on the web and am a bit confused. Need some help in deciding which one to purchase.

Thanks in advance for all your help.

Cheers,
Ashish

[FrankMi]

Hi Ashish, what are your criteria for a post processing package? For example, should the learning curve be for the short term or the long term? Is the availibility of educational tutorials and training videos important?

[ashish]

Hi Frank,

I would be looking at it from a long term perspective. The price difference between the two is negligible in India. Stability, features, ease of use and support would be an important criteria in decision making.

Look forward to your views.

Thanks,
Ashish

[FrankMi]

Hi Frank,

I would be looking at it from a long term perspective. The price difference between the two is negligible in India. Stability, features, ease of use and support would be an important criteria in decision making.

Look forward to your views.

Thanks,
Ashish

I'm not to sure about the market share for Corel Paintshop Pro X4, but I have Photoshop and Lightroom and from what I have seen from Adobe, there is a wealth of free training materials on the web for their products. Given their products widespread use, you can always easily find someone that knows Elements on CiC. If you ever were to outgrow Elements, almost everything you learn by using it is applicable to full-blown Photoshop.

Hopefully we'll get others to that know Paintshop to chime in with some of the practical differences.

It might also be helpful if you were to mention some of the issues that concern you from what you read in the reviews so that those points can be directly addressed.

[MrB]

Ashish,

Your problem is likely to be finding someone who has used both programs thoroughly and competently, so that they can give you a truly fair assessment.

It seems that, on forums like this, Photoshop is the one referred to most frequently, so I would guess it has a much greater market share (and therefore user support) than does Paintshop. However, this is obviously a self-propagating process that does not necessarily mean it is any better - people see "Photoshop" mentioned everywhere, so most newcomers are likely to choose that. It is a bit like the cameras - CaNikon have the market share, other very good cameras rarely getting a mention on general forums, so that the majority of beginners veer towards, or are steered towards, one of those two big brands.

All I can add is that I have been using X4 for a few months, having bought it as a bargain, and so far I have found it to be quite user-friendly. Up to now it has never crashed (PC: AMD triple-core 1.8GHz, 4GB RAM, Windows 7 64-bit), any problems have been solved using on-line help files, and it does have a very extensive set of features (many of which I have yet to discover!). However, as I have not used Photoshop, I cannot compare them for you and I cannot know which is better.

Philip

[DanK]

Ashish,

I faced exactly this choice when I switch to digital about 5 years ago. At that time, you could download a free trial of both paintshop and elements. My recollection is that [I]at that time[I], Paintshop pro was a more powerful program than Elements, but that was several editions ago, so that might not be true. I bought Paintshop, and I found it met my needs at the time.

However, what others say about user communities and online resources fits my experience. It is a lot easier to find information about the Adobe products, and most of the users with whom I exchange tips use them. I finally switched to a combination of Lightroom and Photoshop CS5. There are lots of people who use the combination of Lightroom and Elements as well.

Dan

[Manfred M]

Unfortunately for all the others, Photoshop is the "gold standard" for post-production work and all of the other vendors really have a limited market share. I would suggest Elements, just because of the easier progression to Photoshop later on, if you decide to go that route. While the user interface is considerable different between Elements and full-blown Photoshop, the underlying terminilogy and algorithms are the same.

[ashish]

Thanks for your thoughts folks... Looks like Photoshop Elements might be the better option keeping in mind that i might want to move to Photoshop CS in the long run. Having said that, do you folks think that Lightroom 4 might be a better option to start with than Elements 10? Do let me know your views. Thanks.

[Manfred M]

Thanks for your thoughts folks... Looks like Photoshop Elements might be the better option keeping in mind that i might want to move to Photoshop CS in the long run. Having said that, do you folks think that Lightroom 4 might be a better option to start with than Elements 10? Do let me know your views. Thanks.

I use Lightroom, Adobe Camera Raw (ACR) and Photoshop (CS6). Each has its strengths and weaknesses; they seem to share the underlying code base. ACR is bundled with Photoshop, so you really get the two packages in one. Some of the other users may have a slightly different take than I do.

Lightroom - primarilty a volume production tool. Where it really stands out is in classifying and cataloging images. It has some great automation features and is a good way to apply some generic adjustments to a number of images. As an exaple, if I shoot dozens (or hundreds) of images under similar conditions and want to apply the same adjustments to all of them. Lightroom is your tool. There are some basic editiing tools that allow you to tweak and image without getting into Photoshop.

Adobe Camera Raw - not just for RAW files. It is a good tool to use for making global adjustments to your image in an non-destructive manner. You can quickly adjust curves, brightness, contrast, etc. over the whole image. It has a nice lateral chromatic aberation removal tool built in. Many (not all) of these functions are also available in Photoshop.

Photoshop - as stated in the previous paragraph, you can make global adjustments here as well; but the real powes is in its masking functions and the use of layers. I primarily use Photoshop to tweak parts of the time image, rather than the whole image. It has automation capabilities as well, using "Actions".

So, as you can tell, there is a great deal of overlap between the three programs. Which you use, really depends on the type of photography you do. If I were a wedding photographer, I would be using Lightroom a lot more than I do. ACR I primarily use on RAW files, but that is just because I happen to work that way, and Photoshop is used for detailed , local adjustements (even though global functions do exist).

If I were to use only one piece of software, it would be full-blown Photoshop, just because is does everything; but not necessarily as quickly or automatically as some of the other products.

[ga6742]

I started out with photoshop cs3 at $600. I also saw bargains on Paintshop and photoshop elements. After trying all I just don't get the the pricing for photoshop. I am very stubborn and I just won't pay, what I believe is too much, for a product no matter how good it is. I have found very diverse and very good user materials for paintshop pro. With the advent of Aftershot pro, I don't find myself using adobe products at all now. If Aftershot Pro evolves in a positive way, I think adobe market share will fall or they will come down in price.

[jcuknz]

Photoshop I gather was the 'original' programme and as such got a head start on the opposition. PSP was orginally shareware but developed into a for sale programme. I didn't get PSP until the Anniversary Edition which was v.7AE. I have used PS7 and PS CS and compared to PSP they are unfreindly and clumsy but as mentioned above it is the "Gold Standard" and anyone intending to get into the business should start with Elements and then graduate to Photoshop, there are other Adobe products which get mentioned as 'the way to go' which I have ignored to date. But I gather from blog comments that there are professionals using PSP.
If you are a clever person who is willing to remember key strokes then you should find PS good but I don't and prefer to have a button to press rather than a keystroke combination.
If you do pick PSP there is a user group www.pspug.com with people to help you.
Until you get into the esoteric aspects I doubt if there is much you cannot do with PSP as PS to sort out your photographs or manipulate. The key question is pro scene or self scene in the choice. The question of shooting and handling RAW maybe another question but since I don't shoot RAW I don't know if it needs to be answered.

[russellsnr]

Hi, I use L/R 4 along with P/S CS5 on a computer that I like to use just for photography but I also have PSE 10 on this computer I use for everyday. If I was starting from new I would go for the L/R4 & PSE 10 option, WHY?
(1) they are for what they do very good (2) The launch price on L/R 4 was the selling point for me (3) PSE 10 can also be found very cheap even PSE 9 to start with (4) So many FREE tutorials online as well as here on this forum. (5) IMO L/R 4 & PSE comliment each other and are once you get stuck easy to use.
As I say always JMO.
Russ

[tclune]

The question of shooting and handling RAW maybe another question but since I don't shoot RAW I don't know if it needs to be answered.

I think this is potentially a significant issue. I use PSP, but I do my .NEF prep work in Capture NX2 (View NX2 would be almost as useful for this if you shoot Nikon. I'm sure there are equivalent programs for other cameras.) PS does not read the full camera settings in the .NEF file, but has evolved a very competitive approach that makes working with raw data reasonably pain-free. PSP is not nearly as good at reading .NEF data, so you have to work a lot harder to get to ground zero if you only use PSP for your processing.

However, if you use the manufacturer's raw reader and output 16-bit tiff once you have done your tone-mapping and the like, PSP is perfectly acceptable for all the more complicated manipulations. I should add that PSP supports most PS plug-ins. I use Topaz Labs DeNoise 5 and Detail 2 to do my adjustments on noise reduction and USM-style sharpening, so PSP is fully as usable as PS for those things -- and it costs about $40 instead of 15x that. But, if I were going to open my raw data in either PSP or PS, I would opt for PS. FWIW