Corel Paintshop Pro Ultimate 2020

[InstrEd]

3 minutes ago, msmcleod said:

I still use version 4 on an old 32 bit Win XP box... I tried v5 when it came out, but it confused the hell out of me.

I didn't use Corel Draw for a few years and my daughter wanted to do some fire, ice storms, lightning in text and I had to google how to do it. The new version I installed but only used a little changed so much from the old copy I had. Sort of like Cakewalk here if you don't use the program for a while you scratch your head on how to do stuff you knew how to do in the past.

[InstrEd]

49 minutes ago, Brian Walton said:

Too bad you are late to the table, they have 50% off all of them for months as a response to COVID, etc.

They run 30% off with some regularity, but 50% was unheard of.

Honestly worth full retail and more.    But I also do a lot of visual work.

I don't do much visual stuff anymore. Did some brochures for work etc and we use to have advertisements in several magazines but alas those all went to the internet now. But I still like to dabble in the visual media for myself.

[Promidi]

7 hours ago, StudioNSFW said:

I found this program named "Photoshop" that does a great job with raster graphics editing.  No problem with ads either. 

Subscription software....Miss a payment and you're in demo mode?  I think I'll pass....

[Promidi]

7 hours ago, James Foxall said:

FWIW I tried all the tricks multiple times - the ads always come back.

I must have done further things.....  maybe I stopped a service or something.   It's been so long.  Whatever I did, I see zero ads from Corel.  Note: I do have an IT background, so I would have checked places most users would not even consider looking.

That being said, users should not have to jump through this many hoops to stop ads from any company. 

They should give you a single check box that you select to stop all ads.  That check box should be on the ad itself saying "Don't show any more Corel ads ever"

[Tezza]

23 hours ago, Brian Walton said:

I think it feels and looks clunky and archaic.

Own but never ever use it.

Strongly prefer Affinity Photo for pixel based editing.  The 50% off sale ended yesterday though that put it at the same ~$25 price.

However, Affinity does still have a 90 day trial as far as I know right now...I'm guessing that would tide one over until $35 -40 sale at the very least.

 

As for the spam, Corel is terrible about it, maybe not magix level, but then again who is?

Affinity Photo is about the only paid image editor I would consider jumping to now, so bummed I missed that sale! But $80.00 (aud) full price is not too bad. They also have Publisher and Design, you can switch between using them using their StudioLink technology, real handy for desktop publishing and a great alternative to Microsoft's products which I already own but have 2007 version, very tempted to get Photo and Publisher.   

[abacab]

I still use an old copy of Photoshop Elements as my current go-to editor for quick edits. I know my way around it and can get a lot of stuff done quickly.

Also have a current copy of CorelDraw Graphics Suite, and have been rather fond of the included Corel PhotoPaint raster graphics program like forever. It's a good toolbox for some serious editing! Does CMYK, while Adobe Pjhotoshop Elements is limited to RGB. I also have a very old standalone copy of the full Photoshop if I ever need some serious lifting...

I never really got into Paintshop Pro, but I do have the latest edition due to a good deal from Humble Bundle. Probably need to spend more time with the tutorials, but in general the workflow is a bit different than I'm used to. The popularity of the program begs me to check it out some more.

 

[StudioNSFW]

4 hours ago, Promidi said:

Subscription software....Miss a payment and you're in demo mode?  I think I'll pass....

Actually, I saw the writing on the wall and licensed the whole CS6 Master Creative Suite Back when the subscription thing was  starting up, so I am good, if frozen at CS6.  One of my exes has an .edu email address so she can get the Student deal on Creative Cloud which isn't bad for what you get. 

My $.02 is that in my case Photoshop is part of a larger ecosystem and workflow and The Gimp or PSP or whatever has no integration with Illustrator, InDesign,Premiere, After Effects,  DXC collection or Capture One. CorelDraw is actually a pretty good vector program but if you do graphic stuff seriously (like for money), the Adobe license is either just part of doing business or something your boss pays for. PSP was always the crappy little brother to CorelDraw IMO, but I've also had some Adobe License or the other since 98 or so and PSP never came close to Photoshop for functionality so I probably haven't touched an instance of it since ...around 1998.

If you look at the subscription as a way of financing the inevitible upgrade license evey few years it actually isnt that big a difference.

Hell, anymore, most people don't need any more of a photo editor than what ships with Instagram or Snapchat anyway.  Whoever owns the IP for Corel is just milking the old cow in the barn for as long as they can.

[Brian Walton]

11 hours ago, StudioNSFW said:

Actually, I saw the writing on the wall and licensed the whole CS6 Master Creative Suite Back when the subscription thing was  starting up, so I am good, if frozen at CS6.  One of my exes has an .edu email address so she can get the Student deal on Creative Cloud which isn't bad for what you get. 

My $.02 is that in my case Photoshop is part of a larger ecosystem and workflow and The Gimp or PSP or whatever has no integration with Illustrator, InDesign,Premiere, After Effects,  DXC collection or Capture One. CorelDraw is actually a pretty good vector program but if you do graphic stuff seriously (like for money), the Adobe license is either just part of doing business or something your boss pays for. PSP was always the crappy little brother to CorelDraw IMO, but I've also had some Adobe License or the other since 98 or so and PSP never came close to Photoshop for functionality so I probably haven't touched an instance of it since ...around 1998.

If you look at the subscription as a way of financing the inevitible upgrade license evey few years it actually isnt that big a difference.

Hell, anymore, most people don't need any more of a photo editor than what ships with Instagram or Snapchat anyway.  Whoever owns the IP for Corel is just milking the old cow in the barn for as long as they can.

I also own CS6, and while the subscription model is lame....the price of CS6 was even worse.

However after switching to Affinity - CS6 feels very clunky.  It doesn't even have live filter layers (something Affinity had before Adobe)

 

In terms of the echosystem, the studio link of Affinity between photo, designer and publisher is what Adobe wishes they could do.  As they continue to update it (free to customers thus far),

 

I do like Premiere Pro CS6.  Though Davinci Resolve it easily its equal or superior if you have a really good machine to run it on (and it is free)

Edited June 25, 2020 by Brian Walton

[mkerl]

I use PSP, ACDsee and Silkypix. I like the dephts of PSP and I'm quite happy with HDR Editing. Raw batch editing is fine with Silkypix, Accdsee is comfortable and great for Management of your Collection .  Aftershot Pro 3 is nice for development , too,

Ads is not a real problem, the different Workspaces in PSP 2019 / 2020 are great to speed up your workflow according to your tasks. 

I like it.

Cheers ?

[RobertWS]

11 hours ago, Brian Walton said:

I tired it but once you swtich to something like Affinty, I can't image even re-opening the program.    It can do very good things, but needs refinement .

 

 

I don't know if you tried Gimp after their last major GUI redesign.  You can turn on single window mode and it acts like a normal program!

[TheSteven]

13 hours ago, StudioNSFW said:

I found this program named "Photoshop" that does a great job with raster graphics editing.  No problem with ads either. 

I subscribed to Adobe for years.  It's a great package if it generates income for you (as when I was a web designer/programmer) or if you have someone else is paying the bill.  Otherwise paying $600 a year (or $360 if you can hold out for the new user or we miss you specials) for something that evaporates the moment your subscription expires is foolish. It's like if Waves billed you for WUP on a monthly or yearly basis and if you missed a payment all their plugins stopped working.
It's their commercial customers that let Adobe thrive with their subscription scheme, that and Adobe's ruthless constant vigilance of their licensing.  Large firms get audited (where every workstation gets scanned for Adobe software) on a regular basis for potential license abuse.

[StudioNSFW]

No Argument.  If I didn't use the software commercially it would have been a waste of money to even spring for the perpetual CS6...but I knew I'd still be using it for more than the three years that the break even point vs the subscription model expense. At the time I had never even heard of Capture One so Photoshop and Illustrator were pretty much "Must Have", and I use most of the rest of the Creative Suite too.

Truth be told, Photoshop plays second fiddle to Capture One for most things "Photo" for the last few years around here and muscle memory is  probably my biggest driver in always reaching for Photoshop for raster editing. If I need to crank out something fast (and I almost always do), I'm not trying to figure out which brush does what and how well it does it and how to work it.  .  As an example,  yesterday I had to shoot out some retouched images for an artist l am doing a lot of work with (She's competing for a Maxim Magazine cover and I shot most of her book).  Zit removal, nipple hiding  and minor touch ups  etc were  probably less than a minute per image in Photoshop. All the rest (color correction,  cropping etc) happens in Capture One and with batch processing its a few minutes for the session. Metadata and Digimark and even integration with online proofing gallery all are part of the batch process in C1 so the combination works well for high volume production.  I don't typically do a ton of filters outside of a few favorite recipes in DX/NIK collection

I actually hadn't even looked at Affinity so don't know what I am missing I guess. So far as PSP and the Gimp, I know enough to know I don't personally want to bother learning them any more than I have. If someone else has a workflow that is PSP to CorelDraw to ...I dunno...whatever, it's great if it suits your needs and its a tool that stays out of your way.  

 

[Tezza]

DXO photolab is another one to look at. I use an older version, DXO 11. It's not much of an image editor and neither is it a lightroom type replacement (although the newer version might be better) but what it does do is fantastic. If you work with RAW and just want to polish photos, it's the best tool for that I've found by a long shot. It will also work with other file types. Lens correction, noise reduction, extracting detail from RAW, HDR, seems to be its strong points.

Edited June 25, 2020 by Tezza

[Brian Walton]

9 hours ago, StudioNSFW said:

No Argument.  If I didn't use the software commercially it would have been a waste of money to even spring for the perpetual CS6...but I knew I'd still be using it for more than the three years that the break even point vs the subscription model expense. At the time I had never even heard of Capture One so Photoshop and Illustrator were pretty much "Must Have", and I use most of the rest of the Creative Suite too.

Truth be told, Photoshop plays second fiddle to Capture One for most things "Photo" for the last few years around here and muscle memory is  probably my biggest driver in always reaching for Photoshop for raster editing. If I need to crank out something fast (and I almost always do), I'm not trying to figure out which brush does what and how well it does it and how to work it.  .  As an example,  yesterday I had to shoot out some retouched images for an artist l am doing a lot of work with (She's competing for a Maxim Magazine cover and I shot most of her book).  Zit removal, nipple hiding  and minor touch ups  etc were  probably less than a minute per image in Photoshop. All the rest (color correction,  cropping etc) happens in Capture One and with batch processing its a few minutes for the session. Metadata and Digimark and even integration with online proofing gallery all are part of the batch process in C1 so the combination works well for high volume production.  I don't typically do a ton of filters outside of a few favorite recipes in DX/NIK collection

I actually hadn't even looked at Affinity so don't know what I am missing I guess. So far as PSP and the Gimp, I know enough to know I don't personally want to bother learning them any more than I have. If someone else has a workflow that is PSP to CorelDraw to ...I dunno...whatever, it's great if it suits your needs and its a tool that stays out of your way.  

 

Huge fan of Capture One for RAW editing myself too.

Don't love the price and the costly upgrade path.  But I'm on the latest and greatest and it is indeed the best RAW tool on the market.  

Anyone that shoots Nikon, Sony or Fuji should certainly at least be using the Free Express program.

[StudioNSFW]

7 hours ago, Tezza said:

DXO photolab is another one to look at. I use an older version, DXO 11. It's not much of an image editor and neither is it a lightroom type replacement (although the newer version might be better) but what it does do is fantastic. If you work with RAW and just want to polish photos, it's the best tool for that I've found by a long shot. It will also work with other file types. Lens correction, noise reduction, extracting detail from RAW, HDR, seems to be its strong points.

Actually what I called DX/NIK is properly the DXO suite, which used to be called NIK collection. Been using that stuff for quite a while and it’s very good.

[Tezza]

51 minutes ago, StudioNSFW said:

Actually what I called DX/NIK is properly the DXO suite, which used to be called NIK collection. Been using that stuff for quite a while and it’s very good.

Their older program used to be called DXO optics Pro which i had from version 8 to 11, I think it went to version 15. Now they have DXO Photolab 3, same program but new name with added features. The Nik collection are a set of plugins that they also make that can be used with Lightroom and Photoshop. They can also be used with the DXO Photolab 3 photo editor but don't come with it, they have to be bought separately.

I've not used the Nik Collection but I've got Viewpoint, another plugin they make, everything they make is top class. Providing your camera and lens is supported by their software, it really is magic. Viewpoint straightens out buildings to the correct perspective regardless of whether you shot it at wide angle or telephoto. It doesn't matter how complex the geometry is in the photo, it just grabs it and presents it exact.

I just went to their site and they have discounts on both products until 30th of June. I would grab the upgrade and probably the Nik collection if I were doing some serious photography but I'm not at the moment so I'll stick with DXO optics pro 11 for now. Maybe if that scammer I recently bought a laptop battery off and he didn't deliver, has refunded me on Paypal, I might grab the upgrade.

Edited June 25, 2020 by Tezza

[Wibbles]

I've got Paintshop Pro 2019 installed, but always end up using a beta version of Paint Shop Pro 5 from 1998.

[Lizzie Foster]

I have a few programs, including PhotoShop Elements.  But I usually end up back with Microsoft Digital Image Suite (2006).  It still works on Windows 10 and is easy to use, for the most part.  That said, I would love to have PhotoShop, but buy the time I could talk myself into buying it (hobbyist, not pro) it went subscription.  No, just no.  If I were a business? Sure.  It is deductible.  It is probably worth it.   Corel was on my list to try, so I ordered this.  Hopefully the suggestions above will work to remove the pop-ups and it will be useful.  If not, back to Digital Image Suite......

[mettelus]

2 hours ago, Wibbles said:

end up using a beta version of Paint Shop Pro 5 from 1998

+1, 2020 was the first I have used since PSP5 (which was still JASC at the time, and the manager lived next door to me in MN). PSP5 has "saved the day" so many times for touching up ppt files (often moments before going live). That version is only 17.4MB, lives on every thumb drive I own, and has most of the "go to" features Windows never offered that folks need in a pinch. The clone feature has even been handy... our CFO was looking at a presentation sweating the wrong check boxes being marked, so I grabbed his laptop, jacked in my thumb drive and switched things around. The "How are you doing that??" gave me a smirk, but PSP5 continues to be my go to for what features it has (which is a lot more than people would assume, given its "age"). Layers, histogram, deformations, filters... pretty much unchanged in 22 years over what existed then (that it has embedded).

That particular software makes me very critical at times of things that proclaim "game changer," even with DSP. DSP matured rapidly a long time ago, but integration and AI are still seeing movement.

[Finnbogi Ragnar Ragnarsson]

Of Corel products I mostly use Aftershot Pro. My daughter is a subscriber of Adobe CS  (she’s a designer/web designer and a much better photographer than I am) and was pleasantly surprised how good Aftershot is. I don’t think the rest of the Corel products are a match of their Adobe counterparts but suffice for me. I can’t justify the subscription price.