PSP vs PS

[Iamimdoc]

Would experienced users of Paintshop Pro and Photoshop opine as to whether either program is clearly superior or inferior to the other for advanced hobby photographer use?

The functionality I am referring to would be the stuff a hobbyist might be expected to use day to day in preparing a photo for display. I know this is a bit vague but the functions of each program are just too long to list and I am not enough of an expert to even know what to put on such a list.

As an example, is one program clearly better/worse for such things as HDR or stitching photos together? Are there features that many users would expect that are not available in one program or the other? Are there glaring deficiencies in one or the other?

Sorry for the vagueness but I am pretty sure I don't even know what I should enquire about.

Thanks

[LeviFiction]

Photoshop is better at stitching as PSP does not have any stitching tools. It has basic distortions but nothing that automates the process. Of course there are free photo stitchers so most haven't considered this a huge drawback.

Unsure which is better at HDR.

Photoshop is harder to use in a number of cases, and in a number of cases it's just as hard or easier to use. Essentially Photoshop has fewer full effect automated tools than PSP does, so you have to create the effects manually. So it depends on what you're going for. But in some cases Photoshop's tools are a bit more advanced that PSP's. And in other cases they are exact mirrors of each other as they are standard effects.

I imagine, for the most part, most photos will use the standard tools for preparing a photo. So I'd put them on equal ground for the hobbyist unless you're getting very fancy.

Photoshop has more tools. More filters. And performs certain things differently than PSP. Such as gradients. Undos. History manipulation. Smart objects. Paths. Channel manipulation.

Essentially they're not fully comparable. There are many tutorials that rely on only the most basic of tools and can be performed in both PSP and Photoshop with very few differences. And there are tutorials that you cannot replicate across because the tools are different. So, find what you want to do. What tools you'll find most useful. And work from there.

[brucet]

Here's an old web site that does a command by command table. http://video-books.net/paintshoppro/tut ... ionary.htm

For me the biggest difference is that you 'own' PSP where as you 'rent' PS.

The 'best' software is the one you know best. No point in renting PS if you don't use, or understand, 90% of its features.

regards

[hartpaul]

You can find many comparisons of graphics programs on the internet and different bias about each one depending on who you ask and on what forum.

1. A "dictionary" partially comparing the available features of each program
http://video-books.net/paintshoppro/tut ... ionary.htm

2. Overkill comparison:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compariso ... cs_editors

3. Corel's comparison table:
http://www.paintshoppro.com/static/psp/ ... rix-en.pdf

4. A brief summary:
http://itstillworks.com/corel-paint-sho ... -6655.html

5. A brief history of PSP
https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/arti ... nearly-won

6 Videos both boring and funny and incomplete:
Photo Editing | Adobe Photoshop Lightroom vs Corel Paintshop Pro X8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JtigCCbH7Xw

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AWtGXTxlyw0

A working comparison:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hUHc5ryMXIM

Another working comparison "Blend If" in PSP, Affinity Photo and Photoshop which I find most useful.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V8S46bs-9y8

You can have a small family car or a Rugged 4 wheel drive all terrain vehicle. Both will get you to the local shopping centre with little difference in time. However when going off road best to go for the vehicle with more features and off road reliability.

To get a reliable answer you need to be able to ask people that have worked regularly with both programs and that is very rare.

[JoeB]

I tend to agree with LeviFiction that, for most hobbyists, PSP likely does the job just as well as PS. As he also said, there are excellent free stitching programs out there so it's overkill to use PS (and pay for/rent it) for that purpose.

And, for me, one of the biggest advantages to PSP is that its workspace is incredibly customizable, which is not the case with PS at all. You can add, remove and/or change the position of the various tools AND menu items. You can create or record scripts and then bind (add) them to a toolbar for one-click automation of steps you perform regularly. You can create your own specialty toolbars. And you can create, save and reload those custom workspaces such that you can have different customized workspaces for different types of projects.

I have PS CS6 as well as several versions of PSP. I used to do custom commercially printed projects for clients, and used PSP exclusively for those projects (I got CS6 back when PS did a much better job of content aware work but PSP now seems to do just about as well). So IMHO PSP is easily as good as PS for most work, except perhaps for professional graphics people who need very accurate color calibration and perhaps a few advanced tools I've never needed or tried in PS.

[photodrawken]

Would experienced users of Paintshop Pro and Photoshop opine as to whether either program is clearly superior or inferior to the other for advanced hobby photographer use?

As far as I'm concerned, the answer is what image editor will "be there for you" as you gain experience with editing photos.

In other words, just about any image editor will do an OK job when you're just starting out. As time goes by, if you become more involved with photo editing, the limitations of the various programs will become an ever-increasing burden -- sophisticated processing will either be impossible or excruciatingly tedious. So, even though you might not use most of the features of Photoshop or PhotoLine right now, those features will be there when/if you do need them.

Aside from the sheer quantity of available features, the other thing to keep in mind is that advanced image editors like Photoshop and PhotoLine not only let you do the simple things easily and quickly, but also allow you to do very sophisticated things easily and quickly.

Don't assume that you have to decide now which program will be the one you use forevermore. Most of us have used several image editors over the course of time, and have graduated to new programs as our skills and needs have changed. The great thing about it is that the advanced editors (Photoshop and PhotoLine), as well as the more basic editors (PaintShop Pro and Affinity Photo), have free trials so that after you get comfortable with a certain program you can try another to see how it compares to what you're used to.

I want to emphasize that the question of "superior" is very much a subjective one. If a certain program has capabilities you like, but is so awkward to use that you cuss it out every time you use it, that program is obviously not "superior" for you.

[brucet]

One thing that you also need/should keep in mind is the availablity of 'help' out there. You can Google tutorials for PS and get a zillion of them. Not so with PSP. You can walk into a book store and find many PS books. Not so with PSP. Further education systems are also far more likely to have courses for PS than any other editor. So it can often come down to not the program itself but the support that that program brings with it.

PSP offers a good balance of basic features and advanced features. And a helpful forum!

regards

[Klapoham]

I've been using photoshop for many years, but having started to use Paint Shop Pro only 4 months ago I can say that I prefer it much more:)

[JoeB]

I've been using photoshop for many years, but having started to use Paint Shop Pro only 4 months ago I can say that I prefer it much more:)

I'd say that applies to most of us here. But, for helping out the original poster, could you be more specific about the things you like about PSP compared to Photoshop that make you like PSP more? That would be useful, particularly because you are also a long time Photoshop user so can give an informed perspective.

[Quantus5]

One thing that you also need/should keep in mind is the availability of 'help' out there. You can Google tutorials for PS and get a zillion of them. Not so with PSP. You can walk into a book store and find many PS books. Not so with PSP. Further education systems are also far more likely to have courses for PS than any other editor. So it can often come down to not the program itself but the support that that program brings with it.

PSP offers a good balance of basic features and advanced features. And a helpful forum!

regards

Completely agree with what you are saying. But an interesting question to ask is how much help/info is good enough? Photoshop has a lot more training material, but I counted once and PSP has at least a good 300 quality YouTube videos (granted across several versions), but not bad. A lot less books, but there are several good ones, and one book I really love, "PaintShop Pro X6 for Photographers", by Ken McMahon. It's really the only book I need.

So agreed that PhotoShop has a lot more training material -- but it really is a bit of a mare's nest. Yes PS has the advantage in this area, but really how big is it? I would argue not that big. Once you get to a fairly high level of skill with PSP -- you can actually easily watch a Photoshop video or read an Internet article and translate the "idea" of how to do something and then easily do it in PSP.

Do I wish there were more yes, but my main reason I like PSP is that it pretty much gives you everything that PS has and is a lot -- and I mean a lot less expensive. We can argue about "Best" all day long, where "best" is purely a subjective term. What is absolutely clear is that PSP is the value leader without question.

[Quantus5]

Another way of tackling this questions is asking what does PSP have that PS does not, or vice-versa? PS users will be hard pressed to answer, and to be fair so will PSP users. In fact, I ask this question all the time to PS users and basically I always get the deer in the headlights look, and they go into some "subjective" answer -- like it must be "better" and have more features because PS is the market leader.

There are a few factual things I have learned from being on a Photography forum.

I know that Photoshop Elements only supports an 8-bit color space, while both Photoshop CC and PaintShop Pro support 16 bit. So if that's a show stopper, then PS Elements is clearly out.

With Photoshop CC you can edit directly in the CYMK color space. A valuable feature if you work for a print house, but worthless for the other 99% of the population that uses photo editing software. So nothing to compel me there.

Photoshop CC supports focus stacking directly in Photoshop, although you can use free software in conjunction with PSP to accomplish the same thing. So a little bit more work, but easy workaround if you're interested in focus stacking.

Really the answer is that I don't think there is much of a difference between the two, and it is really, really hard to come up with major feature deficiencies in either piece of software.

I think in the end -- for me I feel like Adobe uses it's market leader position to gouge its customers from a pricing perspective, and I completely refuse to be gouged. Like I said we could argue over "subjective" features all day -- but hard (non subjective) data -- is hard to come by. I just don't think there is anything significant you can do in one that you can't do in the other.

One thing I liked about Corel and the new release of PSP 2018 was their focus on speed, reliability, and usability. I had X9 and was going to wait ~2 years to upgrade again, but once I saw the feature set of 2018 and their focus on speed, reliability, and usability I upgraded to 2018 in a heart beat. If Corel will just keep focusing on those three things I'll upgrade every year. Actually just keep focusing on performance and I'll probably upgrade every year.