Corel PaintShop Pro X9 Ultimate (Old Version)

PaintShop Pro has been around for ages and is the software PhotoShop would love to see disappear from the marketplace. It's the number 1 app in it's category in my opinion, beating PhotoShop in affordability, ease of use, utility, speed, and quality. I have used quite a number of different PaintShop Pro style apps, from free programs like Gimp and others to the super expensive programs like PhotoShop. None of them compare. PaintShop Pro's tons of image alteration functions are extremely fast, accurate, and easy to use. PhotoShop and Gimp are slow, cumbersome, and awkward to use in comparison. I make use of all the advanced features found in PaintShop Pro. I own several versions of it, and have used it since it first came out as shareware many years ago. Originally, it was far behind the competition, but was always very fast. However, over the years it's become the top in it's class. I use it for simple photo cropping, advanced photo alteration and touch up, but I also use it for creating vector art and pixel art for use in professional software packages. I love the fact that there's a "Save Copy As" feature which remembers it's location independent of the "Save As" feature's location. This allows me to maintain a source image in one location, and then save altered copies of it in another location without having to change folders all the time. This is extremely time saving for the work I do, and is a feature most other software lacks. The vector drawing functions in PaintShop Pro are quite unique. They are capable of producing extremely professional results. When I need to make a logo, for example, where all of the lines and curves need to be precise, and need to be resizable without pixilation artifacts, then PaintShop Pro is my go to app. It's perfect for this. It really shines in it's ability to make logos, and other precise 2D objects. You can easily stretch lines, change their appearance, change curves, cut lines, combine lines, change shape colors, shape gradient fills, etc., countless times because they remain as vector data, not raster data. The layering abilities allow you layer raster data with vector data to produce some really complex artwork that can be used for brochures, web art, software splash screens, etc. The pixel editing features of PaintShop Pro are fantastic. If I want to design small images that need precise pixel editing, PaintShop Pro is my go to app. With the snap to grid, and snap to guide options, you can make sure your pixels are all within exact locations on the pixel art you're working on. Of all the apps I've used, Gimp is perhaps the closest in feature set to PaintShop Pro. PhotoShop lacks a lot of the features of PaintShop Pro that I rely on. PhotoShop's photo alteration effects, while comparable in quality to PaintShop Pro, are noticeably slower. While Gimp has a lot of the features in PaintShop Pro, it's slow and awkward to use, it's interface is messy, and it's photo alteration effects are very noticeably poorer in quality. Gimp also doesn't have true vector art functions like those in PaintShop Pro. It's frustrating to use PhotoShop or Gimp to make logos or do pixel art work. While I could use them for most photo editing, there's no advantage in that area, PaintShop Pro is faster with quality comparable to PhotoShop. The only negative I can think of is that PaintShop Pro sometimes crashes when doing really complex work with lots of layers, vector art, etc. Make sure you save your work periodically. I have also had PhotoShop crash, Gimp crash, etc. All of them can crash at some point. PaintShop Pro does pretty much everything PhotoShop does and then some. But it's laid out so differently; if you're used to using PhotoShop, you'll find yourself hunting around for things in PaintShop Pro, thinking you can't find them in PaintShop Pro because they have different names or work so differently that it's not obvious where they are located in the app. There are a few photo effects that PhotoShop has which PaintShop Pro doesn't have and vice versa. Nothing major though. If PhotoShop was a little cheaper, I might recommend it as an alternative to PaintShop Pro, but considering it's super inflated price tag, there's no way I could ever recommend using PhotoShop over PaintShop Pro, unless money means absolutely nothing to you. It's not at all better in any way, and actually has less features. Why pay more for less? It makes no sense. The people at Adobe would love to see PaintShop Pro go away for this very reason. Adobe is currently losing a lot of users to Corel's PaintShop Pro because of their new very costly software subscription model. Since that started, I have noticed some very obviously fake 1 star reviews popping up about PaintShop Pro, with completely inaccurate information in them, made by people who obviously have never used the software before, but who also actually bought it. Very strange indeed. Who would buy the software, not even use it, then make a fake review about it on Amazon? Where are these reviews coming from? Who would do such a thing? The "Ultimate" version of PaintShop Pro is essentially the regular version of PaintShop Pro except that you also get an additional DVD with a bonus pack. The PaintShop Pro app that's packaged in the "Ultimate" version is exactly the same as the normal version. If you don't see yourself needing the extras, why get it. I Happened to buy PaintShop Pro Ultimate from Amazon while it was on sale for the same price as the normal version, so I bought it. I have yet to use the additional material found in the "Ultimate" version's bonus pack, so I won't comment on it in my review until later when I look at them. I am currently using PaintShop Pro X9 (update 3) in Windows 10. It is by far the most stable version of PaintShop Pro when running Windows 10. I found PaintShop Pro X8 would crash a lot in Windows 10. If you have PaintShop Pro X8 and you are using Windows 10, I highly recommend upgrading. There are a few new features in X9. The most useful new feature for me is the new Gradient Fill tool. This is something other similar apps had for some time, which was sorely missing in PaintShop Pro. The new Smart Capture screen shot feature is also pretty handy and works well. What's missing that I wish PaintShop Pro did? Unlike some versions of PhotoShop, PaintShop Pro has absolutely no support for stereoscopic 3D photo processing. I have a lot of stereoscopic 3D MPO photos I took with my stereoscopic 3D cameras which I would like to process as stereoscopic 3D images. While PaintShop Pro can open stereoscopic 3D MPO files, it doesn't process them as 3D photos, it opens them as 2 separate monoscopic images. You can't view them in 3D or edit them in 3D. After they are opened, you need to process the right and left images independently each as separate monoscopic images. You can work with them in this way, but it's cumbersome, and time consuming. If you need to work on stereoscopic images, you'll need something else. While certain versions of PhotoShop have some limited support for stereoscopic 3D photos, it's not it's strong suit; it's missing a lot of features you will need if you are serious about stereoscopic 3D image processing. Unfortunately I don't know of any Paint Shop Pro style app that has full support for stereoscopic 3D photo processing. The batch processing feature in PaintShop Pro is very powerful. If you need a dozen giant photos resized and changed to a different file format for a website, this is easily done in just a few mouse clicks. You can even have complex scripts run in batches on multiple files. PaintShop Pro is a great image editing package. It requires a bit of learning to get the handle of its many features, but it's time well spent. I highly recommend it. It is well worth the price, capable of producing effects found in software costing many times more.

Many, many features. Only used the photo adjustment capability. I need to copy thousands of color slides on a dedicated device to convert slide image to a digital file. The inexpensive copier (Wolverine), and even others that cost a thousand dollars, require adjustment due to files coming out to light or dark, or color tomes are wrong, especially on indoor shots taken with flash, or just light bulbs I had used Photoshop Elements 5 for years, including my PC that I upgraded to Windows 10. However, Microsoft decided to install a major upgrade to my WIN 10 system last month, and whatever they did to the OS resulted in Photoshop Elements crashing, and could not be repaired. Elements 5 was of course designed for an OS of several generations ago, so it was nice to have it run under WIN 10, but that came to an end. New versions of Elements have issues, as other Amazon reviewers have noted, as well as the much higher price, so I decided to try Paintshop Pro. Some Amazon reviewers have complained about Paintshop due to unhappy experiences, but I think some are due to technical issues with their PC, possible incomplete installation of the software, and in some cases discomfort in learning the Paintshop way of performing operations, vs,.their former favorite software. Paintshop works quickly and efficiently on my 3 year old HP PC running quad core 64 bit 3ghz processor with 6GB RAM. . This software is divided into several sections- you click on the one you need, then only the appropriate options show up. (Other sections are for creating greeting cards or albums, or other creative stuff and artwork). Easy to use. I did not have to read the .pdf manual, although information is immediately available on screen via help option. By the way if you have a fast printer, and lots of ink in your cartridges, you can print the full user manual- I believe I looked over around 400 pages! Even the clone tool, (took a few tries to figure out how to use), was very easy to use. I had some kind of blue spots on my 50 year old slides, and decided to try to remove them. Use clone tool to select an area near the problem spot, then move a displayed circle over the bad area and click, causing the defective area in the circle to be replaced with the same background color and texture selected earlier from a nearby part of the slide. Although I have not yet tried, this software has facial recognition features so you can find photos in your collection of files containing specific individuals that have been photographed, but maybe you forgot when and where the pictures were taken, and do not have time to sort through hundreds of digital files- neat technology, and can't wait to try. update after several months i observe regular popup advertising boxes from this company trying toupsell me to their latest version which may have cute new features for some, but useless for cleaning up digital photos. so annoying, i may delete this software and search for an alternative product without spam.

Preliminary--Installed it and started playing with it. So far, so good. This was the "old" version, and includes AfterShot 3 so I feel like I got a good price. I was looking for something to supplement the Nikon software that comes with their DSLR cameras. I played around with PhotoShop (and Illustrator a bit) at work years ago, never LightRoom, and I have used GIMP forever, but was hoping for something a little easier to use for simple stuff. I like that this works with the G**gle NIK collection which has some nice tools but is a little goofy to use standalone. This helps quite a bit there. Not sure yet if this adds much otherwise, or even if it makes anything easier. I found a few tutorials that suggest a little of what this can do with practice. I'm getting the feeling that digital editing is just as fiddly as darkroom work was when I learned a little of that years ago, but easier than working in the dark. It feels like it will take me a long time to get to know how to use this. I'll try to remember to revisit this review in the future when I (hope I ) know more. For now, probably worth $40.

It seems there is a virus in there. Difficult to use as a result.