Customer Reviews

Corel Paint Shop Pro Photo X2 Ultimate [Old Version]

5 star:		(66)
4 star:		(28)
3 star:		(9)
2 star:		(7)
1 star:		(35)

 

 

I have been negligent in reviewing the Corel Paint Shop Pro Photo X2 Ultimate image editing program because I wanted to be sure about what I suspected when I began using it a couple of months ago. "This program is better in many ways and cheaper than the top rated Adobe Photoshop Elements version 7."

I was reluctant to believe that hunch at first. I have both programs installed on a VISTA laptop. Both installed easily and without problem. Both function perfectly without any of the crashing and buggy performance described by other reviewers. I have been using the two programs interchangeably for awhile and eventually noticed that I was opening and using the Corel Paint Shop Pro program more often than the Adobe software. That was the prompt that I needed to offer this review, but my observations do not intend to say the Adobe Photoshop Elements program is necessarily inferior--I simply prefer the Corel software and find it less complicated to use. I will attempt to tell you why.

First, the Corel home screen is easier to see. I found the Adobe Photoshop Elements screen sort of dark and foreboding. The two screens are similar in how the toolbars and menu items are arranged, but not all that much alike in how they are applied. I think the Corel program is more intuitive and logical than the Adobe system.

Both programs have all of the usual features like red eye removal, cropping, brightness adjustments and cloning. These are mostly straight forward, but the Corel program strikes me as less complicated in these areas than the Adobe.

I should admit at the onset--I have yet to master the "Layers" functions in either program. Be that as it may, I am pretty familiar with the rest of the tasks offered by both programs.

Adding images to the organizer pallet at the bottom of the main Corel window is a snap. The "saving as a copy" option in the Corel program is very helpful. Image color adjustments can be made in a number of ways in both programs, but Corel Paint Shop offers better options for changing hue, saturation and texture. I was happy to find how easily edits can be reversed with undo opportunities along the way. The image straightening and adjusting perspective features are worthy of note as is the skin smoothing and tooth whitening options. There is even an option in the Corel program to make a person appear thinner. I never thought I would use that tooth whitening thing, but I have.

I found the Corel feature called "Browse effects" to be particularly useful because it brings up a familiar outline style listing of everything the program does all in one place. One doesn't need to click around on various icons and menu items in order to find the function desired. Clicking through this "Browse effects" list brings up thumbnails that illustrate the choices involved. One could almost use this feature and ignore the array of icons and menus situated around the main window.

I have used the Corel "time machine" function a few times to give vintage appearances to certain photos and find it to be fun if nothing else. The same is true for the frames and distort features along several other artistic effect functions that I doubt most people would use very often. The reason I mention these options is to point out the presence of several functions that are really just amusing to use and probably not essential to serious photo editing.

The ability to adjust the appearance of the home window in the Corel program is appreciated, but I have not messed with that at all. I like the looks of it as is.

Oh, one more thing--adjusting the "layers" in an image may have been included in both programs as a means to humble the user. Just kidding...

If you are trying to decide which program to buy and think the Adobe Photo Shop Elements program is definitely number one you should certainly consider the Corel alternative. I would recommend you buy the Corel Paint Shop Pro Photo X2 Ultimate instead of the Adobe Photoshop Elements program Version 7 not because they are so different in what they do, but because they are so similar in almost everything else except the price and ease of use. The Corel Paint Shop software is easier to figure out and it is significantly less costly than the Adobe program. Then of course there is the matter of how I found myself using the Corel program more often than the Adobe program. I think that says something.

UPDATE(December 2009):

I recently loaded the Corel Paint Shop Pro Photo X2 Ultimate software into a new Windows 7 laptop and it went in perfectly and quickly. The program seems to open up and run faster than it did on my VISTA machine. I like it even more. Just thought you would like to know.

X2 Ultimate is faster than X2 and seems to be free of bugs. In addition, X2 Ultimate includes Background Remover 3 from Image Skill software.

My only complaint is that Smart Photo Fix applies the "suggested fixes" before I can make adjustments. Because of this I have to undo the "suggested fixes" and then apply my fixes.

Smart Photo fix works very well in dark environments but it does not work well in bright climates. Everything is way overexposed! The technology appears to have been developed in Russia where the sunlight exposure is much lower than the southern U.S.

This same overexposure problem affects "One Step Photo Fix". Corel would be well advised to return to the "One Step Photo Fix" from version 9. My clients were absolutely amazed by the one step photo fix in version 9.

Nevertheless, Paint Shop Pro X2 Ultimate is by far the best photo editor available for the price. While not as powerful as Photoshop, it is much easier to use and more powerful than Photoshop Elements 6 or 7. The only product that is close in power for the price is Serif's Photoplus X2.

This product is wonderful, it allows you to do anything with a photo. It is not a sit down and start using program and does take some time to learn. The book is well worth reading because it is a bit complicated. However, once you learn how to use it, its super simple and can easily change any photo into a great portrait.

I have owned all Paint Shop Pro versions. Recent versions had some enhancements, but also some bugs that tech support could not resolve and which still appear in Ultimate. But, I upgraded to X2 Ultimate because it claimed to support my Nikon D300 RAW files. They do open, but they can not be saved directly as uncompressed TIFF files. In fact, in this version the problem applies to all NEF files from my other Nikon DSLRs as well (though those worked fine in the previous version). The bug was verified by Corel Tech Support and I applied for a refund. It was bad enough that I had to pay $60 for a minor upgrade; but, worse, Corel refuses to refund the shipping charges I paid. So, I have to pay $9.00 for the privilege of discovering a bug that rendered this version useless in my workflow. Corel seems to have little regard for users of this increasingly buggy software.

After wasting nearly 15 hours trying to repair my computer, I went to Corel's support site and discovered that Paint Shop Pro X2 is NOT compatible with MANY computers' graphic chip sets.

True. Many faster computers use chip sets (including NVIDIA) that cause your installation and program execution to stall. My computer kept freezing and required a complete reinstall of the operating system! Yes, all my data was lost and it took me all weekend to discover that Paint Shop Pro X2 had caused this problem.

Although Corel recommends upgrading your drivers, many of the newest drivers are not compatible with this program. I have a an HP notebook that has a custom driver- not upgradable so I am out of luck!

It is truly disappointing that Corel has not updated Paint Shop Pro X2 to reflect faster chip sets. A weekend has been wasted for me and all my PSP projects are UNusable on my new computer.

Corel Paint Shop Per X2 has obvious programming errors that the support system says they will not fix. Based on my experience Corel does not care about the user and allows programming errors to be the norm. The program may appear to work on your photo, but can you ever be sure?

I was using Corel Paint Shop Pro X2 to enhance old photographs that I had scanned. Because of the photos contained a lot of detail, I scanned them at a high resolution. When I brought them into X2 some functions seemed to work, but other functions failed to work as expected. I sometimes even got basic programming error messages that indicate the application had failed.

I reported this using Corel's email support. Their only suggestion was reinstall. That seems to be their answer for any unusual behavior. I did this, no change in results. I asked to talk to a manager and they refused.

I then called the phone support line to report this as a bug. They took the report, and then called back in a few minutes saying that is was my problem for using a picture that was too large for Corel X2 to handle and it was my problem. They completely ignored the fact that the program failed to identify this as a photo that was beyond X2's capability. And, nowhere can I find the limits of X2 processing capability.

Corel should have taken this seriously because a failure in their program causes bad results. If the picture is too big for X2 to handle it should tell me that, not just produce bad results. This implies that Corel is not quality oriented, and you should be careful using the product. If this type of error is common in the product and is called a user error, the quality control for the software likely leave other "user error" program errors throughout the product.

I've been using Paint Shop Pro since version 4, and have used PSP4 and PSP8 extensively. I also have an older copy of Photoshop, version 7, which I use quite a bit. A couple weeks ago, I downloaded the trial version of PSP X2 Ultimate. As I became used to the interface, I found myself using Photoshop and the older versions of PSP less and less. There are many things to like about X2 Ultimate, and relatively few annoyances. I plan on purchasing a copy once the trial period runs out.

Most of my work with these products involves processing of images from my DSLR and scanning and processing slides and negatives. I find X2 Ultimate much easier to use than Photoshop, and more convenient to use than PSP8. Many of my old slides have taken on a magenta cast, which I find is more accurately removed by X2 Ultimate than by either PS7 or PSP8. However, the primary tool that I use to correct the color cast -- "Color Balance" is not as easy to use as the same tool in PSP8. It's been dumbed down and if additional refinements are needed, the controls left are not as effective as those used in PSP8. I have found that X2 Ultimate does an admirable job at removing grain and/or noise from images, with several different tools that can be employed. The High Pass sharpening feature is a welcome addition, and I find myself using it frequently.

X2 Ultimate does require more computer oomph, though. I have it installed on an older system running XP with a 1.2 ghz processor and "only" 768MB RAM. This is plenty of power for the other imaging software I use, even Photoshop, but X2 Ultimate definitely lags, swapping memory to and from the hard drive frequently. I use a tablet for some editing chores. X2 supports pen pressure for variable width lines (PSP8 does not, although PS7 does), but the drawn output does lag behind the cursor on my system, while the lag is negligible with either PSP8 or PS7.

The fact that X2 Ultimate will require that I either add RAM to my system, or upgrade it altogether for performance to improve is why I give this product 4 stars instead of 5.

I owned previous versions of this program and I feel ripped off on this one. Corel is not JASC. When JASC owned the program you felt that you got a nice program at a good price - they even sent out a news letter with free picture tubes, frames and tips. Now I feel ripped off. Corel advertised that you get a "Over $200 Value" if you purchased the ultimate version. Not true. The USB drive is cheap plastic, You get a trial version of Painter Essentials 4 - The upgrade is 35.00 + shipping. The Media Recovery Software you can download from the web for free. A Background Remover is included in most other photo programs for free and the Creative Content Pack is junk. You might like them if your five. I think they took the ones no one wanted and put them with this package - you have to download them on install, they're not on the disk. The last version I was happy with was JASC Version 8, it was great, but It didn't operate on Vista so I thought I would upgrade after my PC died. As to the Corel program it is a little different. Some of the features are nice but the dark interface is terrible I have large monitor and It's still hard on the eyes luckily it can be changed to the lighter interface through the view menu. Overall I haven't noticed that much new or useful for me. I wish I hadn't bought this package because it doesn't have the quality or customer service it use to have. I'm changing to Serif's PhotoPlus - it has similar features and if you need help they don't charge you to ask a question or more. Corel charges $15 and of course there is no money back guarantee.

I uses Photoshop CS 2 before and while this is a phantastic software for editing pictures, it was really shooting birds with canons.
The most pictures I make these days fall in the category of family snapshots, with the occasional landscape and some other documentary photos.
So I was looking for a more simple solution with more automation / with three kids, you just don't have the time anymore to individually tweak every photo to the max in PS. And with my wife discovering the joy of taking pictures of our kids, the picture count for this year is slightly below 3000.
X2 Ultimate has everything that I need - a quick fix button for my wife, a somewhat more elaborate but still simple tweaking capability for me and if I really need it, it also has basically the same functionalities built in as PS, when you delve deeper into the menus.
It also has a decent photo viewer and comes will all kinds of bells and whistles that I haven't tried out so far (like the background removal tool, the HDR fuction etc.).
The worklflow might not be as refined as with PS and Lightroom, but for my basic and simple needs it is a perfect fit.
The learning curve is practically non-existent if you already have some experience with other photo editing software. And it runs very fast even on my old XP machine with 1GB RAM.
I used the ancestors of this software way back in the early 90s, before I became a serious photographer and updated to the big gun PS. Now that I have reverted back to being a snapshooter again, X2 Ultimate is the BB Gun I need to shoot my birds. :)

This is an extremely difficult product to install. Painter Photo Essentials 4, which is included, is even worse and not compatible with Norton Internet Security. Running it will freeze your system. I've spent weeks trouble shooting the install and as a result have not even tried to use Paint Shop Pro Photo. Corel technical support is not aware of the problem and offers no solutions. Be prepared for hours of systems freezes and an unusable product.