Customer Reviews

Corel Paint Shop Pro 9 [OLD VERSION]

5 star:		(19)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

To be honest Adobe Photoshop is the top pro paint/photo package to use because of the amount of extras and plugins that it can use but I find myself turning to Paint Shop Pro very often. Let me list the reasons why.

1. It is quicker than Adobe Photoshop.
2. It has enough functions to do most of the things I need.
3. It is easy to use.
4. The learning curve is not steep.
5. The package is smaller in hard drive size than Photoshop.
6. It can do the vast majority of things that Photoshop can do.

PS has a very steep learning curve but is the only true Pro package out there, however how much of PS you think you will use depends on the type of work you are doing. I would recommend PSP just on the basis that you can get it working right out the box by just learning the basic interface.

I use this package an awful lot. I even do complex composites with it. In short - simple.

One of the reasons I originally started buying Paint Shop Pro years ago, was that it had more options than other graphics software costing 4 times as much. Adobe Illustrator and Macromedia Freehand being amongst the software that I did a comparison test with.

Like most software you can download a demo from their web-site to see if it does meet your needs. And since everyone's needs are a bit different, you cannot always go on what these reviews say.

I find it to be a slight improvement over version 8.0 in the graphic editing department, but since I do not use if for photo-editing I cannot comment on that aspect of it.

Also, unlike some other users, I have not run into any bugs. I just bought a new computer and it works like a charm. There is going to be a bit of a learning curve if you haven't ever used any graphic editing software before, but I figured Paint Shop Pro was easier to use than the competition when I ran my own tests. That was years ago, and you should demo them all to find out what you prefer.

Good Luck!

Paint Shop Pro 9 continues to innovate with new Art Effects brushes bringing subtle color mixing, impasto, and runout effects to a wide range of new brush options. These are brush effects only available in Corel Painter or RightHemisphere's DeepPaint which cost 50-100% more. Yet PSP continues to serve the photo finishing market well with several new photo fix filters including a wild and wooly displacement filter. And Jasc continues to improve the interface with tabs for open image files and new color swatches. Goto Adobe Photoshop only if you need precise color control and infinite layering variations - otherwise Paint Shop Pro 9 will meet all your needs at 1/5th the price.

I use the unpatched version 9.0 and I haven't experienced any problems with it at all. I have no problem with lossless rotating and I have no problems saving pictures after red eye removal. To say that it is so full of bugs that it is unuseable is complete nonsense in my experience. PSP 9 is a powerhouse and you need a decent system to run it properly. I highly recommend that you check the system requirements and that you have a system that meets the "recommended" requirements, not the "minimum" requirements. That means running XP and at least 512 Mb of RAM. I am a graphics professional and I find Paint Shop Pro much faster and more intuitive to use than Photoshop. Paint Shop Pro rocks and I highly recommend it to anyone who works with graphics.

Paint Shop Pro ver 8 was the last best hope of a great image editor. Version 9, since Corel took it over, is slower, more gimmicky and harder to use. The browse/thumbnail viewer takes much longer and the edits just dogs. To compare I used ver 8.1 on the same machine and overall v8 is much snappier. Tech support with JASC (the original owners) was reasonable and prompt, Core's Tech support needs work. As with another product I use, Bryce v5 (a 3D editor), after Corel took it under their wing it's become software I don't really enjoy using anymore.
PSP ver8 I would have given 4.75 stars. Sorry Corel you did not do this product a favor.

I have used Paint Shop Pro 7 Anniversary Edition and Paint Shop Pro 8 on Windows ME, and Paint Shop Pro 8 and 9 on Windows XP. I also have Adobe Photoshop Elements 2.0 and Corel Painter Essentials on my computer.

I must say that of the above programmes PSP Version 9 is the one that really gets used. I love the vector capabilities which are particularly useful for drawing lace diagrams, and I also like the digital camera noise feature and One Step Photo Fix. However One Step Photo Fix is not always the best answer for fixing photos and it's well worth exploring the other tools if your picture doesn't quite come out as you want it to - and sometimes it's necessary to run One Step Photo Fix two or three times.

I'm also not too happy with the length of time it takes for my Plugins folder to load in PSP9. When I launch PSP8, the Plugins are there listed immediately, but in PSP9 just as in PSP7 they take several minutes to load into the computer RAM. I also find on my current computer which has Windows XP Service Pack 2 with 1 GB RAM that PSP9 does freeze and crash from time to time but PSP has always done that on any computer I have owned so I find it is essential to save your graphics regularly as you work - as is recommended in nearly every online graphics tutorial.

Many problems with crashing and freezing can however be resolved by ensuring that you have a good graphics card and at least 512 MB, preferably 1 GB or more of RAM. I found a lot of my problems with PSP7 on my old Windows ME computer disappeared when I increased the amount of RAM although ME's system resource issues are such that problems do remain with using any graphics programme on the Windows ME operating system. I don't have these issues on my Windows XP computer.

It's very disappointing that Corel have chosen not to provide good support for PSP users, but many people thought that that would happen when Corel purchased PSP from Jasc. However there are many online resources and PSP graphics schools and it should be possible to find answers for most problems.

That said I enjoy playing with the new Art Media tools and working with photographs, and I really don't use the other graphics packages I have on my computer system at all - PSP was the first graphics programme that I learned thoroughly and I'm so comfortable with using it that I wouldn't really want to move to anything else. I do think it's an excellent computer graphics programme and will fulfil the needs of most users more than adequately.

The best part of this product is the new tool to remove digital camera noise. I think it is a must have feature for editing any photo taken in low light area. You will be amazed to see the results. The other star feature is the one touch photo fix.

I'm a professional graphic designer, and I've been using PSP (and Adobe Photoshop) since the early versions, and I am very disappointed in this version. I bought the upgrade from 7 to 9, mainly because I was interested in the scripting ability and the new paint brush functions.

This new version is more complex than it needs to be, extremely awkward to work with, and it has been heavily "Corelized" (in case you don't know, recently Paint Shop Pro was purchased by the Corel Corporation). One of the most frustrating things about this version are the docking toolbars and palettes--enough to drive one mad as they are difficult to position and they take up too much space if they're docked and are constantly in the way if they're floating. The browse display screen now takes up the whole work area and you have to move the floating tool palettes around if you want to scroll the thumbnail folder up and down.

I also dislike the changes that they made to the text functions--again, more awkward to use, and now you have two palettes to have to bother with, and I'm still trying to figure out the changes they made with the alpha channel functions. I used to be able to delete them with the click of a button. I can't now!

Despite these and many other shortcomings, I can't deny that the new version has a lot of cool features, such as the one button auto photo enhancement and scripting ability. I wanted this scripting function that could automatically do some of the repetitive things I do to images. This feature saves me a lot of time. So I guess, PSP 9 is not all bad. But they could have added these new features seamlessly to the old layout. Instead they had to go and change just about everything.

I just wish that Corel would have left Paint Shop Pro's integrity intact. I used to use Corel's Photopaint extensively--and it seems to me like they've tried to make Paint Shop Pro 9 similar to that program, which was also hard to use and not very intuitive.

I believe that Corel overlooked the fact that one of the great things about Paint Shop Pro has always been its simplicity. I've always appreciated the fact that it takes me fewer key strokes/clicks to accomplish the same thing in PSP that I could do in one of the other graphic programs, which is why Paint Shop Pro has always been my primary design tool.

So, I'm sorry to report that I'm giving this version two thumbs down. And believe me, I'm going to keep PSP 7 on my computer.

Paint Shop Pro is by far one of the best if not the best graphics/photo editing programs out there. Upon first use it's kind of overwhelming, but after just a few hours of playing around, or reading some of the surplus of online tutorials the possibilities of this program are endless. You can edit photos or any graphic for that matter easily, or start from scratch and create a totally original piece of digital artwork! If you own a previous edition, honestly the new editions arent worth shelling out the cost of all new software. On the plus side once you buy this program it doesn't get quickly out-dated requiring you to buy all new software every time you turn around.

Paint Shop Pro is simply the best graphics application available at any price. Photoshop CS sits almost completely unused in my computer, while Paint Shop Pro is used daily. It does eveything I could want it to do and even does photo editing tasks that simply can not be done in Photoshop. It is too bad that Corel has purchased this company. However, a program like this that is so easy to use and has such excellent documentaion, rarely needs any tech support. The best thing about this program is that the tasks are done just the way intuition tells you to do them rather than making you dance about a menu of complicated choices that never get you where you want to go. The majority of users who are even vaguely familiar with a computer will be able to sit down and use this program with no special instruction or preparation. One caveat, though, is you need a system that works and Windows ME just does not fit the bill...for this or any application.