Customer Reviews

Corel PaintShop Photo Express 2010 [OLD VERSION]

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(20)
3 star:		(26)
2 star:		(26)
1 star:		(21)

 

 

Corel PaintShop Photo 2010 has one absolutely unforgivable, fatal flaw: IT OVERWRITES YOUR ORIGINAL PICTURE FILES WITHOUT WARNING. This is ridiculous. You can't experiment, or try out features to learn the program without running the danger of ruining your pictures. As soon as you switch from one picture to another, the first picture is saved with all the modifications you made to it. No warning, no chance to change your mind. Corel knows best.

The solution, of course, is to hit the "revert to original" button before you change to another picture. But how often are you going to remember to do that? ANY DECENT PROGRAM will ask you for confirmation before destroying your original file.

The installation process is similarly constructed, making multiple changes to your OS without once asking permission.

So never mind the SLOWNESS of this thing (pack a lunch to get you through the installation process). Never mind the extreme (or so it seems to me) hardware requirements. Never mind the cutesy-poo non-standard user interface. Never mind that you really don't get very many tools to work on your photos with--if Auto-Fix doesn't do what you want, you don't have much else you can do. (And some of the tools are ridiculously worthless; for example, under Effects you get change to black and white, change to sepia, "antique", and soft focus. Wow. Frames and Edges are cute for about 5 minutes. And the Picture Tube function [more accurately called 'rubber stamp'] has no reason for existing that I can think of.) The fact that this thing overwrites your photos without permission completely takes it out of the running.

Luckily, I destroyed "only" 2 pictures before I realized what was going on. A simple confirmation dialog box would be all it took to fix this fatal flaw. It's insane that it doesn't have one.

This is a slick program with a basic set of automated features (red eye correction, teeth whitening), global conversions (b/w, sepia), and puppies (see below) that can send your pictures to a few popular social sites.

If you are interested in making only simple, yet for the most part essential changes to your pictures and are working with only a few images then please skip to the last paragraph of this review. For me, the emphasis on a "slick" interface was not worth the loss of functionality, control, or speed. For example, there is no way to resize or sharpen an image. (Please read through the comments to this review for a more detailed discussion on these functions.) You can forget about changing white balance/color cast, color space or printer profiles.

When comparing equivalent features ACDSee Photo Manager 2009 everything I tried took much longer in PaintShop. Also, in comparison to the ACDSee product, you have far fewer options for organizing and viewing and the editing capabilities are no where near as complete. However, one thing PaintShop Photo did offer was a stamp that dropped little pictures of puppies all over your image. While that was interesting I think it would get real old, real quick.

The picture management capabilities are also lacking. You can assign tags and ratings but the search/sort/group features are all but non-existent. For example, you can assign a tag to a bunch of pictures and display just those. However, there is no way to then assign an additional tag to the group of imaged displayed. Also, the only way to display images in as a bunch of thumbnails. This is good for more than a few hundred pibtures.

Even knowing these limitations I wanted this program to work well; it did not. It just took too long to do the little that it does... do. Also, it requires a minimum screen resolution of 1024x768 so running it on some netbook-sized screens will create additional issues.

Who should buy this product? Someone who needs to make essential changes to a few pictures, uploads those pictures seamlessly to YouTube, facebook, or flickr, and wants the technical details to an absolute minimum and the cost under $43. If you can stay within these boundaries then this is a great program. The two stars are due to the speed of the program and the 'unlikelyhood" that you will be satisfied with these limits.

* The "bloat" refers to what can only be using very inefficient techniques to implement the limited (albeit essential) features provided.

BTW, I feel that honest, effective reviews can take the place of first-hand experiences that are lacking in online shopping. I've always appreciated the help I've received from other reviewers and work hard to return the favor as best as I can. I hope you found this review helpful and if there was anything you thought was lacking or unclear leave a comment and I'll do what I can to fix it.

I was optimistic getting this program. I was looking for a lightweight, easy to use program for my photos. The only thing easy about this program was the installation. Everything went down hill from there.

When I started up the program it didn't give me an option to choose the area where my photo are located on my second internal drive. It scanned EVERY image on my drives. I couldn't stop it! I had to wait for the program to finish. Well, this took over 30 minutes. I only wanted my photos, not every image on my PC. So I changed the settings to remove the unwanted folders. 45 minutes to re-scan my drives again and 2 crashes! Ok, I need a break. So I walked away from my PC for an hour or so and restarted the program. It took 5 minutes for the program to re-start completely. When the program was ready all the image thumbnails were some type of generic icon, not my images. So I had the program re-scan my drive with my photos. Big mistake. 2 more crashes and another 45 minutes. Still no luck. Ok, I'm through with this. Then I tried to uninstall this program. No luck there either. My main hard drive sounded like a rocket on the take off pad @ NASA. The uninstall program got stuck at 49% for three (3) consecutive uninstall attempts. 2 more crashes. Finally I had to manually remove the files and cold reboot my system.

Sorry folks, but I had way too many problems with Photo Express. It's buggy, crashes frequently, and almost impossible to uninstall. I am not a computer guru by any means, but I do know my way around my PC and this program had me pulling hair, yelling so loud my dog hid under the bed, and my wife not talking to me until I calmed down. I hate, and I mean absolutely hate it when a new program makes my system freak out. Corel should have done more beta testing. Don't waste your money.

And Corel PaintShop Photo Express is what it is- a comfy, friendly interface for those uncomfortable with complex applications and manually managing their files.

If you have never used any photo editing software, this will probably be entirely suitable. If you have any experience with any other photo software. I feel the end results of this app do not justify the learning curve for of this distinctive program.

I haven't really bought into the idea that every app deserves its own peculiar interface, it reminds me of the early days of the horseless carriage when every manufacturer had their own set of controls and commands. How you started, adjusted and shifted a Ford had was of no help at all when you jumped into an Olds.

I suppose many people back then enjoyed the challenge of learning a new "operating system" every time they changed vehicles;' I know I probably would have been one of them.

But it's not 1912, and I don't want to go motoring, I just want to edit some photos.

So at first look I find the sleek, unique and altogether attractively different look of Corel Paint Shop Photo Express to be a huge pain in the ass. It's as if it screams, "we aren't a normal Windows app" Only, bad news: they are.

Installation- including typing the lengthy serial number (and you can't paste it in later if you've typed t elsewhere to save, as I usually do)- took about 15 minutes. I tend to not mind the length of time so much as wondering what changes it is making to my machine that I could probably live without and will then struggle to eradicate after I give up on the package- especially as it involves C++ and Directx.. WMEncoder?

On first use: searching for my photos/videos, the number is in the high thousands. And the search took forever. I suppose if I'd let it go it would be a lot easier to see how it does in fact organize them, but after 30 minutes I clicked the OK button and it halted the search. There is no way that I could see to tell it to look only in a specific place for images, it wants them all. This is not uncommon for apps like this, but again, I am much happier with my own filing system.

First discovery was that Photo Express makes itself the default photo-everything for you without asking. I use Explorer a lot in thumbnail view and it works great. Simple and fast. But without realizing what it had done, when I was looking for an image, double clicking the file opened it right into Corel. It was a shock to see the unfamiliar black-bordered viewer instead of my usual view.

So before I disabled it and reverted, I had a look - a few things are cool, it resembles the old XP "filmstrip" view, but again, with the all-new look. The images seem to take a half-second longer to load, and you can watch the image settle into focus as it comes up. And maybe it's just me, but the image did not even look as good. So back to the old way.

As far as features, Photo Express has everything the newcomer (or youngster) to photo editing might want- mostly automatic settings to correct common problems with digital photos. I think this could be quite a time-saver, but there is a very narrow range of choices. I like being able to zoom with my scroll-wheel and then drag the image around the frame, but this is hardly unique to this program. There is a nice built-in email applet, but I could not discover how to add any of my email accounts that were not Gmail or what is supposed to be the default e-mail application, in this case Outlook.

I had seen a comment regarding Photo xpress' file saving system, and that it saves an image on exit without prompting for a file name. You have to do it manually, the "save as" command automatically will suggest a name for your file as "xxxx-01.jpg" which is a nice gesture. If you do not, it will save the image with any changes, apparently overwriting the file.

However, next time you open it, even after editing in another app- you are allowed to undo all the changes at single stroke. So once again it is unconventional, but not unmanageable. I feel the entire Corel suite would be a decent setup for some, but as a stand-alone it did not impress

Other voices here have also done an excellent and commendable job of describing all the features, functions and nuance of Photo Express, I suggest you check them out. But to be honest, after as many hours as I could working with it, I went for the uninstall. And poured another cup of coffee as I settled in to wait.. well, as long as it did the task thoroughly I didn't mind. Six minutes of screens to remind you of what you are about to be missing, but when done, it seemed to be a clean removal.

I was expecting a good program but all I got was a basic photo editor that tracks photos on your computer... Utterly pointless.

This might be good for the basic person that has no clue as to how to use any advanced programs but this software is seriously lacking still. I have yet to find anything that will take lens blue out of an image or even motion blur caused by a shake or anything of the sort.

while this does have a couple nice simple things like adding tan to a person or fixing blemishes and so on it still doesn't even come close to comparing to a majority of other software titles out there.

A couple quick youtube videos later and you could be using adobe photoshop to stomp a mud hole in this programs abilities. Granted Photoshop is a rather expensive program it just can't be matched by anything else out there. I did receive this software for the explicit purposes of reviewing it and I'll have to say they really dropped the ball on this one.

edit:
They should have at least included some other features with the software for stuff like chromatic aberrations (an optical aberration in which the image has colored fringes.). Basically CA is when light hits the side of an object and the camera perceives a glare or flare off of the side of that object in the form of a red or blueish light that kind of glows around the edges, it can be other colors but red and blue are the common ones that I see a lot of in shots that I work on.

At most this is just a photo organizer with a couple other features.

When I first ran it, it hung - had to kill a process which was probably searching for photos. Not a good start.

When creating a slideshow, it crops and pans pictures in uncontrollable ways, so that heads are cut off and so on. If you double click on the picture, you can adjust the cropping, though - beware, "Apply" saves changes to the original image, not just for the slideshow. (There is an option to revert, though.) AND the edited photo is automatically added to the END of the slideshow, so you have to drag it back to the right place - not an easy task in this interface, because dragging it past the right/left side of the window only scrolls if you hit the right spot. AND after you've cropped it to suit the pan/zoom transition, you might find the transition is now different!

Titles disappear upon playback after adding music and other operations - they're still there, but you have to re-open the project to see them again. We also found that the beginning title also moved to the top randomly. And titles sometimes vanish for no reason.

There is no way to adjust timing and transitions for individual pictures - changes apply to all. If you want a certain photo to display longer, there's no way to do that - can't repeat a photo. Brilliant!

The user interface is easy to figure out, but getting to the right place in the timeline is a mess. If you click on the actual photo in the timeline, nothing happens. Click on the slider underneath and it jumps to the proportional location in the slideshow, not to the picture above it.

There are options to fit show to music or vice versa, but it doesn't fade music for you, so you have to edit it yourself using your own resources. If the music track isn't long enough, it repeats. If it's too long, some photos may repeat. If you see pictures in the playback preview which you can't see in the media list, this is why.

No options to pick the photos to show at the starting and ending templates - for the starting template, it shows the first photo and shows it again when the slideshow starts.

So, if you're not too picky, this is easy to use to create a basic slideshow. If you want just a little more control, you'll find this doesn't meet your needs.

Was it too presumptuous of me to assume that a program called "Paintshop Photo Express" might be a program that would allow me to edit and manipulate my photos? I hoped this would be comparable to an extremely light version of Adobe Photoshop. Unfortunately, that was nowhere near the case.

All that Corel's Paintshop Photo enables you to do is things that you were already able to do without it. Let's walk through the numerous features that it boasts on its box:


"Easily Download from your memory card, camera, or mobile phone"

If "memory card" means flash drive, then you don't need any program to do that. Just click and drag. And if "memory card" means any kind of camera memory card, then you can't physically do that without a memory card adapter, and those also allow you to click and drag without any sort of fancy program to do it for you. Additionally, all digital cameras come with software that allows you to download your photos to your computer (usually much faster and more efficiently than this program does), and you can't download from a mobile phone without a special connector from your phone company's store.


"Quickly find and view your photos, videos and music by folder, album, date, rating or tag"

I don't know about you, but I don't want to buy a program that's going to reorganize my files for me. That's giving the software a bit too much power/control, and you can be sure that it's going to get some of the organizing wrong. Additionally, this is going to require a lot of data input on your part for it to have the correct information with which to organize. Just organize the files yourself. It will take about as much time as it does to install, learn, and run this sluggish and unnecessary program.


"Quickly produce amazing projects using professional looking templates"

This part isn't so bad, but there are a number of cheaper programs that provide just as many (if not more) template options. There are even some websites that provide such templates for free.


"Combine photos and video clips in fun slide shows with creative transitions"

I don't know how many of us are planning on sitting people in front of our computers to show off slides, but it you are, this might be a worthwhile feature. Windows XP (and, I assume Vista and 7) has a photo slideshow feature, but it certainly doesn't boast "creative transitions".


"Let Quickfix improve photos for you"

The program automatically "fixes" your photos without giving you any control over the process. A good digital camera should do this for you in the first place and, for the more sophisticated fixes, I'd rather have some control over the process. The automated feature certainly isn't perfect, and there's no way to adjust what it does. Worse yet, it has a habit of automatically saving the changes it makes, whether or not you ask it to.


"Crop, rotate, sharpen, remove red eye, adjust brightness and more with a few clicks"

Much of this can be done with the basic photo editing software that comes bundled in most versions of Windows. The rest is more basic than one would hope for and difficult to control with precision.


"Back up and burn your photos to CDs and DVDs for safekeeping"

Who needs a program to do this?


"Upload slideshows to your Youtube account, share photos with friends on Facebook and Flickr, and e-mail photos quickly with automatic photo resizing"

Again, the slideshow thing might be useful to someone, but it's already a no-brainer to upload photos to Facebook or e-mail photos to a friend.


Though the name and appearance of Corel's Paintshop Photo Express do not suggest it, this product was designed for someone who loves taking pictures and videos yet has absolutely zero idea how to use the many basic features of a computer. If a person hasn't figured these things out twenty years into the information age, are they really going to take the time to learn how to use this program?

I really cannot recommend this software. I found things about it that bothered me immediately. First, after installing it and running it for the first time, it automatically starts scanning all the drives on your computer to import every image it finds into it's database (including images from saved web pages). I did not find a way to stop it and it really took a long time. What I'm left with is really difficult to work with.

I do not like the picture browsing capability or the organizational features. I much prefer to just use Windows 7 since I find it faster and more intuitive.

Some of the photo editing gadgets were mildly interesting but nothing that I'd use very often and nothing that hasn't been done better in other software (like Paint Shop Pro).

[...]

Sadly, this software doesn't give you anything you don't already have (if you have Windows 7 or Vista) that you can't get a better version of for free. I've decided to uninstall this software.

Corel PaintShop Photo Express 2010 has a slick looking but unconventional interface and very little functionality. In fact, common free photo editing software features much more functionality. I believe it is intended for people with very little experience with computers and no experience with other photo editing software. However, for the rest of us using it is mostly an annoying experience.

If you launch it by selecting a new photo and then right clicking you still cannot edit that photo as you can with basically all other photo editing software. You have to use the import functionality and import folders with photos. You edit photos by selecting them and clicking "Edit in Express Edit". Here you can straighten, crop, fix red eye problems, and use auto fix. However, there is no batch editing functionality, no resizing, you cannot import bit maps, no pen tool, no library of filters, no magic wand, no marquee tool, etc. I should add that by adding photos to the tray you have some limited resizing options (small/medium/large).

Windows Live Photo Gallery is a free tool photo editing tool with all those editing features and much more. I am not referring to Windows Photo Gallery which comes pre-installed with Vista and is also pretty useless. I am talking about Windows Live Photo Gallery which is free and you easily can download.

After using an editing tool in Corel PaintShop Photo Express 2010 you click the Apply button to apply it and see the effect. When you leave the editor or go to the next photo your work is automatically saved to disk without prompting you. You can restore the old photo by opening up the editor again and pressing "Revert to original". Basically, Corel Photo Express 2010 automatically saves your stuff (whether you want that or not) but you can always revert back. This is good for users who don't understand the concept of file and save. However, it makes it virtually impossible to use other photo editing software in conjunction with Corel Photo Express 2010 and you are running the risk of destroying photos. Corel Photo Express 2010 will over write your work without your explicit permission one way or another.

Other things that annoyed me were; it is slow, it sets itself as the default photo editor upon install without asking for your permission, the install took a long time, there are new updates very often, and you cannot use save as to save file/photo wherever you want on disk. You can only save to folders you have imported.

You can use Corel Photo Express 2010 to create little projects like a Photo Book, cards, collages, calendars, and slide shows. To get nice results you need to create these projects and then order them on-line (rather then trying to print them yourself). I thought that the functionality for automatically uploading pictures to face book or send photo emails was nifty but not essential functionality. When you upload to face book it asks you for your user name and password and creates an album called "Corel Uploader Photos". If you find the face book up loader annoying that functionality has some value to you but I would not pay for it.

In summary, I can maybe recommend Corel Photo Express 2010 to the computer illiterate but with reservations. For all others it is definitely a DON'T BUY.

I have a variety of digital cameras and camcorders bought over the years. My camera range from point and shoot digital to DSLRs. Me and my wife also enjoy social media sites primarily facebook and Youtube. I am a digital camera enthusiast. Photo Express is a very USEFUL collection of tools that has replaced all of my various come with the camera software with a better software experience and lots or really cool and useful tools. The more I try it the more I like it.

Some background. I am using the software on a new Windows 7 computer. I have three digital cameras all from different manufactures. Instead of searching for the old boxes for the software disc or going to websites for software downloads I instead just used Photo Express. Photo Express recognized each camera and downloaded everything smoothly and quickly. It put photos into one folder and video into another. The software recognizes cell phones, hard disc drives, memory cards, anything with media on it.

The main editing options are sparse but useful. Cropping is easy to do and allows you to crop with a fixed size say 4 by 6. Why is this important? If you just free form crop you might get any manner of sized crop say 6.5 by 7.1. You might like it but your photo lab will not be able to reproduce it. By keeping the ratio fixed what you crop to is what you will get when printed out. The main editing tool is something called 'quick fix'. I have liked the results. It will try to get a little better overall exposure balance. Nothing dramatic but a nice if subtle at times improvement to pictures most of the time. If you want more options you can click on more tools and get various options such as changing color to black and white or sepia, turning color saturation up, adding different frames and edges to the photo, and changing brightness and sharpness. Much like most point and shoots then you havbe the option of an 'auto' fix (quick fix) or a higher level of control and options using more tools

I also found the projects options very useful. You can pretty quickly make photo books, collages, and calendars. You can then output them in various forms including PDF or link to an online order service with a Corel account. I created in minutes some collages that my wife really enjoyed. I also created a photobook much quicker than I had using an online service.

Photo Express also is really handy when connecting to social media sites. I have linked with my facebook to add photos and easily uploaded video on to youtube. All without getting out of Photo Express. The software also has an option to upload to a flickr account. One more cool thing. I have a webcam built in to my laptop I am using it on. It recognizes the webcam and allows you to record video quickly and easily.

I think Corel did a great job for an underserved yet huge part of digital media households, non-expert, home users. This is the first photo software program I have used other than those supplied with cameras and it was very easy for me to explore and figure out how things work. The menus are well designed and simply by clicking on things you are taken through the options the software has. Very easy to use. On a new 4 GB ram computer the software is super-fast. For the price, you get a really nice suite of tools to share your media with social websites, do some basic yet powerful editing using quick fix or a greater level of control using more tools, and do some easy yet satisfying projects. The software is fast and has an easy to use user interface. Also with a collection of cameras you can get-rid of the various supplied with software if you choose and use just this. Recommended.