Customer Reviews

Corel Photo & Video Pro X3 Bundle [Old Version]

5 star:		(16)
4 star:		(26)
3 star:		(24)
2 star:		(15)
1 star:		(18)

 

 

Check online reviews also. No improvement over X2's slow performance. Lot's of crashes, eats up system resources. Corel very slow in responding with fixes. This is another "not ready for prime time " release.

I have to agree that since Corel took over, this product has gone downhill. I've used PSP since version 5 and the problems have really gotten worse with X2. Going forward my only choice is to get PhotoShop.

I've experienced the crashes and slow performance other people have mentioned - especially after the 12.01 update. My initial issues were the program complained all the time about paths not being found. Contacting tech support didn't get me far beyond the "use this utility to uninstall the app and follow these instructions." Initially, this seemed to work. But this was a false sense of security because the problem would appear again later on. Then it got worse. The app started crashing when I tried to use certain common functions - like Paste As New Selection!!! This rendered the app unusable. So I went through uninstalling it, deleting all registry entries and folders --- AGAIN! A reinstall seemed to work. Then I applied the 12.01 upgrade, and it's back to crashing. This time it's crashing before it even get to the application! The app has been rendered totally useless.

So once again, I'll do the uninstall thing and reinstall the original from the CD and not install the upgrade.

Heed this warning: DO NOT INSTALL the 12.01 upgrade! This seems to be the downfall to making PSP completely unusable.

Hopefully I'll be able to continue using the 12.00 version until I'm able to get PhotoShop.

I have used PSP since the old JASC days. I think version 5 was my first. I think version 6 was the best. I still use PSP because I'm used to it, but I may just have to bite the bullet and learn something else. I shoot Pentax, and the first thing I learned about X2 was that it did not accomodate Pentax raw. I was waiting for X3 to fix that, which it may have, although about half the time, the software shuts down instantly after opening the photo and exercising about four commands. X3 also appears to strip the EXIF data from the saved version of the image, which is rather frustrating. There is an option box to check if you want to save the EXIF data, but it doesn't matter if its checked or not.

I keep hoping that Corel will get their act together on this and put out a decent version. I've been hoping that for the last three versions, but nothing good seems to be happening. I suppose one could argue that you get what you pay for, but Corel should be able to do a lot better than this version. If I had used the money I paid for the last three versions, I could have come close to getting Photoshop. I suggest saving your money unless you can get it for less than ten bucks.

First, let me say I work with photos a lot more than video. I wanted this product to compare to Photoshop and to take photos from the camera, to editing, to video slideshows.

The first issue is the fact that I did not receive a Photo disc. As a result, more than half of the reason I bought it was compromised.

The second issue was that I had major issues with the Video disc. The program crashed when I tried to load my media library. Once I got a file loaded for more than basic editing, I wanted to overlay music. The problem was that the audio file skipped and was unlistenable. I was very disappointed and had planned on rewarding this product with one star.

What changed it to 3 stars?

Well, I still don't have a Photo disc, but I decided that I would just rate this product on what I had. I got up this morning and decided to try out the software one more time... Well, I can happily say that they had updates available that fixed all of my video disc related issues. The updates were a bit of a pain to install because they do not automatically close the software, which was required for the update. I had to figure out how to do that when the software had not completely launched. I figured it out with some trial and error and I got everything updated.

I went back to the program and decided to build a slideshow from a bunch of different types of photo files (jpeg, tif, bmp). They loaded up very quickly to my surprise. I then dragged them to the bar and put them in order. I then decided to push my luck and grab an audio file. I played it and there was no longer any skipping!! I then added some transitions and then created a movie. It worked like I was hoping it would.

The manager also gives you plenty of ways to save/share the movie. You can save it as video, save it to disc, save it to youtube, save it to Vimeo, and they also have a section for saving it to a mobile device.

Anyway, the product is now what I wanted with the exception of the missing Photo disc. It can create slideshows from my photos and save them to the hard drive, disc or to a portable player. Since I have not used video editing software in a while, I was surprised by how easy it was to get up and running (after the update).

I can't say that I highly recommend the program because half of it was missing. However, I did give it three stars because I expect to use what I do have quite a bit for creating slideshows and cropping and editing video. Just make sure you install the updates!!!

UPDATE: I received a new copy of this program from Amazon. This one has the Photo disc. I installed it and installed the updates. The photo program, to my surprise, actually works with my Canon CR2 files (raw). It has several features, too. There is an "Express Lab" for quick edits and a full editor when you want to spend some time editing the photo. I have Photoshop Elements and CS4 and if you are familiar with those editors, this program is easy to adapt to.

I am very happy with this program now and it works great for taking photos/video from the camera to editing to video/slideshows with ease. My computer is at the bottom of their spec requirements and it runs both the photo and video editors without crashing. For the price, I think it would be hard to do much better.

I bought the X2 Photo & Video bundle for about $50 during one of Amazon's recent sales. The upgrade path that has been offered by Corel from the X2 bundle to the X3 bundle is currently very expensive by comparison. At the time of writing I can upgrade either of Photo or Video X2 individually for about $70 each in Corel's online store. There doesn't seem to be any upgrade path for the entire X2 bundle. Paying to upgrade each X2 product individually works out to about the same as just buying the X3 bundle anew.

I experience frequent crashes in the X2 version with the latest updates installed. I see someone else's review here is already commenting on crashes in X3. One of my other beefs with the Photo suite is that it still does not claim to support 48-bit color throughout the application, which can be pretty important.

So as someone who already owns a copy of the X2 bundle for now I give this a thumbs down. If you are a new user you should know that it's not a bad suite for the price. Corel could be doing much better, though.

Bought Video Pro X3 with Photo Pro X3 to upgrade an older version of Photo Pro X. The Photo Pro X3 is a great upgrade to Ver X and I am very pleased with it.

The Video Pro X3 software I found was not as full featured and easy to use as my older Roxio Creator 2009 software. This software would not burn disks with my HP DVD lightscribe drive even though the drive worked fine with all the other programs on my computer. There was no fix or help available from Corel for the problem and a request for help went unanswered. My computer exceeded all the hardware specifications listed for this product.

I have removed Video Pro X3 from my computer and do not recommend this product.

I was very pleased to see that this bundle was being offered to Vine members to review. I knew I could make good use out of this fast! The same day I received it I installed the first disc with no issues. I grabbed the second disc which looked identical to the first but the packaging sleeve was different & it clearly stated it was the PaintShop Photo Pro disc & the serial numbers were provided. Upon installing this disc I was asked if I was sure I wanted to uninstall Corel Video Studio. I was confused & figured I'd put in the wrong disc seeing how they looked the same. So after trying each disc two times I came to the conclusion that I got a bum bundle with two of the IDENTICAL discs.

No biggie really says I, I have been given a friendly little letter thanking me for taking the time to review the product & if I have any problems call this man at this number at this extension. So I do this. I try for almost TWO weeks! I NEVER speak to a human. I leave voice mail messages leaving my email AND my phone number. I even tried called the regular Corel customer service number. For this, you can be charged a $15 service fee! Imagine that! You need installation help for example & you have to dish out $15 more! Needless to say calling the regular customer service number got me nowhere.

I have wasted enough time & am totally disgusted with this company. I don't understand how they can treat anyone this way let alone people they know are flat our reviewing their products!
If I had paid for this I would be enraged. As it is, I am pissed at all the time I have wasted.

I never used the Video part of the bundle & I am uninstalling it after this review. Hopefully I am able to uninstall it without issues. I noticed other reviewers mention that they had there computers freeze when they opened the program. I am so NOT going there! I don't even want to take the risk. So bye by corel you suck!

Okay so I have a fairly up to date system with an AMD Phenom X2 processor, 4gigs of ram, a sapphire 512 MB HD 4850 graphics card, windows 7 64bit and all the bells and whistles you can get for a fast and reliable PC and I have to say that when I saw this product online, I thought the price was great. So I purchased it. I love the photo editing but however, when I tried the Video software I was a bit disappointed. First of all, the photo software is quite fascinating. It's a great product to edit photos and make slide shows. Second, I was not too satisfied on how the editing process worked for the Video pro. It got a little frustrating to use as far as shortcuts go. Also it would freeze or maybe crash at some point or another.

Pros: Great photo editing software

Cons: Video editing is a pain and it's like you get what you pay for. Though the templates and new blue effects are quite decent but that's about it.

I am writing this review after watching Steve Jobs' October 2010 announcement for Apple's iLife '11, that includes iPhoto and iMovie. I am usually a Photoshop user and I have used a variety of video editing packages, but not very heavily, including two which I found more intuitive from Roxio and Pinnacle (i.e. Pinnacle Studio), as well as various simple MS Windows Media programs.

First I'll review the PaintShop Photo Pro X3. The original review copy came with 2 Video Pro discs (one of which said PaintShop Pro on the sleeve and therefore had an invalid serial number), instead of a PaintShop and a Video Pro disc. I contacted Corel and they immediately sent a copy of PaintShop Pro by express mail. Amazon then resent the Photo and Video Pro Bundle and once again it had 2 Video Pro discs. So now I have 4 Video Pro discs (2 with correct serial numbers) and 1 copy of PaintShop Pro (kindly sent from Corel). So check that you get the right discs in your box. Corel's product manager was very responsive. I told him that I hoped he didn't have a big disc production problem, but apparently he has.

Installation was easy, but VideoStudio was very slow to load, and I felt nervous when it said configuring Direct X which is graphic system software (If Direct X is installed and working why configure it? If it needs upgrading, then say upgrading and ask me if I want to do it) and QuickTime (for which I have the latest version). I also don't know why I need to click the Finish button - if it's finished it can close the application itself.

PaintShop Pro's default "skin" is Graphite Workspace, which is gun metal gray. It maybe OK for a gamer, but personally I like a white background, so I deselected the Graphite Workspace option (I suggest it ships with the white background option). There are many preferences that can be set. The program has 3 main modes - the first mode is Organizer. This is similar to Adobe Bridge and enables you to browse rapidly through pictures. The next mode is Express Lab which lets you do simple editing like cropping, straightening, brightness, contrast, red-eye fixing and color balance. This is similar to Adobe's Camera Raw. The third mode is the Full Editor. This is like Adobe Photoshop or the open source application, GIMP.

Google's Picasa and Apple's iPhoto are easier for simple editing tasks because they don't have separate modes for the simple editor and the browser (compare with Express Lab and Organizer). In particular, they make it easier to straighten pictures by using a grid. Like Photoshop, PaintShop Pro has a range of filters and effects. I have slow, large disks on my system and if they went to sleep sometimes the software crashed. Adobe Photoshop does not crash in a similar environment, so I deem the software a little less reliable than that from Adobe.

I enjoyed using PaintShop Pro and it's a good alternative to Adobe Photoshop, but I wish O'Reilly had a Corel Annoyances book, as there were several Annoyances in the application. Here are some.

1. When I browse through a folder and open a picture in Express Lab, then close it again the focus goes to the first picture in the folder - I might have a 100 pictures in a folder and be editing number 95, the next one I want to edit is 96 and I close 95 only to find that I am back at picture number 1. A workaround might be to open several pictures at once - but if you are just picking odd pictures from a long stream that is awkward.

2. When I opened Corel Painter Essentials from Windows I received an error message and sent the report to the Corel Team online.

3. When it was installing an upgrade, the application never showed an hourglass or equivalent - it just hung.

4. The Organizer didn't play AVI movies, although the thumbnails did show movies.

5. Batch processing doesn't run in the background. I thought the whole point of batch was that you could leave a task to run and then go and do something else.

6. In Quick Review the EXIF File does not rotate images. This is confusing because the Organizer does rotate images. So if you make Quick Review do a slide show the image is in the wrong orientation.

7. You can review AVI and WMV video files, but not MOV files - the application crashed with the message Corel Paintshop has stopped working.

8. When you tag an image the tags are shown on the left-hand side of the screen, but not in the window where you add the tag. It would be good to have a pull-down menu of existing tags on the right-hand side of the screen when you add a tag.

9. When in Organizer Mode the screen shows the tops of menus, but they don't all work - this is confusing for the user - in Organizer mode hide the commands totally and only show them when they can be used in Full Edit mode.

10. When I edited images the first time, Corel PaintShop made extra folders of the old images until I told it not to do this. I don't like apps that mess up my folder organization and hide files or save unnecessary files - I've been editing images for so long that I tend to have an Originals and an Edited folder. For new users this may be a feature, but I found it annoying.

I could go on, but it's these little details that make the program less than polished. One difference between Corel PaintShop Pro and Adobe Photoshop is that Corel expects me to indicate whether a layer is raster or vector, whereas I just use layers in Photoshop, then I can flatten them later or do what I want with them.

Secondly, I'll review Project Creator, a separate application in which Corel shines. However, it is a little slow at loading the thumbnails when it prepares to load images to Flickr. With a little patience, I was successful in uploading images to Flickr. The Facebook loader asked me for authentication, but then failed to load the pictures saying the network connection was missing (which it wasn't) - I tried it several times. The collage and card making features worked well - although after seeing Steve Jobs showing iPhoto cards printed with letterpress embossing at a commercial printers, Corel has some way to go. Apple's iPhoto '11 sets a new standard for Photo Editing applications that is a generation ahead of this package.

VideoStudio Pro X3 was a little counterintuitive when I started to use it. Like PaintShop Pro it has a simple and advanced editing mode. Apple's iMovie is again ahead of other simple video packages on the market, for example it can quickly make trailers for movies.

When I used the Simple Editor it didn't let me choose a folder to save the file in. I never worked out how to cut a clip, a basic editing feature that should be obvious. I found the Simple Editor would string together videos, add a title (which I couldn't work out how to edit) and some music but not much more. I've used simple editors before from companies like Roxio and they are much easier to grasp. When I opened the Advanced Editor this had more features. It can handle a basic video track, plus 6 video overlay tracks and multiple sound tracks.

First I picked a Windows color for the title slide, but Corel changed it - why? I chose the specific color I wanted and I don't like it when applications change what I've selected. I chose a multi-colored heading and the software made it all red. So the template was not exact. Then I edited my clips. You can view the entire Project or a specific Clip. The default, which it annoyingly kept reverting to is Clip. The Play button is at the left of the buttons, not in the middle as you often find on other players, so it took me some time to see it, not least because it is dark gray on gray with the default skin.

I tried to add the titles in Storyboard mode, but it kept moving the display to Timeline View - most annoying. There are many transitions you can add between clips. I am not sure why there is a Corel Palette and a Windows Palette for color, I guess it changes color to match TV NTSC format, but it seems this shouldn't be the default. A Windows user would expect the Windows palette to be the default - especially if the movie is intended to be viewed on a PC.

One interesting feature of VideoStudio was the Painting Creator - it would record my scribbles - this can be fun to add to a video.

So this is not an intuitive video editing package to use, you need to read the Help, except it wasn't the last menu as you'd expect. So I turned to the little manual that came in the box. It basically said there's plenty to explore, which there is, but given I've used other packages that are way more intuitive I think I'll leave this one.

In summary, these packages provide an alternative to Adobe's products, but are less polished. PaintShop Pro is worth considering, but as for VideoStudio, there are many better, more intuitive alternatives.

After trying a different software package for high definition video editing and finding it to be an exercise in futility (I won't give the name, but it rhymes with TowerDirector), I had high hopes for this one because I have liked other Corel products. Unfortunately, it crashes like a mother, much like the aforementioned, unnamed software. I can only edit about one or two minutes of video, then it crashes and I have to close it and re-open it to begin again. Luckily, I can tell when it is about to crash (it starts acting funny) and I can usually save it so I don't lose anything. When I finally finish editing my video, I will still have to add transitions and menus. After that, I'll pray I can get it to burn to a blu-ray. Because I'm being optimistic in my hopes for success, I give this product two stars. If I can burn successfully, I will be back here to up the star rating to 5. If I find myself unable to create a finished product, I'll be back to take away a star (after my hysterical sobs of frustration subside). But seriously, I really don't think editing and burning high definition video can be done with any consistent success using any computer currently for sale to the public with software that can only promise to do so. If anyone knows of something that actually works, please let me know.