CS or PSP

[MitchellB]

With Photoshop being the industry standard IS Paint shop pro just as good? I am debating the two different products and price is certainly an issue.

Any tyhoughts??

Can PS actions and such be used with PSP??

[DannyRaphael]

With Photoshop being the industry standard IS Paint shop pro just as good? I am debating the two different products and price is certainly an issue.

Any thoughts??

Can PS actions and such be used with PSP??

Which you use somewhat depends on your intent/direction. If you plan on working with other professional graphic designers, printers/publishers (example: magazines, catalogs), etc., Photoshop would be my recommendation.

If you're doing this mostly for fun or perhaps to make a little money on the side, then either will serve your purposes. PSP is the more economical choice and functionally PSP has more built-in features/tools than Photoshop. Most would consider PSP to be the more, perhaps much more, user-friendly of the two.

Photoshop CS and later has extensive built-in capabilities when it comes to processing files in .RAW format. If .RAW processing is important to you, be sure to investigate PSP's capabilities in this regard.

If you prefer books for learning/research purposes, the number of Photoshop books hugely outnumbers those available for PSP. From an Internet perspective the PS tutorial/information advantage is even greater, however in my opinion there are more than enough PSP resources available, so don't let this be a deciding factor.

If you decided to go with PSP and sometime in the future decided to switch to PS, you will find a lot of architectural overlap, that is, both work pretty much the same way. A lot of the PSP knowledge/experience would be useful in learning/using Photoshop.

If you are an eBay shopper a less expensive way to get into Photoshop is to buy an older version, such as 7.0. (Must be a legitimate/legal verson.) After learning to use it, one has the option of upgrading to a newer version, say PS CS2 or CS3 (when it comes out). This approach usually cuts the overall cost of getting into PS by over 50%. PS 7.0 does 85% of what CS2 does. Believe me: For a rookie there would be plenty to learn in 7.0 in terms of fundamental skills/how to use the program, etc.

Speaking of eBay, one could save some $$ buying an older version of PSP, too.

Photoshop actions are not compatible with PSP; likewise PSP scripts are not compatible with PS.

I hope some of this helps. Good luck with your decision.

~Danny~

[Craig Walters]

i agree with almost everything danny said. the only thing i'm a little surprised at is this statement:

PSP is the more economical choice and functionally PSP has more built-in features/tools than Photoshop.

now, i'm not a ps user, so i cant really argue it, but ps always seemed to have more functions than psp, and certainly more functions that worked hand in hand with other functions. one simple example is the channels. if you want to work in channels in psp you pretty much have to split them first. ps seems to be able to keep them unsplit yet capable of being worked on individually. also, ps's number of colorspaces is far greater than psp. no LAB mode, no cmyk and so on in psp. you also have no way to check gamut in psp. and those things will hurt you if you want to do your own printing.

for me, psp is FAR easier to use. and for having maybe half to two thirds of the functions of ps, at 1 tenth the price, you are getting far more bang for the buck.

thus, i'd highly recommend psp as a 'starter' editor. when you're ready to graduate to ps, all the things that danny said are true. companies EXPECT you to know ps if you're going into any graphics intense area. job postings require ps, not psp.

another thing ps has psp beat on is plugins. almost any editor can use the standard .8bf type plugin. however, ps is now using even more complex plugins that go beyond the .8bf that psp cant use. there arent many of these yet and most folks that write plugins do write .8bf's.

but it's not all ps beats psp. psp has some features similar and dissimilar that are better than ps. the quick example is psp's 'digital camera noise removal' tool/filter. this is tops in my book. psp also allows you to bring features from earlier versions straight into the new versions. so, if a tool gets changed to soemthing new, but you like the old tool, you can just bring it into the new version. not sure ps can do that. several of those old tools now reside in my psp 10. another area where psp beats ps is in selections. in psp selections float. ps might be able to do this, so not real sure there, but in psp you can make a selection on one layer and apply that selection to a different layer. that can be quite handy at times.

frankly, if i were using both, i'd tend to work in psp first. then, if there was something i just couldnt do, like checking the gamut or working in cmyk or lab, i'd go to ps.

eventually, i think the smart person gets both. several folks here have both. each has its strengths and weaknesses. ps is still the 'cadillac' of editors, but psp is no longer the vw bug either. it's more like a good sedan, reliable, cheaper, and gets you where you want to go

craig

p.s. you might also want to take a look at 'the Gimp'. this is an open source graphic editor and is quite good for being a freebie. ask lkroll, one of our patrons, about the gimp. he uses it often.

[LonK]

Thanks for asking the question MichellB and thanks for the replies Danny and Craig. I just ordered PSP10 the other day since I found a great deal on it (~$26.50), and was about to ask the same question. For that price, I couldn't resist adding it to my toolbox. I'm sure I'll have some questions once I receive it and start working with it.

[imann08]

I have never even seen PSP but I swear by PS. Some of the new features that have come along in the last couple of versions have been incredibly valuable. Especially if you work in photo retouching. Also, the fact that it has LAB and PSP doesn't would be enough to make up my mind. I personally think LAB can be that valuable. The other thing, that was mentioned earlier, is the amount of books available. I love to read big 1000 page books on this stuff and there are some great books out there for PS. Finally, it's ability to interact with AI and inDesign, which are also the industry standards, is better than any other program would be. That in itself is a plus if you plan on doing any page layout of vector art. There are things as Craig said, that PSP has that PS doesn't or doesn't do as well, but they can usually be obtained in a plug in such as neat image for noise reduction. I am obviously biased but I love PS and don't find it difficult to use so don't let the user friendly things scare you off.

[raniday]

I'll just throw in my 2 cents worth and echo what Craig and Danny have said. I began with both programs, and I found PS very intimidating to a newbie but PSP user friendly. So, I cut my digital art teeth on PSP, then began to realize that PS is the Mother Ship and gravitated over to it; now I rarely use PSP.

In the beginning, I used the tubes and picture frames a lot in PSP, but I don't use those anymore. Most tubes are too cutsey for what I do now, and I rarely use frames but can either make my own or use one of the many actions available out there for PS. My workflow usually involves PS first, then Painter, but occasionally I'll think of an effect, like Digital Camera Noise Removal that I want to go into PSP to use, and there are a few plugins that I like how they work in PSP.

I buy a lot from Ebay, but let the buyer beware. I bought CS, and the same day, the seller cancelled her Ebay membership and kept my money but didn't send the software. I hounded her mercilessly by email and telephone until I finally got it, legal and unused, but it kept losing its registration almost everytime I shut it down, and I would have to call the company and get a new reg number; then one day, the company was gone! EEK! I finally found a way to get around that, but it was irritating for a while. I was beginning to wish I had put a couple of hundred with it and bought at retail. Otherwise, my Ebay software purchases have been smooth and ended happily ever after.

[bart_hickman]

I have both PSPX and PSCS2. If price is an issue, then no question you should go with PSPX in my opinion. PSPX does all of the basic things you need to learn all of the concepts and follow along with every thread in this forum. It also has the one of the best dang noise reduction tools you ever saw (only Neat Image and Noise Ninja are better and then only slightly so.) Puts the NR in Photoshop to shame. So that'll save you another $40 'cause you won't have to buy an NR tool. PSPX also has a solid collection of adjustment layers which is one of the things that sets it apart from the other sub-$100 tools.

I bought PS primarily because it's fast. And it's speed advantage becomes more obvious as the image sizes increase. If you start to do manipulations on large (>10mpixel) panoramas (which is something I like to do a lot), then PS is the only tool that is even usable (Elements is also fast, but it's feature set is too limited for my uses.) I've also discovered other things I like about it--mainly improves productivity because there are fewer steps needed to achieve most of the advanced operations.

If you see somebody use a PS feature you can't figure out how to replicate in PSPX, then ask and I'm sure you'll get an answer on either how to duplicate it exactly or how to live without it (or, in the rare event that the answer is, "you're out of luck" and then that's when it's time to buy PS ) Certainly I will answer if I'm in the neighborhood. I also have a couple of scripts that I use to help compensate for the lack of channels and the lack of a Lab color mode (I never use Lab mode anyway--using HSL channels generally yields better results and is more intuitive.)

The Corel PSPX users group also has experts who can answer questions like this.

Actually, my real recommendation is for you to download the 30-day trial of Paintshop Pro first. Find tutorials, ask questions here, and really learn it--really try to get into it. Then, when it expires, try Photoshop for 30-days as well. THEN decide. You could download both at the same time, but I think it might be too hard to evaluate them simultaneously if you're starting from scratch.

Bart