Paint Shop Pro X2 not bothering with Sony

[ksills]

It appears that Corel has decided to abandon Sony and sees no point in updating for the Sony DSLR's. Please advise everyone to avoid Corel products until such time as they acknowledge Sony DSLR's

[David Kilpatrick]

Don't worry, I started avoiding them years ago when the JPEG conversion quality and the up/down interpolation both proved rather short of Photoshop Elements/PS standards. They did send me review copies of PSP for many years but eventually gave up when they realised the reviews were not entirely favourable!

David

[Cogito]

It appears that Corel has decided to abandon Sony and sees no point in updating for the Sony DSLR's. Please advise everyone to avoid Corel products until such time as they acknowledge Sony DSLR's

I assume that you're referring to RAW support. If so, I agree with David.....
However there are alternatives.
If you're a bit short of money then try RawTherapee - http://www.rawtherapee.com/
This provides support for all of the current Sony DSLRs RAW images for a moderate donation. It also will handle JPEGs, TIFs and many other RAW formats. Oh, I have no financial interest in the product.
For my birthday, my wife bought me a copy of Adobe Lightroom. For a bit (hiccup!!) more money this also is pretty easy to use and supports just about everything.
I use both and am certainly no expert with either - but they work for me.....

I hope I'm not breaking any forum rules by offering links?

[David Kilpatrick]

All relevant links are welcome here. There is no Forum ban on commercial postings, either, provided they are totally relevant and beneficial to members. We are here to increase the knowledge and resources available, not to restrict 'competition'!

David

[bfitzgerald]

Corel have updated PSP to the amazingly logical title of ...

"CorelPaint Shop Pro Photo X2 Ultimate"

More info here..

http://www.corel.com/servlet/Satellite/ ... bview=tab0

Corel suggest they have more raw support, but from my use of previous versions, it was pretty terrible (the 5d has major colour problems, it's unusable frankly on older versions) PSP "used" to be good, the last version I tried was X, and 9, beyond that..frankly it just slapped a load of mostly pointless gimmicks in, and some spyware stuff too, as well as running fairly poor too!

The program needs a complete overhaul, start from scratch. Corel seem to just want to bloat it out with more gimmicks each year. I have not tried the new one, but have no interest in PSP anymore, I keep X and 9 for a few things. Not many options at the low end, elements is one, and Photoplus X2 is not bad, though far from quirk free either, least it is a bit more logical, and a good one for people learning to use this type of software.

Now if only we had an open source program, that got the resources of say open office. Gimp IMO is not really up to the job, it's not bad, but nowhere near what it could be

[[SiC]]

Don't worry, I started avoiding them years ago when the JPEG conversion quality and the up/down interpolation both proved rather short of Photoshop Elements/PS standards. They did send me review copies of PSP for many years but eventually gave up when they realised the reviews were not entirely favourable!

David

Would be nice to hear you elaborate on this since I use PSP 8.1 for almost all my PP
I've been hanging on to PSP because it was available for me since University (version 3 or so i think) and at that time PS was much too advanced for my liking or what I needed. Later I acquired a second hand license for PSP 8.1 at bargain price.
I own licenses of PS Elements 3 and 4 but rarely use them...

Sorry for such a late answer but I haven't stumbled on this thread before.

BR,
/Zeb!

[[SiC]]

It appears that Corel has decided to abandon Sony and sees no point in updating for the Sony DSLR's. Please advise everyone to avoid Corel products until such time as they acknowledge Sony DSLR's

Seems like X2 supports Alpha100, F828, V3, R1 ( http://tinyurl.com/4x5tu5 )
Ultimate supports DSC-F828, DSC-R1, DSC-V3, DSLR-A100, DSLR-A200, DSLR-A300, DSLR-A350, DSLR-A700, XCD-SX910CR ( http://tinyurl.com/3qqyju )

[David Kilpatrick]

Don't worry, I started avoiding them years ago when the JPEG conversion quality and the up/down interpolation both proved rather short of Photoshop Elements/PS standards. They did send me review copies of PSP for many years but eventually gave up when they realised the reviews were not entirely favourable!

David

Would be nice to hear you elaborate on this since I use PSP 8.1 for almost all my PP

It's not my finding - repeated saving at the highest quality JPEG level in PS/Elements produces less degradation than PSP. However, you have to save many times to see it. And PS offers (apparently) better routines - five choices of interpolation method for up or down sizing, which are echoed in the way PS handles resizing of selections as well. Elements is obviously more limited. PSP may have improved but it used, for several generations of edition, to lag behind PS in JPEG and resizing quality.

David

[[SiC]]

It's not my finding - repeated saving at the highest quality JPEG level in PS/Elements produces less degradation than PSP. However, you have to save many times to see it. And PS offers (apparently) better routines - five choices of interpolation method for up or down sizing, which are echoed in the way PS handles resizing of selections as well. Elements is obviously more limited. PSP may have improved but it used, for several generations of edition, to lag behind PS in JPEG and resizing quality.

David

Thank you DK!
Okay, if the degradation is not worse than that then I don't think it will matter for my uses - I'm not that much of a photophile
PSP 8.1 also has five methods of interpolation (four true ones):

Smart Size - Use this type in most cases. Based on the new pixel dimensions you set, Paint Shop Pro chooses the best algorithm listed below.

Weighted Average - Uses a weighted-average colour value of neighbouring pixels to determine how newly created pixels will appear. Use this type when reducing photo-realistic, irregular, or complex images.

Bilinear - Uses the two nearest pixels around each existing pixel to determine how newly created pixels will appear.

Bicubic - Minimises the jaggedness that often results from expand­ing an image by estimating how the newly created pixels will appear. Use this type when enlarging photo-realistic, irregular, or complex images.

Pixel Resize - Duplicates or removes pixels as necessary to achieve the selected width and height of the image. Use this type with hard-edged images and simple graphics.

I don't know what is missing compared to PS, but again these are good enough for my use so I won't be too worried about it then

BR,
/Zeb!