Photoshop a must?

[Sam443]

I presently have Corel Photopaint (for purposes other than digital photography) which I use to play around with images from a Minolta RD-175. Is anyone familiar with PhotoPaint and PhotoShop that can tell me how important it will be to purchase Photoshop?

 

[Imported]

I don't have PhotoPaint but I use Photoshop at school and Paint Shop Pro at home. Photoshop is a great tool and probably the most powerful image editor and most expensive. Paint Shop Pro is also pretty good since it supports most, if not all of Photoshop's filters and can be bought for under $80 at most places (List is $99). If you've used or haven't Photoshop, try the Paint Shop Pro demo at www.jasc.com and compare them.

 

[Ulysses]

Photoshop is a classic, but seems a bit overpriced. I think Paint Shop Pro is getting a little dated, at least as far as WWW graphics go, and it really is not a "professional" level app. Maybe try Ulead PhotoImpact if you're on a budget.

I recently switched to Macromedia Dreammweaver/Fireworks 3 Studio, but it is too early to evaluate - very economical combo though.

 

[Workin']

Corel Photopaint is pretty comparable to Photoshop for most tasks. If you know how to work Photopaint I would stick with that, you won't gain much more than a steep learning curve if you switch to Photoshop. In my opinion it would be a waste of money for you to buy Photoshop unless there is a specific feature you need and the same thing can't be accomplished in Photopaint.

I have access to both and since I learned Photopaint first I almost always use that. I haven't come across anything that I've needed to do that I couldn't do in Photopaint. I tried using Photoshop because everyone was telling me how great it is, but I still prefer Photopaint because I already know how to use it.

Hope this helps.

 

[Doggiedog]

I have Photoshop 5.5 and one thing I noticed about it was the poor print quality of its drivers.

I tried printing out several pictures in Win98 and Win2K but all pictures came out jagged and slightly pixelated. I printed out the same ones using my Visioneer scanner software and Photodraw from Microsoft and they came out excellent (true photographic quality).

Right now I just edit pictures in Photoshop but I print out in Photodraw.

Equipment:

1Ghz Athlon Classic
256MB Corsair PC133
GeForce 32MB DDR
HP 970CXI

 

[Imported]

If you want good webgraphics, I'd try Fireworks3 from Macromedia then. As far as Paint Shop Pro goes, I think version 7 is going to be a bit better at webgraphics, but you're right, it's a little dated on webgraphics.

 

[Sam443]

Thanks for help, all!