Serif photoplus 9

I have been given Serif PhotoPlus 9 of which I know nothing about. I am just thinking about purchasing Elements 7 but perhaps I should find out more about Serif. Does anyone have any experience of this package and what it brings to digital photography editing compared to Elements 7?

Serif Photoplus has seen versions 10, 11, and now X2 since version 9. I found it OK (no better) for JPG's but not much else. Serif claims it will open RAW files, but that's not Pentax RAW files.

I switched to Adobe Photoshop. You'd be best advised to go with Adobe also.

Serif Photoplus will open PEFs (at least one version of it does, I can't remember which version my Dad has), but there's no good reason to do so as it offers no options whatsoever when doing so and just opens them like jpgs.

It's a pretty handy editor, nothing very special, it does have one very nice feature though and that is the "print multiple" function. This allows you to arrange multiple photos (or multiple copies of one photo) at defined sizes on a sheet of paper. Best photo printing system I've come across. Again, I can't remember if this came in version 8, 9 or 10.


my advice, since you have been given photoplus 9 for nothing, is to play with it and see what you think. If it does what you want, why shell out money for something else?

PSE allows for multiple printing too. But I agree, play with Photoplus 9 first and if it does what you want save your money.
If you need/want more, or shoot RAW then buy PSE7, or even see if you an get PSE6 for a lower price as 7 doesn't add anything too revolutionary to the mix.

Note: If you want to shoot RAW you can always use the supplied Pentax Photo Lab software (which is free). Also you could use Silkypix Free Edition. Both will give JPG/TIFF output that you can then do post-production with whatever editor takes your fancy

Matt

Photoplus has curves - Elements doesn't, I switch between both programs as needed. I don't like having to use export optimiser to save jpegs & tiffs, Otherwise Pageplus is quite good. JohnT

PSE6 has simple curves - not as good maybe as the full curves in full PS but better than nothing.

Elements can
Hop over to www.hiddenelements.com (some tools are free)
Matt