So right... but if you plan to do this professionally and work with or for someone else, then you may not have a choice but to choose a right or wrong product.

If you have the freedom to start fresh I would have to agree that PSP will have more user friendly features that can allow you to get some tasks done quicker than with PS. Again, Adobe has just not been adding user friendly features... probably due to the fear that it wont be a "professional" product if it is too easy to use. Like the old mouthwash commercial; "...it tastes like medicine to let you know its working..."

Anyway... I think there are a lot more tutorials for PSP now than there were even a few years ago, plus one would hope that its features have kept getting better so many more of the PS tutorials will likely work pretty well with minimal translation.


Good luck and have fun!

Last I used was CS3 and PaintShop Pro X.
But at the time, the color management of PSPX was atrocious.
Other than that, PSp has many wonderful, user friendly features.

One of the best ones is image straightening. Have an image tht is keystoned or othrwise skewed... just draw a box indicating what should be square/rectangular and in three seconds, WALLA!! You have a straight image.
The same functionality in CS3 would require pulling points of the four corners of the full image to make it look right. Even the lens correction in PhotoShop takes waaayy too long to make a skewed image look right.

PhotoShop in general has the advantage of having an abundance of tutorials. Most would work on PSP but you have to convert words, and sometimes create your own steps to make up for differences.

PSP also has some really nifty paint-like effects. If I ever get into painting from scratch, PSP would be high on the list. There are no comparable capabilities in PhotoShop.


The major benefit of CS3 over PSPX was speed. PSP has always been written in what seemed to be an interpreted language by Macromedia and has been very slow. Even after Corel bought it out and supposedly re-wrote much from scratch, the tool was very slow.
Maybe just not enough time spent on optimizing actions for viewable image v.s. full image??? Either way, two seconds to draw a line in PSP v.s. 1/2 second in PhotoShop was a big deal to me.

On that note, drawing with a pad... Paintshop Pro did not seem to handle pressure changes as well as PhotoShop. Although I thought the drawing style applied was sometimes more natural than Photoshop.


The drawing speed and the color management outweighed the other benefits of PSP.

Overall and more generalized, I think you're right. People may go out to buy it because it is simply said to be the best. I don't know if that is true. It is certainly the most popular and that makes it easy to get answers on what can often be a very difficult area to learn.

If you have the creative ability to learn on your own, and as more tutorials are mde for PSP, I'd pobably look at that over PhotoShop.
Personally I think Adobe is going down hill on adding useful features and quality in PhotoShop. They are gearing more towards ripping out features so they can make more separate products and bring in more money.

Fair enough. Although I think the one comment from this thread that I can agree with more than any other is:

"I have problems taking advice from anything that goes great with thyme, garlic butter..... "

Just too hilarious!

Ya know, one thing came to mind as I'm about to head out for lunch...

If I were a brand new member browsing the latest threads, what would I think about this one?

I'm not sure these threads help the site in the least. It shows an elitist attitude and exposes poor taste by publicly bashing a single member or small groups of members for, apparently, being lazy and stupid.

As a new member, I would quickly go elsewhere since this thread can be read to show the site to be much like many of the others out there.


As a member that has been around a few years, I know that not to be true. I just hope these sorts of inflammatory threads can silently fade away so that we don't scare off more great potential members like the ones we already have.

With it turning from hypothetical to being directed at individual users, I am sorry I ever contributed to this thread in the first place.

Some of the comments sound rather selfish, which is acceptable. Everyone is different. You have a right be be selfish, but world doesn't have to conform to being selfish either.

I like to look at it differently...
Perhaps these people are not stupid or lazy, but just think differently. Or perhaps the wording at some point was misunderstood, and they are hoping for a slightly different explanation to get them over the hump.

e.g. You ever read the AF360FGZ manual for setting the slave modes?
Being told to read the manual was of no help at all. I had done that half a dozen times and never had a clue that it would be of interest to me.
It makes perfect sense now, but until it was actually explained by one simple sentence, whew... right over my head. I cannot explain why, it just didn't make sense at the time.

OK, this may not explain all cases, (in some cases people are just lazy, thats life, suck it up), but I think its a bit harsh to jump on newcomers because they may ask a question that the more seasoned members feel is beneath them.

We always have a choice to ignore the request for help and not respond.
I prefer the immortal words of Thumper, I believe, "If you can't say somethin nice, don't say anything at all."

Why not? Plenty of technology websites out there, for example, that charge for their information. But you can get the same information from plenty of free blogs, forums, etc...

Depending on the subject matter, are you willing and/or able to discern the good information from the chaff that might be given by well meaning, but perhaps less than fully knowledgeable folks?
Can you afford the time to investigate and to potentially be given wrong information?

For example, I feel free to offer advice where I feel I have something contribute here... although a few times (hopefully not too often), I have been corrected or others have filled in gaps left by my explanations.

If I happen to give advice in line with what a pro could have given, excellent. Hopefully I will also get the same in return -- some day.

I think in some cases it is just quicker and easier for some people to go directly to a paid source. I prefer the more friendly atmosphere of places like this.

Dunno if it will help, but try Soft proof (CTRL-Y) and set to sRGB.
This will show you what things will look like when viewed with a non-color managed viewer such as IrfanView, web pages, etc...
It may even help to soft proof for your printing. I believe you'd set to use your printer profile. (not sure, I don't bother. If I need color correctness I'll probably send out for printing and hope/pray the color management actually works).

Honestly I don't know if this is how things are supposed to work, but it is the only way I can get images to look "consistent" between Photoshop and other programs.
Printing is close without soft proofing, but I find I still have to adjust a bit, even when using the printer's printing software, profiles and paper for which the profiles were created. (it "should" work but doesn't!!)

Anyway, try the links sent by Matt. They should get you as close to working as possible.
For me, I am still having discrepancies I cannot explain, but I think I have found acceptable workarounds for some issues.


One silly thing to ask... do you have a multi-monitor setup?
Windows, be default, cannot handle multi-monitor setup and profile both monitors independently. Infact it will pick a profile for one monitor at random and profile both the same. (bad if you have two different monitors).
Anyway, there is a Microsoft tool that fixes the problem. I'll send a link if you need it and cannot find it. (XRite/Manaco/GretagMcbeth, or whatever, did not know about this program and it is what? five years old? Argh!)

I know it should not make a difference, but some of my troubles with inconsistencies between software (on the same monitor) seemed to go away when I installed this program. Yeah doesn't make sense. But perhaps something else got fixed by coincidence at the same time???

he, he, oh yeah I've looked at the charts in the past, sort of stared at them and let my eyes glaze over is probably more like it.
I never had any idea how to use that in the real world.

I really should take a look at them again. Its been a few years and they would probably mean something to me now.

Is there any way to determine what the MTF value would be?
For example, if I have MTF priority mode set and I shoot in program mode, shouldn't aperture and shutter speed both be adjusted "properly". Thus if the light is such that the best quality aperture can be used with a reasonable shutter speed/ISO, that should give you your answer, correct?

Thats how I understand it, but I never studied this much. So I would be interested in any more info on how this works, if I'm wrong.
I'm not sure I ever saw this work well in practice, so I could certainly be off on my assumptions.

[edit] Looks like Matt types faster that I can. I'll check out the link. Thanks![/edit]

Probably, but not unlike dozens of other lenses.
Unless they squeak too, but cannot be heard over the hum of the motorized focusing?