OT...PSP x6 Ultimate

[Duckie]

Any painters here using Corel Paint Shop Pro X6 Ultimate as your primary paint tool?

If so, what are your impressions.

I'm currently using PSP 9.1. It's good but it's 32 bit and occasionally hiccups on my Win 7 64 bit sys.

There are some good prices on it right now and wondered if it's at least as good as what I'm using now.

Thanks,
Steve

[stovall]

Duckie, Paint Shop Pro X6 is very good especially for photo tuning. I us it almost exclusively for that. My painting tool is primarily Photo Shop but before learning Photo Shop I used Paint Shop Pro as my painting tool. It is well worth the money and recommend it highly. Hope this helps.

[PutPut]

I started with PSP 4 and faithfully upgraded every version while the program was owned by JASC. It was worth it because it seemed like there where new useful painting tools in every new version. JASC sold the program to Corel a few years ago. Corel has been making a photo editor out of it (and a very good one) but I haven't seen a new painting tool since PSP 9 or 10.

Best, Paul

[MCDesigns]

It's funny, my first real paint program was PSP 4 back in the day. I now have photoshop, Gimp and an old version of PSP 7 from Jasc and other than an occasional closing issue when ending the program, PSP works flawlessly on my Vista 64 bit system. Of the 3 I really prefer Gimp as it does most of what the other 2 do and I am more comfortable with the UI.

[Duckie]

Thanks very much for your replies, guys.

I started out years ago with PSP 5, moved up to PSP 7 and then to where I am now with PSP 9. I also have the latest Gimp but haven't come close to getting used to it after years of PSP. I've also recently discovered that my PSP can use the Nvidia plugins for converting to file formats like DDS, and DXT compression as well as the bump map tool which makes me very hesitant to switch.

However, as I said, it's not working right in the 64 bit op sys. I can use it all day long as long as I stay in the same format. However, once I perform a format conversion, say, from PSD to a BMP or DDS, it performs the conversion then locks up. Every time. Once it locks up the only way to get around it is to kill the process.

It has become very annoying and time consuming to work this way. I researched the issue with the consensus being that it is not compatible with 64 bit systems even though many work without issue, some do not. Mine apparently is one of the latter.

Hence, my interest in a newer version compatible with 64 bit OS without breaking the bank.

[Jafo]

Started with some horrid Dos paint proggies....then moved on to PSP....mostly 3....but ended up with 6 [not X6] ....and still use that 'mostly'.
Only thing it doesn't do....that I'd have liked is 'shaped' text....ie text around an arc.

It's 32bit....works just fine in 7 Ult 64 ...but will run out of memory with the larger layered files ....at which time I switch to Photoshop Elements 2.0 ....simple ver of PS ....that is also 32bit but handles mem swapping better.

First rule of Graphic proggies.... [although PS is the 'industry standard'] is....get one....and stick with it....an OK proggy in the hands of someone who knows it is infinitely better than a novice with the 'best' proggy money can buy.

If you doubt that....watch this....

[anthony31]

Well, they've got X7 out now so that is the latest version and is why X6 is going cheap.

I upgraded from X2 to X6 earlier this year and here are my impressions:

Mouse zoom doesn't automatically centre on your mouse position anymore: If you want to zoom in using the mouse you used to be able to move the mouse to a point on the picture and it when you zoom in with the scroll wheel it would automatically treat the mouse location as the centre and would zoom into there. It doesn't do this anymore so I find myself having to scroll around the screen a lot more.

Graphical glitches: Sometimes the screen will not redraw properly. Especially when zoomed in. This can require a quick zoom out/in to get the screen to redraw. This is annoying. Looks like they've fixed it in X7 though.

64bit: Awesome. Finally I can use some big pictures without PSP crapping itself and running out of memory. I've been able to use images 5GB+ in memory (when they save they are much smaller due to the compression in the save file). Still, the max limit for images is around 25,000x25,000 pixels (I think from memory). It does handle the large files OK. There is a bit of a slowdown but nowhere near as much as with large files in X2. I must say that X6 does feel more stable as a program (apart from the graphics glitch) than X2 which could on occasion crash.

Detaching tool palettes: Do this quite a lot where I try to change a setting in the brush tool palette (eg tool size) but if I click just a pixel or two too low it detaches the whole palette which I have to reattach. Annoying.

Create new layer moved: This gets me every single time. Used to be able to right click on the layers palette and create a new layer from there but you can't in X6. I've made a shortcut icon for a new raster layer but I still havent learned to use it as a first option. Muscle memory keeps me trying the right click thing.

Now, I just tried the X7 trial version and I've found one major problem with it. Working on a 5024x6302 pixel image with 5 layers I tried moving one of the layers and X7 just took ages to do it (I'm talking close to a minute). This is just not acceptable for me so I will not be upgrading to X7.

The other problem with X7 trial is that it reintroduced the nag screen into X6. This is an annoying popup that opens each time you close X6 and there is no easy way to disable it. This is a click box to never show the message again but PSP ignores it. Spent 10 minutes googling to find a solution. I am very unimpressed about buying a program and still having to put up with annoying ad popups.

I do recommend you download the trial version. This will run completely separately to any other PSP versions (it doesn't upgrade your existing programs). I have X2 and X6 both on my computer just fine. The download is about 300MB in size and has a 30 day limit. Should be more than enough time to see if it works for you.

[Duckie]

anthony31, thanks very much for taking the time to write your review. Great information. I guess my problem with 9 is running out of memory. Other than that I am very pleased and very used to 9! But with 6X price dropping I wanted to see if anyone felt its functions and performance were at least as good as JASC 9 and if so I might give it a try.

BTW, I shy away from "new editions/versions" until someone else flies it around the pylons a few laps!

Thanks again for your very informative review.

Steve

[Duckie]

First rule of Graphic proggies.... [although PS is the 'industry standard'] is....get one....and stick with it....an OK proggy in the hands of someone who knows it is infinitely better than a novice with the 'best' proggy money can buy.

If you doubt that....watch this....

Makes perfect sense!

Impressive video - well, the video is OK, the skill and talent of the artist are what's impressive!

Thanks