Have 2D raster graphics programs changed much in 10 years?

Pawnless Endgame

Pawnless Endgame

Pawnless Endgame

Soldato
Joined
10 May 2004
Posts
13,021
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Sunny Stafford
I've been a loyal user of Paintshop Pro since the mid 90s, moving up versions 3, 4, 5 and 6. Come September 2000 and I went to version 7 and I have stuck with it ever since and I'm still using it 10 years on.

The question is - Photoshop is now on version CS5. The reason why I haven't switched to PSD is because of my eyesight problems. I find the PSP interface much more readable than PSD's. Have I missed much in those 10 years? I mean, PSP7 offers layers, layer-adjustment, masks, feathered selection, CMYK colourspace and separations, your usual stock effects and plug-ins, TWAIN support, tablet support, custom & textured gradients, clone brush, custom brush. Finally, it touches on the vector world by allowing some basic shapes, freehand curves, object grouping/ungrouping and it also treats fonts as a vector (and allows you to rasterise later). Plus it comes with the separate GIF animator program. Not bad all-in-all for the £32 that I paid.

So given all of this info, am I missing anything new? To see examples of what I do in PSP7, have a quick stab at my deviantART profile. The Disney stuff may not be to your taste guys but you might like my 'AMD Inside' parody :-)
 
Hmmm, my homosexuality senses are tingling! :p

I can't do an accurate comparison as I haven't used PSP in over 9 years, even then it was incredibly brief. At the time however, I found Photoshop to be far more powerful and generally more user friendly. In terms of layer styles/effects, masking, filters and so forth, it just seemed ahead of the competition. Which, for a product so expensive and with total market domination, I should entirely expect.

Edit:

As for missing anything new: More features, styles, filters, more powerful file handling abilities. Nothing of any real relevance in terms of what I'd use it for. Infact, I can go back to using Photoshop 7.0 at any time with no hassle whatsoever. The interface is actually less fidgety, less annoying and more user friendly.

Check this out:
http://www.guidebookgallery.org/apps/photoshop

:)
 
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Haha, thanks Shifty! Yeah I am male and actually straight despite the Disney theme going. The trippy colours are more to do with my Synaesthesia :-)

Thanks for the comparison though. I forgot to say why I didn't go for any PSP after 7. It was because PSP8 was 10 times the footprint. Going back to PSP7, I'm still yet to find any *.PSD files that won't open in right to this very day. PSP7 opens 'em all :-) Plus, it has the image browser which I have gotten very reliant to.

PSP7.png
 
Might want to have a look at Paint.NET too, that's free, fairly capable and dead easy to use. I switch between it and CS4 depending on what needs to be done.
 
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