ian said:
I had my heart set on v3. No longer retailing in the uk. how about v4.
any comments from people who have upgraded would be appreciated. any online
reviews of version 4 too please.
What does PSE3 do that has your heart set on it? If it's anything like
the difference between v2 and v3, v4 will offer incremental
improvements, some interface tweaks, and about the same overall
functionality as before. I can't think v4 would be a downgrade.
However, there are much better options out there if you're not firmly
committed to working with PSD files, Adobe-only plugins, or the one or
two PS-only tools Elements will offer. Paint Shop Pro is my favorite,
offering 90% of the power of true Photoshop for the price of Elements
(if you find a good sale). Unlike PSE3, PSP gives you full layer and
mask support, more control over brush behavior, and a much better
*fully customizable* interface. It also has a number of features that
even true Photoshop lacks, such as powerful noise removal and chromatic
aberration filters, "Clarify" (a little like low-strength/high-radius
unsharp mask), selective undo, "Art Media" painting, and a
higher-quality on-the-fly zoom function. Its main weaknesses are in
printed output (lacks PS's prepress origins), color management (the
latest version, X, supports multiple color spaces but makes you jump
through hurdles to use them), no "Layer Styles", bugginess compared to
Adobe, and little third-party support for their native PSPImage format
(usually the only way to preserve multiple layers). On the plus side,
it includes a Windows extension to display PSPImage thumbnails in
regular Windows file folders. Overall, you can produce just about any
sort of image you can imagine in PSP once you master it. X is
considerably faster and more stable than 9, but it still has a few
prominent bugs that haven't been fixed. And there are lots of signs
that Corel will be treating future versions more like "easy to use"
Elements than as a PS rival, so you might get burned down the line if
you commit to it.
Picture Window Pro is another affordable alternative. It's a bit
quirky and doesn't support non-destructive editing (layers), but it's
quick, powerful, tiny (4MB?), and has all the tools necessary to
process a photo to perfection. Ulead's PhotoImpact is the other "big
name" I've used; in its own way it's every bit as capable as the
others. I don't like the interface, and the only versions I used (v8
and 8.5/XL) were very crash-prone on two different computers. But it's
affordable and has a fair number of satisfied users.
Perhaps you had some other reason for wanting Elements 3? I'd be
interested in hearing it.
Regards,
false_dmitrii
