What Can I Do With Photoshop That I Can't Do With Paint Shop Pro 7?

[GiovanniC]

I'm sort of considering getting PhotoShop CS2 or maybe even something lower than that, but I only want to do it if there are significant advantages over PSP7, which I already have. Can anyone give me some guidance on that?

[ET Awful]

1. Well . . . I use both, so I couldn't really say one is better at X and the

other is better at Y.

I probably use Photoshop more simply because I like the interface better. Another advantage to Photoshop is it has some features that PSP lacks (such as the ability to work with digital camera RAW files). Photoshop also tends to be a little quicker and more robust when it comes to rendering tasks such as color correction, etc. It seems to have a more complex algorithm which gives cleaner results.

However, PSP9 (which is a worthwhile upgrade from 7) has some very nice features as well, such as built in tools for reducing chromatic aberration (the purple fringing found frequently in digital photography using lower quality lenses), reducing digital noise, filters for correcting barrel distortion caused by the lens, etc.

They're both excellent tools and they both have some things that the other doesn't.

My personal suggestion would be to upgrade your PSP licence to version 9, and if you can get your hands on a heavily discounted copy of PS CS2 (an academic license or the like), get it as well.

If you or anyone you know is a college student, you can get academic license pricing which is very heavily discounted. You could upgrade your PSP7 and get PS CS2 for less than it would cost to buy a full license for CS2 if you go the academic licensing route.