Corel Painter vs. Corel PaintShop Pro

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Painter
Score 9.9 out of 10
N/A
Painter is a digital art and painting application, from Corel Corporation.N/A
Corel PaintShop Pro
Score 9.0 out of 10
N/A
PaintShop Pro is an all-in-one photo editor with advanced photo management, editing & creative tools that deliver everything a photo & design enthusiast needs, from Corel Corporation.N/A
Pricing
Corel PainterCorel PaintShop Pro
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
PainterCorel PaintShop Pro
Free Trial
NoNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Corel PainterCorel PaintShop Pro
Considered Both Products
Painter
Chose Painter
Corel Painter has support to multiple OS and across all the devices. Coloring and multi layer imaging works very well. The new enhanced brush settings and the redesigned brush libraries.
Chose Painter
Like I already mentioned Photoshop is so much more pleasant to work with. Though out of the box Photoshop definitely has a lot fewer brushes; you can definitely download bushes often for free, or otherwise a small fee (you have to pay to add more brushes with Painter as well). …
Corel PaintShop Pro
Chose Corel PaintShop Pro
I've used Corel PaintShop Pro for many years - so many, in fact, that I don't recall anything specific that I used prior to it. Seems to me that it was owned by Jaasc software when I started, and I've just stuck with it, because it works and it works well. I wholly intend to …
Chose Corel PaintShop Pro
I find Corel PaintShop Pro to be a lot more user friendly and affordable.
Chose Corel PaintShop Pro
From an ROI perspective, we moved entirely away from PhotoShop because we could not justify the cost vs performance. Corel PaintShop Pro is simply more cost-effective and offers the same performance and tools.
Best Alternatives
Corel PainterCorel PaintShop Pro
Small Businesses
CorelDRAW Graphics Suite
CorelDRAW Graphics Suite
Score 9.8 out of 10
CorelDRAW Graphics Suite
CorelDRAW Graphics Suite
Score 9.8 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
GIMP
GIMP
Score 9.3 out of 10
GIMP
GIMP
Score 9.3 out of 10
Enterprises
CorelDRAW Graphics Suite
CorelDRAW Graphics Suite
Score 9.8 out of 10
CorelDRAW Graphics Suite
CorelDRAW Graphics Suite
Score 9.8 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Corel PainterCorel PaintShop Pro
Likelihood to Recommend
7.0
(0 ratings)
9.0
(0 ratings)
Usability
1.0
(0 ratings)
9.0
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
3.0
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
Corel PainterCorel PaintShop Pro
Likelihood to Recommend
Corel painter is one of the best tools in the market for specialized designing and painting. The spotlight option with watercolor marking is very unique. The new Captured Dab Library is one of the best features of the latest update. The new enhanced brush settings and the redesigned brush libraries make life so much easier.
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Corel PaintShop Pro is well suited for photographers wanting to adjust photos and also for designers who want to create designs from scratch, working in layers and merging various elements. Due to slow load times, Corel PaintShop Pro is not well suited when you only have a few small tasks to do and when a lightweight alternative will do the job just as well (e.g. cropping and red-eye removal).
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Pros
  • Watercolor Compatible
  • Multiple variety of Brushes and shapes
  • Captured Dab Library
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  • I can create digital copies of artwork I collect
  • I like the fact that I can create transparent backgrounds.
  • I can edit and clean old photographs.
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Cons
  • Way too many functional bugs, makes it hard to work with
  • Bad UX and usability, too much unintuitive behavior, makes it particularly hard to work with
  • Overall looks and behaves as if it was coded in the '90s, it really needs a complete UX overhaul
  • Did I mention the many bugs yet? Yeah? I'll mention it again because it's bad
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  • I have the 2018 version and every now and again upgrade ads will pop up in the bottom right of my screen which I find rather annoying
  • How to save your work and where it gets saved is confusing. It took me a while to realize that projects were saved in "pspimage" files. The knowledge base article “The Basics Of Saving Files In PaintShop Pro” did not mention pspfiles. They also have the concept of workspaces, but I eventually realized that this is not where your work is saved.
  • I find that a tool called paint.net is massively easier to use, but, then again, paint.net has far fewer features. I think an option in PaintShop Pro for temporarily switching down the functionality and interface to resemble paint.net would be a useful feature, so users do not get blinded by the extensive interface.
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Likelihood to Renew
No answers on this topic
I feel like the program is not only powerful and intuitive, it's also extremely affordable. I've been a PSP user for many, many years, and I've really not looked at any other alternatives since then. At the time, anything remotely close was very expensive. PSP does everything (and MUCH more) that I need it to effectively and affordably. As long as that continues, I'll continue to be a satisfied user.
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Usability
If it wasn't quite clear yet, I'll state it again: the usability of Corel Painter is, simply put, horrid. And I am not talking about rendering, lagging, etc., it is not even all that bad there. I am talking about the weird issues like being unable to move a brush into a custom brush palette when you work on a second screen, like being unable to move the software onto the second screen in the first place unless you separate all the palettes and the windows (and if nobody tells you upfront there is no way of knowing because the manual doesn't state this at all), and then having to drag all your separate windows and palettes over one by one every time your computer wakes up again, and they won't really want to move to the other screen but only through a tiny corner of your screen, and the fact that you have to scroll through lists and lists of fonts but can't search and when you apply this font, add another piece of text the font jumps back to the default font of all the text already applied even when you haven't selected any of the text. Just to name a very small few.
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Overall I am used to using Paintshop Pro since before it was a Corel Product it has only gotten better and I do not have to put up with Adobe rules
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Reliability and Availability
No answers on this topic
This program is not dependent on outside resources. Again, this is a desktop app. Load it up and use it. As long as your machine is reasonably powered and otherwise behaving, PSP runs great.
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Performance
No answers on this topic
I have had no significant waiting times
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Support Rating
It was really hard to get them to understand what I was having problems with. It was hard to get the message through that Painter has an unacceptable amount of functional and UX bugs. When I finally talked to someone who was easier to communicate with, he was very stoic about the situation, like they didn't really care about the awful amount of bugs.
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I've never had to contact support. If I've had questions, I've been able to answer them from the existing help file and video tutorials.
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Implementation Rating
No answers on this topic
Nothing in particular. This is a desktop app. Install the program and use it. It's very straightforward for general graphic manipulation, and very intuitive for more complex processing.
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Alternatives Considered
Like I already mentioned Photoshop is so much more pleasant to work with. Though out of the box Photoshop definitely has a lot fewer brushes; you can definitely download bushes often for free, or otherwise a small fee (you have to pay to add more brushes with Painter as well). Painter has so many horrible bugs, functional as well as usability bugs, it's just very, very sloppy definitely compared to Photoshop which is virtually bug-free nowadays. All due respect to programmers, I have been a coder myself, but it is obvious that Painter is built by coders and coders alone, it is obvious there have not been many designers (UX or otherwise) involved in the development of Painter. I got Painter on a discount (luckily or I would have been really ticked off) and I wanted to try it out. I would NEVER pay $500 for it now I know it is riddled with bugs.
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From an ROI perspective, we moved entirely away from PhotoShop because we could not justify the cost vs performance. Corel PaintShop Pro is simply more cost-effective and offers the same performance and tools.
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Scalability
No answers on this topic
I'm not sure that this is scalable; it's a desktop app. Load it up, and use it. Make sure you have a license for each person using it. Pretty simple.
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Return on Investment
  • Waste of money
  • Waste of time trying to work around all the bugs
  • Waste of time trying to talk to customer service
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  • Our website is better because of Corel PaintShop Pro
  • Our brochures for tradeshows are much better due to PaintShop Pro
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ScreenShots