Likelihood to Recommend 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).
Read full review I have been able to import an environment and create realistic lighting rather quickly by using the power of GPU rendering. Paired with its ability to create instances of geometry, it makes it easy to render a megacity environment in half the time. One issue with this is the clutter that can be made with connecting nodes.
Read full review Pros AI photo correction is an excellent new addition The before an after side by side feature we use everyday The undo feature is one I particularly like Read full review Octane uses GPU rendering so it takes advantage of the video card. It gives you a good selection of options to tweak and refine your model rendering. It can use 3D instances so it doesn't overuse computer resources. There are plugins that can be incorporated into other 3D packages for rendering. Octane is particularly inexpensive compared to other 3D render packages. You are able to copy certain sections of nodes in order to create different iterations of the same environment or model. For example, changing the lighting or camera features. Read full review Cons 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. Read full review Its user interface could use some improvement. It is node-based so there is a slight learning curve when using it as a beginner. It doesn't import FBX files. It requires a 3D model to have UVs in order to import it into Octane. At times it may not be as stable. Read full review Alternatives Considered 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.
Read full review Although both have their pros and cons, Octane is far less expensive and it allows for more control over the geometry within a scene with better lighting and camera controls.
Read full review Return on Investment Our website is better because of Corel PaintShop Pro Our brochures for tradeshows are much better due to PaintShop Pro Read full review Octane has had a huge advantage of GPU rendering. It's relatively inexpensive compared to other rendering packages. It allows for more control over the scene compared to packages like Keyshot. Read full review ScreenShots