Corel Paint Shop Pro Photo X2 Ultimate

Great product....actually compatible w/ VISTA systems. Not the easiest program 2 work with, but well worth learning.

While I had bought PSP X2, I installed trial version before opening the box. I currently have PSP X, and PSP X2 (two versions ahead) has practically no improvement.

Here are the pros over PSP X:
1. Color replacer took is new.
2. Uses darker color theme (which is indeed good since you see our photo much better)

And here are the cons. Got to read Wikipedia article on PSPX2.
1. Installs two services and an exe process that are always running on your system. You can kill the exe but cannot stop the services without leaving PSP X2 non-functional (reboot fixes it again).
2. Much more hard-drive space. Probably because of extra content, brushes, etc. But how many times you use these?

On the other hand, a competing product, PhotoImpact Pro X3 belonging to the same company, which further is surprisingly almost exactly the same as Nova PhotoImpact Pro 13, has improved significantly to become much better than PXP X/X2. Yeah, Nova version 11 has bad reviews at Amazon.com, so I was skeptical. But it just works fine (no installation issues, no crashes, lots of features, lots of bonuses).

I uses Photoshop CS 2 before and while this is a phantastic software for editing pictures, it was really shooting birds with canons.
The most pictures I make these days fall in the category of family snapshots, with the occasional landscape and some other documentary photos.
So I was looking for a more simple solution with more automation / with three kids, you just don't have the time anymore to individually tweak every photo to the max in PS. And with my wife discovering the joy of taking pictures of our kids, the picture count for this year is slightly below 3000.
X2 Ultimate has everything that I need - a quick fix button for my wife, a somewhat more elaborate but still simple tweaking capability for me and if I really need it, it also has basically the same functionalities built in as PS, when you delve deeper into the menus.
It also has a decent photo viewer and comes will all kinds of bells and whistles that I haven't tried out so far (like the background removal tool, the HDR fuction etc.).
The worklflow might not be as refined as with PS and Lightroom, but for my basic and simple needs it is a perfect fit.
The learning curve is practically non-existent if you already have some experience with other photo editing software. And it runs very fast even on my old XP machine with 1GB RAM.
I used the ancestors of this software way back in the early 90s, before I became a serious photographer and updated to the big gun PS. Now that I have reverted back to being a snapshooter again, X2 Ultimate is the BB Gun I need to shoot my birds. :)

This is an extremely difficult product to install. Painter Photo Essentials 4, which is included, is even worse and not compatible with Norton Internet Security. Running it will freeze your system. I've spent weeks trouble shooting the install and as a result have not even tried to use Paint Shop Pro Photo. Corel technical support is not aware of the problem and offers no solutions. Be prepared for hours of systems freezes and an unusable product.

It is now well over a month and still I have not received the product!! It qualified for free shipping, but I needed sooner so I paid Amazon extra $$ for expedited shipping and never received anything. I requested a refund and Amazon sent return postage tag, yet I still have NO merchandise to affix it to?
This is very poor service on Amazons behalf. I do not think I will EVER purchase from them again!!
BUYER BEWARE OF AMAZON!