Photoshop vs . . .

[paulk]

Are there any good, inexpensive alternatives to Photoshop for post-processing, such as Paint Shop Pro, or is that "penny wise and pound foolish"?

[Bog]

See, what you need are tiered Photoshop manuals....

No, sorry, forgive me... g'night!

[Mylenium]

Are there any good, inexpensive alternatives to Photoshop for post-processing, such as Paint Shop Pro, or is that "penny wise and pound foolish"?

No, not really. PSP is probably the best of all the alternatives, but still has some shortcomings. Personally it is simply to slow and sluggish for me as are also Gimp and other alternatives. I also do not like to jump between too many programs and Photoshop has a lot of stuff built-in so I don't need to. Lastly, these days it's rather difficult to get third-party plugins to run without flaws in other apps than Photoshop because they so much rely on its mechanisms.

With all that said, you still have some options. There is nothing wrong with PSP if you are only just beginning and since Gimp is free, you can always have it installed without feeling guilty. Also look into ArtRage for painting - at 20 bucks it's a steal. Also look in some of those "cheap holiday photo editors" like Ulead PhotoImpact. You may not use them as a primary tool, but they have some interesting semi-automatic adjustment tools. Photoshop Elements falls into that same category.

Mylenium

[BazC]

I'll second Mylenium, PSP is probably the best alternative and very cheap but Photoshop is still the best of the bunch by quite a large margin in my opinion. I really wish there was an equally good alternative because I don't like Adobe's licensing system. It's hard to believe that no-one has even tried to compete with PS, PSP is aimed more at hobbiest/amateur market.

Anyway Paint Shop Pro is very capable and will likely do everything you need but give the Gimp a try too, after all, it's free what have you got to lose!?

[archiea]

How about Mirage?
http://www.bauhaussoftware.com/2D_Animation.php

[BazC]

Hmm, I've never heard of Mirage before, thanks for pointing it out it looks interesting. Photoshop filters only work on Windows for some reason though
I'm going to give it a go though!

[Captain Obvious]

Cinepaint

It's usually superior to Photoshop, if you're doing color correction and the like in a high dynamic range workflow. All the filters work on HDR images. Awesome! And it's FREE!

[RedBull]

Free ones like Paint.Net http://www.getpaint.net/index.html
and or Gimp/Cinepaint.

Also might want to check out something like PDPro
http://www.squirreldome.com/cyberop.htm which is a cheap painter.

[Verlon]

I like Mirage (formerly Aura: the paint program that came with the Video Toaster) because it reminds me of deluxe paint.
I do not like Gimp, but it is free. I haven't seen cinepaint, but will have to give it a look.

Photoshop is still tough to beat.

[Wickster]

You can try Pixel Image Editor...
Almost a Photoshop clone

http://www.kanzelsberger.com/pixel/?page_id=12

a bit buggy though but then again its in beta.

[BazC]

Yeah ixel has a lot of potential but is very unstable for me at the moment.

[Captain Obvious]

You can try Pixel Image Editor...
Almost a Photoshop clone

http://www.kanzelsberger.com/pixel/?page_id=12

a bit buggy though but then again its in beta.

Saying Pixel is a bit buggy is like saying there are a couple of grains of sand in Sahara.

[ScottSullivan]

Since switching over to MacBook Pro, I've been playing with Gimp, trying to see if I can manage. I've got a version of it that is supposed to be close to PS (I think it's called GimpShop).

It's just "okay." On a scale from 1-10, it's a 5. It does what I need, for now, but takes a tad bit longer. What was once a 1 minute "open/paint/add alpha/resave as Tiff+A" has now turned into a 10 minute ordeal.

As far as batch processing, I think I'm now the batch processor. Carpel Tunnel, here I come!

[Captain Obvious]

If it's batch processing you want, you might want to investigate the possibility of using Automator or AppleScript.

Or you could just use Photoshop. After all, it WORKS on the Macbook Pro. It's just a tad slow. But then again, Photoshop on a Macbook Pro is about as fast as Photoshop on a 1 GHz G4. I've used Photoshop on my iBook G4, and it was plenty fast. I don't think you'll have real performance issues running Pshop in Rosetta on an Intel Mac.

[Snosrap]

Photoshop is still the best of the bunch by quite a large margin in my opinion. I really wish there was an equally good alternative because I don't like Adobe's licensing system. It's hard to believe that no-one has even tried to compete with PS

I can't believe that Corel Photo Paint has not come up in this thread. It has everything to offer as PhotoShop but with far superior painting and masking tools. It uses an object metaphor vs. a layer metaphor but they function very similar to layers. Photo Paint is also way more "painterly", but also handles photo retouching with ease. I have both PS and Photo Paint loaded on my PC and I'll open and use Photo Paint whenever I need to create art and PS whenever I need to make color corrections. (I really like PS's create new adjustment layer feature) Photo Paint is not sold separately, but comes bundled with Corel Draw Suite which may be why it has no recognition. The whole suite sells for $399 on Corel's site, considerably less than PhotoShop alone. I also use Mirage on a regular basis and it’s real nice too, but I must admit that its use is relegated to compositing my LW frames into animations with some FX. I wouldn’t think about using it for creating a web page or the like. Give Corel a try I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised.

Cheers
Snos