Review by Amazon Customer

First part PhotonnAs a long time Photoshop User I had some struggles early with the features that are available to you and where to locate them. The program was driving me crazy. Now after two months of using it, I believe Corel has done a good job with this program. Yes it does not compare to Photoshop but that is like comparing apples to oranges. Paintshop Pro really competes with photoshop elements and as a user of that product also, I will admit Paintshop Pro is better.

The install process does a take a while but so most applications in this field. The first thing I did after installation was run an update.. I highly recommend this when using Corel’s prodcuts. I have some bad experiences a few of there other programs.

The interface is nice but is not real user friendly, so it does require extra time to learn what features are availble to you. Corel has gone down the same path as other and uses a black interface.

Using the productnOne the first thing the app wants to do is scan your computer images. I pointed towards my folder stucture that I use with lightroom. The organizer is easy to use and has a good feel to it.

When it came to editing photos this is where I struggled at first. Photoshop Elememts is defintely easier but does not have as many edit capabilites. Corel did include some one step fix features but I believe they did not work well enough for me, I wanted more control. When I ran the one step photo fix I felt the photo became to overexposed and needed tweeking.

With HDR Imagery being the rage lately, Corel included it in X3. It does not produce the result I like from HDR and does not give enough control like Photomatix. I am going knock Corel for this because I was suprised to see it even included.

Performacnce wise I did not experienceany real slowness but I am running Intel I Core. If you have any older computer you may experience slowness, I base this off pf past experiences with the Corel software.

VideonnI was a huge fan of Ulead. After Corel bought Ulead the quality of the product declined. Video Studio does require a powerful computer to work well. Yes it may run with the minimum I would hate to see how it performs. I am running a quad core so when I create a DVD it works well.

The interface is easy to use and move around. I had no problem moving around. It comes with a good timelin builders. There are more than enough templates to create a stunning DVD menu.

If you have a newer NVidia video card the software allows to use the GPU for acceleration. This makes all the difference in the world because a GPU with DDR5 will crush the CPU in time to encodennI would definitely recommend this to friends and family with understanding there may be some frustration in the beginning because it is not as easy as Photoshop/Premerie Elements to use