Review by William A. Nolan

First a little background. I have always been a Photoshop guy. I am a pro photographer, and I have taught photoshop in my college photography classes for years. However, the latest versions aren’t really being sold. Instead you pay a monthly or yearly fee. No thanks. I know that’s the trend lately, but I don’t have to like it. As a result I am in the process of switching. The Corel suite is, so far, just as powerful. By that I mean that I haven’t yet wanted to do something and not been able to do it with this software. There has certainly a learning curve. Corel uses different terms than Adobe. What I know as layers are now called objects, to give just one example. It took me a while to become an expert at Photoshop, and this software will be no different.

As primarily a photographer, Photo-Paint will be the portion of the suite I use most. It has been easy to adjust so far, and there are hints both at the right side and bottom of the screen. I already like some things better. For instance, when cloning, which I use often, in this program you select the area to clone from by simply right clicking it. I was used to having to press alt, but this way is easier – no hands on the keyboard. I have so far found this to be quite easy to figure out on my own or with the on-screen hints. I have only used Help when I didn’t know what to call something because the terminology is different.

The Website Creator is also easy to use and has some good, pre-made templates. I don’t do a lot of websites, but I did a quick one to try it out and it was pretty easy. In this case I am comparing it to Site Spinner, and this seems to compare well. Aftershot allows editing of RAW files, and many other functions I have been using Lightroom to do.

The suite comes with a lot of extras, such as 1000 fonts, 10,000 pieces of clipart, templates, frames, fills, and a bunch more, and all can be used royalty free if you are doing commercial work. The suite works well on my Windows 10 computer, and handles my dual monitor setup well. I am impressed so far, and it isn’t too expensive for a complete suite of graphics tools. I am making the switch.