Review by Bill McLean

It is a complete mystery to me why any buyer - at any of the prices offered - would give this Coral package less than Four Stars. Maybe the larger and much more expensive PhotoShop programs do a little more, maybe they are a little easier to use, or maybe the Nay Sayers just hate Canadians. How would I know? I don’t even own anything from PhotoShop except Elements 7.

I started editing photos using Picasa, the free download from Google. That was okay then - for my level of expertise. Later, I improved my results a little by using PhotoShop Elements 7. It was a lot more difficult to use than Picasa, but the results were worth the extra effort. Both accepted Canon RAW formats.

Now I’m using Coral Paint Shop Pro Ultimate Photo X2 - and the other smaller programs included for free. I am amazed that good User Guides, and excellent Video Instructions, are included at no additional charge. I did purchase a book for Coral’s Photo X3, but just to see if it’s worth the upgrade to me. It is. I’m saving up (or waiting for the price to drop when X4 comes out).

Of course all these new potentials are kind of overwhelming at first. But I can use just the easy parts or, if inspired by a one of my pictures, I can go to whatever level I’m willing to expend the effort to use.

What’s all this griping about complexity and crashing. Access to many solutions (that must be complex) is desired. As far as crashes, does anyone really know why any given program crashes? They all crash. Get used to it. Take precautions. SAVE YOUR WORK FREQUENTLY. As for the sometimes complaint of running slow, my top of the line Canon Pro9000 Mark II prints slow, especially with high resolution Canon RAW photographs. Tish Tish I’m just glad that the program handles Canon RAW (and automatically saves to TIFF.)nnThis is a really good program(s). But, if you can afford it, BUY THE CURRENT X3 RELEASE. I hope this is helpful.