Custom Made Sig and Avatar [6]

Hi GFX-experts, I am in urgent need of your wisdom

Just trotted across Corel Paint Shop Pro X4 today in a store. I was thinking of buying Adobe Photoshop Elements 10 (still to be released), but now I am wondering if I should switch to Corel. For one thing, PSE 9 does not have a pen tool (also called the path tool or the curve tool), and I don't think PSE 10 will have it either. It remains a feature of Photoshop CS only. Now I believe that Paint Shop Pro has a curve tool, and also layer masks.

Purchasing the full-fledged suites like Photoshop CS or CorelDraw Graphics Suite X5 is financially out of the question for me (the infamous student's budget). And I'm not sure I'll really need all those features included in the suites.

So can anyone confirm this/help me out? Does Paint Shop Pro have a friendly user interface, too?

Thanks, Dennis, but I would prefer not to buy licenced software off ebay - you just never know.

Well, you were certainly lucky...But not everyone is...and whether it's legit or not something we cannot discuss due to forum rule #4
Anyway, I think I'll download the trial version of Corel Paint Shop Pro on my other computer and see how it goes. If I like it, then I can kick PSE 5 off the system...It's not bad at all, but it's old and it really hogs the computer resources, making the keyboard hot and the fans wail like a pack of howling wolves ;-))

Hi Dennis,
As per your request - here are the zipped PSD files containing the layers of your sig. The first file (sig_THW_2) contains the components of the sig itself; the second one (sig_THW_3) has the Path Tool elements (the red-and-black "streamers") and red outer glow. I had to do it this way because I used GIMP to create the streamers - and GIMP cannot read non-simplified layers created in PSE, so it just removes all layer effects...So I had to first merge the sig in PSE and then continue working on it in GIMP...hope that made sense ;-D

PooMan UK said:

Athene what exactly is it that you want to use the software for ?
Corel Paint Shop Pro X4 is aimed specifically at photo editing.

Hi Nick,
I'd like to use it to edit photos and to create sigs ;-) I think Paint Shop Pro has a curve/pen tool which PSE does not have. And when I want to work on a PSE-created PSD file in GIMP, then GIMP simply ignores layer effects like bevel/emboss, inner/outer glows etc. I mostly use GIMP because it has a curve tool; but then I usually have to work with two sets of PSD layers just for one sig.

I've done a lot of reading on the enormous suites like Photoshop CS and Corel Draw Graphics Suite X5, and they seem to have too many functions, several of which I'll probably never use...besides the fact that they're very expensive.
Student versions (over here, at least) tend to be rather watered down - so what's the use of a full-fledged watered-down version? ;-)))

Briefly...I'm searching for a rough equivalent of PSE with a curve tool :-D