Economy Drive

Is upgrading to the latest software releases really essential? Given the current financial situation and future economic uncertainty and being on a fixed income,
I have been reacquainting myself with Paint Shop Pro recently. Why? Because I have been using Xara Xtreme virtually exclusively for well over a year, it’s surprising
(or perhaps not quite so surprising) how much I had forgotten. Even the simple task of creating some pleasing text took a bit of figuring out, and some perusal
of the help files.
This isn’t about how crappy PSP is, or even how wonderful Xtreme is, (although it is!) or about trying to compare apples to oranges. I’m a big fan of PSP, but I
need to use it less and less as I find more and more ways of doing the same things using Xtreme. I still use PSP a lot for those tools such as the clone brush
and magic wand, but everything else has become decidedly rusty. I wanted to be able to work through some PSP tutorials which produce artwork that Xtreme
cannot reproduce, as I think it would be a shame to miss out on all that PSP has to offer. Hence my reappraisal of PSP.
But I was once again struck by how versatile Xtreme is, and the example I’ve attached shows how it was possible to recreate the PSP text with Xtreme versions
using 2 different tools.
I know that Adobe is the industry standard, and Egg’s thread about CS4 set me thinking that I probably won’t be upgrading to it. I’m using PSP8 for my relearning,
because it is the version I’m most comfortable with, and I don’t think since Corel took over that it has improved much at all.
I find that for my purposes, PSP8 and Xara Xtreme 4 and the occasional use of CorelDraw 9 & X3 for a few things like Desktop Publishing and 9’s Corel Texture,
probably cover all that Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop and InDesign can do for a fraction of the cost. Also I’m not using a fraction of the computing resources that the
latest Adobe offerings seem to require. So if I can get my head around all that PSP 8 can do that Xtreme cannot, I won't have to upgrade to the new Adobe suite, at
least, that's how I see it; combine all the resources that I already have and become proficient enough at all of them so that Adobe will be redundant for me.
I know Photoshop, InDesign and Illustrator can do lots, but given the combination of Xtreme, PSP and CorelDraw, I don't think I'll be missing too much.
These are my attempts at trying to economise on future purchases without making too many sacrifices. I have also found that Sun Microsystem’s Open Office will
help in this regard, too. No more Microsoft Office for me. Again not bashing the product, but it seems to have lost much of its relevance with a pretty good free
version available. The only thing I have to worry about now is an irresistable set of new features in Xara Xtreme 5.0.
If any of you have other money-saving suggestions to offer the TG community, I’m sure they will be of interest to lots of members. Free plugins for Photoshop
(that also work with PSP and Xtreme) for example, or free (legitimate) music downloads and other software will, I’m sure be of interest.
Is there perhaps a core set of computer software suitable for the graphic community which is available at realistically low prices, or, even better, free?
Saludos,
Bob.

see also our old thread about Pixel Painting Software

Bob - in trying to recreate the PSP text with the XX bevel tool, if you change the light elevation to 90°, the bevel will look much more like the edge of the PSP text.