Rating: 
Summary: STILL THE BEST FOR THE BUCK
Review: I have used PSP 8 now for about 1 month. Upgraded from PSP 7. I'm still getting used to it,but I can say I like it, and am glad I upgraded. The first thing to do if you buy the boxed version after you load it go to JASC.Com and download all the little fixes for it. The file is almost 25Mb in size so if you are using a dial-up connection it will take a while. But it takes care of all the little problems users have told them about. With PSP 7 I had to do the same thing. But it's nice to see a company stay on top of these type things with the software they sell. I also purchased 2 books on Amazon to help me get a feel for the changes. " Paint Shop Pro 8 fast & easy" and "Paint Shop Pro 8 zero to hero" I feel this product is worth the price and is fun and easy to use. Would give it 5 stars if their manuals were writen better. The program itself 6 stars.
Rating: 
Summary: version 8 vs version 7 and photoshop
Review: Version 7 is nice because all the tools are out in the open, visible at the opening of your first image. Version 8 on the other hand has a truncated left (usually) docked toolbar tools with those little arrows to indicate that more is hidden from view. I could see how one would find this useful in a screen resolution 800X600 or below, but for those at higher screen resolutions is really just hides the tools behind another click or too. If version 8 supported the interface of version 7 I would not have a problem with this program, however, version 8 does seem to be a lesser clone of photoshop. Adobe products all run slow on my computer, and I fear that paint shop pro is on the same trek as Adobe by some of the other reviews on the slowness of this product. My recommendation is to find PSP 7, one of those small stores in the big city may have a copy. I will NOT use PSP 8. Being a first time customer with PSP 7 I would hope that Jasc would want to keep people like me happy and continuing the buying of thier products. I will see what V9 has to offer before I decide to upgrade again.
Rating: 
Summary: Best program I own!
Review: I had been using Photoshop 7 for almost a year when I tried a trial version of Paint Shop Pro 8. This program sold itself to me in about 15 minutes. It is so easy to use and does just about all that Photoshop does and more. The only tool I now use in Photoshop is the healing brush on a rare occassion. PSP 8 fills every need totally. It even has some features not found anywhere else. The scratch removal tool is incredible and works on many things....scratches are removed one by one, so you don't have a generally blurred image to get rid of scratches. And it also can remove face wrinkles, blemishes and just about any other imperfection you can find. I like the program so much that I also bought the Xtras 1 and 2 and the Virtual Painter program that works as a plug in. The only thing I do wish would change is their pricing policy. It is very erratic, so watch how much you pay and the current rebates. There is a suite of programs offered at the moment that after rebate is cheaper than the main program alone most of the time. But, as for the program itself, it is the best.
Rating:
Summary: PSP8 and PSP7: A Comparison
Review: I've been a user of Paint Shop Pro since version 3 and over the past year I've used version 7. I recently upgraded to version 8, thanks to the very affordable price. Without a doubt, Jasc typically makes great software at a very reasonable price. Compared to PSP7, PSP8 offers several advantages. One of the biggest is that on complicated images with multiple layers, it no longer takes several seconds to do simple operations like flood filling. The general performance of the painting component is much faster than before. PSP8 also brings with it a new interface more akin to Photoshop. It is much cleaner and more compact. There is a ton of information right at your fingertips now in centralized locations instead of scattered across various floating menus. Indeed, the whole package is a lot more organized than before. There are other minor new features that are nice additions. One great addition is the emergence of a freehand pen tool that allows you to more easily draw with the mouse by smoothing any curve you draw (similar to Macromedia Flash). The sensitivity is adjustable. There are also a few new special effects. Another new function is scripting. For all of those tedious graphic manipulation tasks where you find yourself doing the exact same thing repeatedly, you can automate routine actions using scripting. Again, another great idea. Previous in PSP7, Jasc offered automatic color, contrast, and saturation enhancements for any photograph. Here, they've integrated them into the "one step photo fix" feature that, as advertised, tries to fix an entire picture in the push of a button. To my surprise, it works remarkably well. However, there is a negative side to PSP8. It has a host of strange quirks and bugs. Perhaps thanks to the rewrite, some parts of PSP8 are unstable. While the program doesn't crash per se, it doesn't function like it should in some cases. In several cases, I've observed the Undo function breaking completely or even undo'ing the wrong portions of the image. In another case, a saved file did not save correctly when using the PNG exporter. And yet the worst part is that these bugs are rather nondeterministic. They occur sometimes and not others. Without a doubt, PSP8 would have benefit from more testing as even with the most recent patch installed, it hasn't earned my trust yet unlike PSP7. If you can tolerate the quirks, however, you gain a significant increase in speed when dealing with complex multi-layered images. It's a toss, really. If you're like me and you deal with such images, you might deal with the bugs and enjoy the speed increase. For the casual user, though, I would be cautious recommending this one over PSP7.
Rating: 
Summary: More like a PSP 7.5 than a PSP 8
Review: Not much difference between version 8 and version 7. Version 7 was a leap forward from 6, but don't expect any such change between 7 and 8. If you don't own Paint Shop Pro 7, then go ahead and buy 8. If you already have 7, stick with it...there is almost no difference between what you already own and version 8. (I suspect some of the reviews on this and other products are by people associated with the companies that make them). PSP is a very good photo/paint program and a lot faster to use than the more well known (and incomprehensibly expensive) Adobe Photoshop. PSP has lots of ways to edit just about every aspect of an image (lots of ways you probably never knew about) and the features can be combined many, many ways so that even after using it for years you can still find new effects through experimentation. Best buy for the money, but again, if you already own 7, you pretty much already own most of 8. If you own any version earlier than 7, or if you don't own PSP at all, then by all means I would suggest PSP 8 over the competition.
Rating:
Summary: GREAT PROGRAM for the money
Review: I have used Photoshop 5.0 LE and also my daughters Photoshop 7.0. I really liked Photoshop 7 but couldn't find a real copy that I could afford (I did get sold an illegal copy but luckily got my money back) and Photoshop CS was way out of my reach. I was thinking about going back to Photoshop 6 and was searching the web for a review of Photoshop 6 and 7. What I found was a comparison of Photoshop 6 and Paint Shop Pro 7, and I was impressed with what I read about PSP. I also found that JASC allowed you to download a 60 day full trial version. I downloaded the trial version and was sold after 3 days and purchased a full copy. I mostly want to edit photo's and this program does everything that I want it to. I am sure that Photoshop 7 has some features that PSP 8 doesn't have, but I am not sure what they would be. When you figure that PSP 8 cost about 80% less that Photoshop CS, I just don't think you can go wrong with this program. It is sure worth a 60 day free trial before you spend a lot of money on something else.
Rating:
Summary: Outstanding software
Review: I have always loved Paintshop Pro, beginning with Version 3. For many years I have been using version 5.03 without problem and with great results. When Version 8 came out and I read the reviews, I knew I had to finally upgrade. I am not disappointed one bit. I have used various versions of Photoshop, including Elements, but I still come back to Paintshop and prefer it for many reasons that I will not go into here, except for one: PRICE. For the money, this program should get 6 stars. Like other profressinal level graphics programs, you have to have the computing power to run it well. A 2+ processor (AMD or Intel) allows it to work without probmems, and 512k memory helps as well. You do need a 1+ processor and 256k memory and with that you will wait some, but it will run. Highly recommended for anyone who wants to learn from the ground up or who has some familiarity with other high-end graphics programs. The improvements to this version over 5.03 are tremendous. It is like a whole new program but with some nice elements remaining. The manual with it is huge and there is much support on line.
Rating: 
Summary: Version 8 is absolutely horrible!
Review: I have version 7, and love it!
Upgraded to version 8, and hated it.
Very sluggish in operation, user interface is
completely different and difficult use. I un-installed version 8, and went back to version 7.
Rating:
Summary: Stay With PSP 7
Review: if you are a psp 7 user, i strongly recommend that you stay with v7. it's not, as one reviewer incorrectly says, because there aren't significant upgrades in psp 8. it's rather because there are significant upgrades which degrade the product's performance. i find v8 much more buggy running on my 2.6-ghz/1-gb ram machine. yes, it's nice to be able to dock all the tool bars, and the image straightening tool is a nice add-on (though they made it harder to turn off than it should be). but, the clone tool no longer moves or clones as smoothly as it did on v7. and, i for the life of me cannot figure out why some identical tools have completely different icons (v7 to v8). come on jasc: since we can all read words, icons never really made sense (at least to me), but it's crazy to change the language on us midstream! to put my money where my mouth is: i have both installed on my machine. i edit about 50-100 images a week. and i almost always click on the v7 install. every now and then i click on v8 thinking "it can't be as bad as i think it is!". oh yes it can!! mark d.
Rating:
Summary: PSP 8 rocks! and YES, upgrade from PSP 7
Review: I'm a longtime user of PSP 7, and PSP 8 has lots of little features that make my life easier. Dialogs like Unsharp mask, etc. are resizable, you have a dropper in Histogram Adjustment mode that allows you to get details on your image, etc. ... in other words, the little things that give you fewer and fewer reasons to pay 6 (or if you're just upgrading from PSP 7, **12**) times the price of Photoshop! To those complaining about speed: I have a 1Ghz and it works just fine. Cold startup time is marginally slower, but after that, it's just as peppy as before (in fact, perhaps slightly faster). And to those complaining about the toolbars being "stacked on the left" ... umm, you can move them? Mine are all on my second monitor, so that's a great option, but it supports many other configurations as well. Just work with it, give it a chance ...
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