Unless your made of Money, stick with Photopaint 10, or go for Paint Shop Pro 7 which is only 79 dollars US. Heck for that matter you could use Gimp which is Free.

Photoshop doesn't really add anything that Photopaint can't do. If you also have Corel Draw10 then you're all set. Use the drawiing tools in Draw and export the result to Photopaint. It's not much different than using Illustrator and Photoshop...

I'd personally say go with Photoshop if you can. I could be considered biased though, since I've been using Photoshop for so long. I also use Paint Shop Pro, but imho after version 5, it stopped being a rich man's Paintbrush, and started being a poor man's Photoshop.

No, really, Photopaint is just as good as Photoshop, althoughPhotoshop is the standard in the industry. So, unless you're looking to get hired in a production company - then you need to know Photoshop or nobody will hire you - then you'd be waisting your money. I'm not saying Photoshop isn't good, no no, it's excellent, but Corel's graphics suite is just as good, it's just not as popular. I know some people who will even argue that Corel is actually better.

I've been using Photopaint since it started being included with Corel Draw. I now have Photopaint 10 and I must say I'm quite disappointed that Photoshop 6 has surpassed it.

Photopaint has always had a better UI for many things, it takes fewer steps for many common tasks.

But Photopaint has fallen behind in some pretty basic stuff such as being able to do quick effects to "objects" (the Corel equivalent of Layers).

In Photoshop, I can select a layer and choose blending options and features such as bevel, drop shadow, glows, etc. are all right there.

In Photopaint, by contrast, those features either don't exist or are pathetically poor and require far more steps. Take Beveling, for instance, the Photopaint version of Bevel and emboss is basically broken. It's just so much quicker to apply quick effects to a layer in Photoshop that do what 99% of users would want that it overshadows for me, the nice things in Photopaint's UI.

And Photopaint is rather buggy. Ctrl-Insert, a CUA convention, works but Shift-Insert will cause the Marque feature to go into "Add" mode and only a literal mouse click on the UI will change it back, very annoying.

the Photoshop work mothodology is professional, thats why people who has desing studies prefer it; of course anyone can use it. Photopaint is for amateurs.

Has anyone tried Painter 7 for Windows? I use this under Mac OS X now and wouldn't trade it for anything else. I have no idea how the Win version stacks up, though. I'm wondering if Corel hasn't reduced it's efforts in the area of Photopaint 10 (which I also find lacking under OS X) in order to put all it's eggs under the Painter 7 basket. P7 might be overkill for those used to Photpaint.

i,m using Corel Photopaint 10,adobe photoshop6,Ulead photoimpact6,paint shop pro and zoner draw3.
it may seem alot of programs but each can be handy to have.