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"Paint Shop Pro"-like to OSX?

brewno

brewno

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Jun 8, 2007
461
18
Montreal, Canada
Hello dear forum lurkers,

I'm going on a trip to Japan soon and I'll take my camera and my MBP to take a few pictures there. Aperture 3 will be my companion.
I also would like to install on my mac a program that does things like Paint Shop Pro does on a Windows environment, but nothing coming from Adobe, please, I'm looking for something cheap that I could add text, effects, just like PSP.
Does anyone know a good program?

I appreciate your help.

Bruno
 
GIMP

Please search.

I think MacRumors is having a contest to see who is going to be the 1,000,000th person to ask about a "Free/Cheap" paint / photo editing program for the Mac.
 
GIMP is good for a free app but not the best.

A Paint-Shop-Pro equivalent for OS-X is Pixelmator. It is a great app that you is like a fast/better version of Photoshop.


www.pixelmator.com

Plus you can download the demo to see if its worth the price.
 
I use Pixelmator also as a Paint Shop Pro replacement. You can run Paint Shop Pro on your Mac without installing windows by using CrossOver . It's not on codeweavers list of apps, but I used it for awhile on 2 different Macs and it ran Paint shop Pro just as fast as a windows machine. I don't use any Windows software any more. I find GIMP to be so bloated and slow that I can have an edit finished and on to other stuff by the time GIMP opens and ready to use.
 
Thank you FSMBP and Pomeroy for the kind answers. Some people here need to take a chill pill.
I'll look for Pixelmator, thank you :)
 
I liked PSP too. That and ACDSee were the two programs I struggled hardest to find equivalents on the Mac. I use Pixelmator too for the odd job. It's not as nice as I remember PSP being, but it does the job fairly well. Photoshop Elements would be a second runner up.
 
Yeah! I used to love ACDSee for full-screen picture viewing. I found one equivalent for Mac, that does the job: JustLooking. I set it up for when I click on a photo, it opens it on Full screen.
 
Preview can be used for much more than just a quick glance at an image file when you get out of the habit using it like on a windows machine. To open up the power of Preview I keep it on the dock so it is handy all the time (doesn't have to be open and running). Select the group of files you want to see or just drag the whole folder to the dock and drop on Preview. Preview will open with all the images in a side bar and some buttons will appear on the bottom right. One of these buttons is 
"Contact Sheet" when you click on it a Slider will appear and you can adjust the size of the thumbnails. By dropping multiple files on Preview you can now do Batch operations too, like Adjust the size or flip and rotate. You can easily Crop images and do Color Adjusts in Preview as well. I also use Preview to "Annotate" screen shots by adding boxes, circles, arrows and text when I need to. I try to use the features that came on my Mac when I can. I believe they were designed to work well together and I don't need to run a lot of 3rd party software to try and force my Mac to act like Windows machine. Don't forget that "Quick Look" also works well for browsing all kinds of files (images, music, PDF, text and etc). Open Finder in " List or Column view" select a file then hit the "Space bar" and then you can scroll up and down using the arrow keys.
You may already know all this but maybe someone New will find it helpful.
 
This is an older thread, but thought I would share my recent experience....
I've always used PSP on the PC and just got my first MBP.
I downloaded the trial version of Elements 8 and was using it pretty well in a short time period.
I'm not real great with computers, but this Elements program is pretty nice.
- Dave
 
I have iMaginator, Painter X, Aperture and Pixelmater ....

I like the results I have seen friends use with Paint Shop Pro.

Someone mentioned that Pixelmator does the same.

What I am looking for in particular is a program that will run on
Macintosh Snow Leopard (I can't afford DxO Pro just yet at $169 for my
Nikon D200 -- tried the demo and LOVED IT)

that will correct perspective.

I can do it manually on iMaginator but it leaves jagged edges and the demo of DxO Pro did NOT.

Anyone tell me how to use perspective correction on Pixelmator or ANOTHER Mac program that does !

Thank you !!!

Cheers, Fay in Sedona
 
Psp

This is a very old thread but I hope that someone still reads it. I LOVED PSP, not for editing pictures but for all the tutorials on how to draw pixel line art and all the different 3rd party plugins it had. Photoshop Elements is a good program for the Mac but it isn't PSP. It doesn't have tutorials on the things I like to do, so I gave up looking for a program like PSP. Was that wrong of me?
 
CylonGlitch said:
There are approximately 2.5 billion tutorials on the internet. That might be a good place to start.
Click to expand...

I posted here because I did search the net. Users of PSP write tutorials such as how to draw a cute little pixel bunny. Photoshop Elements users haven't done that from what I've seen. It's all about editing photos. I'm looking for the cute little bunny type tutorials.
 
lwr32 said:
I posted here because I did search the net. Users of PSP write tutorials such as how to draw a cute little pixel bunny. Photoshop Elements users haven't done that from what I've seen. It's all about editing photos. I'm looking for the cute little bunny type tutorials.
Click to expand...

Google : Photoshop, how to draw a rabbit
Result : 3rd Hit

It's kinda cute.
42.jpg
 
Re: Paint Shop Pro-like to OSX

CylonGlitch said:
GIMP

Please search.

I think MacRumors is having a contest to see who is going to be the 1,000,000th person to ask about a "Free/Cheap" paint / photo editing program for the Mac.
Click to expand...

My problem isn't "free/cheap." It's that I've downloaded any number of free, cheap and not-cheap applications that lack the functions I enjoyed with Paint Shop Pro (Win). There's got to be a tool out there that will let me create a new image, fill it with cut-and-pasted image fragments from other images, adjust transparency, do pixel-level editing, etc. All I seem to find are apps that provide "effects" and "borders." In 25 years, I've never found a need for borders and rarely for effects. One of you professionals- I'm VERY amateur - surely can identify what I want and point me to it in Mac-dom. Please?
 
tspofford said:
My problem isn't "free/cheap." It's that I've downloaded any number of free, cheap and not-cheap applications that lack the functions I enjoyed with Paint Shop Pro (Win). There's got to be a tool out there that will let me create a new image, fill it with cut-and-pasted image fragments from other images, adjust transparency, do pixel-level editing, etc. All I seem to find are apps that provide "effects" and "borders." In 25 years, I've never found a need for borders and rarely for effects. One of you professionals- I'm VERY amateur - surely can identify what I want and point me to it in Mac-dom. Please?
Click to expand...

For Pixelmator ($14.99 in the Mac App Store, but also a free-trial version on their website), check out the following Pixelmator tutorial sites to see if this is what you have in mind:
http://www.pxm-tuts.com/page/2/
http://tripletsisters.wordpress.com
http://www.pixelmator.com/tutorials/third-party/

I also love iDraw which is vector-based drawing, $25 in the Mac App Store. They're just starting a tuts site but I've found I can follow along or adjust using basic Adobe Illustrator tuts from Tuts+:
http://www.indeeo.com/idraw/tutorials/
http://design.tutsplus.com
 
tspofford said:
My problem isn't "free/cheap." It's that I've downloaded any number of free, cheap and not-cheap applications that lack the functions I enjoyed with Paint Shop Pro (Win). There's got to be a tool out there that will let me create a new image, fill it with cut-and-pasted image fragments from other images, adjust transparency, do pixel-level editing, etc. All I seem to find are apps that provide "effects" and "borders." In 25 years, I've never found a need for borders and rarely for effects. One of you professionals- I'm VERY amateur - surely can identify what I want and point me to it in Mac-dom. Please?
Click to expand...

VirtualBox is Free and will let you install and run Paint Shop Pro, I used it for awhile, but I find Pixelmator does everything I need to do, just takes some time to relearn some of the things you had learned how to do in PSP .
https://www.virtualbox.org/

CrossOver from Codeweavers works well with Paint Shop Pro also, but it is $60. I have seen it much cheaper when included in a software bundle.
http://www.codeweavers.com/products/

You don't need to install a copy of Windows for either of these Apps to use Windows programs on your Mac. They don't work with all Windows software, but I know PSP 7 works with both. I kept going back to PSP7, I hated what Corel did to it after they bought it. If you spend a little time with Pixelmator and their tutorials and I think you can do away with PSP altogether.
 
tspofford said:
My problem isn't "free/cheap." It's that I've downloaded any number of free, cheap and not-cheap applications that lack the functions I enjoyed with Paint Shop Pro (Win). There's got to be a tool out there that will let me create a new image, fill it with cut-and-pasted image fragments from other images, adjust transparency, do pixel-level editing, etc. All I seem to find are apps that provide "effects" and "borders." In 25 years, I've never found a need for borders and rarely for effects. One of you professionals- I'm VERY amateur - surely can identify what I want and point me to it in Mac-dom. Please?
Click to expand...

GIMP can do everything you want, it is truly a replacement for Photoshop. The only thing that it can't do are plugins (or at least not photoshop plugins). If you're claiming it can't, then you're wrong. Seriously, GIMP is often used by professionals when they need something outside the Adobe realm.

You do know that the messages you're replying to are over 3 years old, right?

If you spend a few dollars, get Pixelmator, it is a great application and well worth the money. $15 and will do more than what you want. If you want FREE then your only real choice is GiMP.

----------
Pomeroy said:
You don't need to install a copy of Windows for either of these Apps to use Windows programs on your Mac.
Click to expand...

VirtualBox you do, it is a free version of Parallels or VMWare Fusion. It works, but I find it a bit slow. But it's good enough for things like this. But you WILL need a copy of windows.
 
CylonGlitch said:
You do know that the messages you're replying to are over 3 years old, right?

.
Click to expand...

Yes, I did know that, but it was on point and produced 4 very helpful replies. Thanks!

----------
CylonGlitch said:
VirtualBox you do, it is a free version of Parallels or VMWare Fusion. It works, but I find it a bit slow. But you WILL need a copy of windows.
Click to expand...

Yes, thanks. That's what I do now: Fusion, Windows, and my 12-year-old version whatever (5?) PSP. Yes, it works but as you say, on my 8Gb MacBook Pro, it's slow. Between that and the native apps y'all pointed me to, I'm good. Thanks again.
 
Isn't Graphic Converter still around? Back in the day I used PSP on Windows and GC on Mac. I do have Pixelmator now but once I learned I can do simple things in Preview, I use that. I do more intensive work in Photoshop.
 
tspofford said:
Fusion, Windows, and my 12-year-old version whatever (5?) PSP.
Click to expand...

Paint Shop Pro 7.04. It was almost but not quite (I think) the last one from JASC, or at least the last one before they instituted a relatively spend-y full version upgrade policy.

Sorry to see that go. Same with DESQview - well, the need for that got passed up by the technology - and the original PC Tools.

Thanks. I have what I was after and can now let this thread fade back into archival status for another 3-4 years.
 
A bunch of us have been collating a list over on the CGTalk forums documenting alternatives to Adobe software.

Adobe Production Apps Alternatives

There's quite a few options out there and some really capable ones at that.
Keep in mind though that the list is platform agnostic and therefor some of the apps listed might not be available on OSX. Nonetheless, it's a good list worth perusing.
 
CylonGlitch said:
There are approximately 2.5 billion tutorials on the internet. That might be a good place to start.
Click to expand...

Maybe you don't understand they type of tutorials I'm looking for. Here is a link to the type of tutorials I'm looking for http://choura2001.free.fr/tuto/lapin_angl.htm

I find tutorials like those all over the net for PSP but not for Photoshop.

----------
CylonGlitch said:
Google : Photoshop, how to draw a rabbit
Result : 3rd Hit

It's kinda cute.
Image
Click to expand...

Thanks. Do you know what app is being used. It doesn't look like Photoshop. Also, if I didn't mention, I'm a Mac user.
 
paint shop pro 9

I will be buying my first iMac soon, want to continue to use psp 9 and all the 'tubes' and layered images I have in .psp format ... does anyone currently use psp 9 on an iMac and if yes, how? crossover? virtualbox? fusion? parallels? something else?

and yes, I know this is an old thread, but found some useful info here, but hoping for something more current

TIA!
 
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