Corel PaintShop Pro 2023 Ultimate | Powerful Photo Editing & Graphic Design Software + Creative Suite | Amazon Exclusive ParticleShop + 5 Brush Starter Pack [PC Key Card]

Somehow this product gets worse with every release. I guess its time to convert to a real image editor...

I purchased the - Corel PaintShop Pro 2023 Ultimate | Powerful Photo Editing & Graphic Design Software + Creative Suite [PC Key Card] – for my place of business. I installed it on the mini-pc that I have set up in the workshop area for use with my laser engraver. I’m also running an old version of Photoshop Elements, and Krita. A long ways back, I was a Corel user so when the opportunity arose to try the program out again, I jumped at the opportunity.

I wish I could focus more on the actual use of Paintshop Pro but the installation was infuriating. Nearly took two days to finally get full access. Thank goodness I came back and looked at several reviews which were much more informative than the information I found. Please navigate to the FAQ PDF within this page as it was very informative to me!

..unless youre a computer whiz, which I am not. I called customer support twice because I couldnt download the product. Apparently, customer support is located in the Middle East somewhere, because I couldnt understand them. Also, they couldnt wait to get me off the phone, even though I was nothing but courteous to them. So now Im stuck with a useless $85 cardboard box. Of course this is no reflection on Amazon. As usual they delivered promptly. No complaints at all about Amazon.

This was a bit of a pain to install. The box contained a paper with the software keys and a download url to go to. The downloaded file contained folders for each piece of software and some folders with the addons, which for the fonts was just a bunch of font files and I couldnt figure out how to get them in so they were useable in the program. The other install files I had to do into each folder and run the executable to install them, then some even had to download additional data afterwards. It took at least 30 minutes to run through all of them. But like I said they fonts I never could figure out how to get them into the program.

I didnt have a lot of issues getting this loaded.

The installation process for this suite is a nightmare and to be honest, I’m STILL trying to decide if the hassle of installing Corel is worth the money saved over Adobe products. I will update this review in the future once I’ve had even more time to work with it; I’ve been using competitor products for 10+ years now so I’ll need more time to really give Corel a fair shake. But PHEW, this installation process was such a bad introduction!

I am reasonably computer savey with a strong windows computer, but the trouble I went through loading Paintshop Pro Ultimate, Painter Essentials 8, and Particle shop purchased from Coral through Amazon was the most difficult I have ever had with software.

UPDATE: Reduced to 1 star, would give zero if I could. I started getting Black Friday popup ads. NOT OK! The ad popped up right over a work conversation while I was typing. This is a purchased product, so there should be no ads. Shame on you Corel! Get out of here with that garbage. I will not be using another Corel product again.

Seems like a good product. Was not able to download to any of my computers or laptops.