Serif’s Photo Editing Software has a lot of the same functions as industry standard Adobe Photoshop, and given that Photoshop is so expensive, it’s a logical choice for someone looking for an economical alternative.  As a relatively new PhotoPlus user, it seems to me that it does most of the same things can be done in it as in Photoshop, but it’s not as easy to do them.

Professionals used to Photoshop will notice that PhotoPlus X2 doesn’t take as long to start up, which is nice.  It also uses things like layers and most of the image adjustment functions that are familiar to Photoshop users, from levels and auto levels right down the line. These shared features at first appear to function in just about exactly the same way they do in Photoshop.  PhotoPlus does not, however, have some of the familiar keyboard shortcuts (or shortcuts to replace them, for that matter) and lacks some of the ease and intuitiveness of commands that you are probably accustomed to.  The toolbars aren’t as well-designed, there’s more hassle to resize and adjust objects pasted into existing images, there aren’t tabs for multiple images you have open across the top, and there generally is some clunkiness that is reminiscent of Photoshop several generations ago. Forget editing your Adobe file types, too.  It would probably be unreasonable to expect something much better than this for the price, though.

Those who are newer to using powerful photo editors will appreciate that it starts up with a “How to” sidebar that will walk you through some otherwise complicated retouching maneuvers like adding a tan to a person in an image or removing dark circles from under eyes.  These procedures are still complicated, mind you, but the step-by-step help provided can really make it easier to grasp some of the new concepts that go into doing these things well.  It’s definitely a big step up from what came on your computer or with your camera for an amateur digital photographer or someone just looking to make minor retouching edits to photos from events, say, before posting them on the web.