Paint Shop Pro ???

[ubalderdash]

I used to be a big fan of this program and although Gimp is probably better it is just too complicated for the casual user. I've just spent an hour with it and have achieved nothing, not even a coloured squiggle!

Can anyone suggest a more user friendly graphics program similar to Paint Shop Pro but usable in Ubuntu?

[michy99]

Have you tried OpenOffice Draw? I am personally a big fan of the Gimp, but it can be a little much to learn. Tutorials are the way to go.

http://www.gimp.org/tutorials/

[XCan]

What are you planning on doing? Just drawing figures? In that case, PSP isn't really suitable for it (neither is photoshop or gimp for that matter), and you should try out Inkscape instead, which I find is even handier than the bloated Adobe Illustrator.

[Deemz]

xara looks quite nice and seems reasonably stable....a pleasant surprise!!

[Chronon]

If you do figures for LaTeX documents, I recommend Ipe. It has snap modes, allows LaTeX for typesetting text and math and exports to PDF or EPS. It's not great for color support, but is good for simple line drawings, geometrical constructions, etc.

[floyd-humphrey]

Paint Shop Pro (I own V4 - V9) seem to run mostly fine ( tested 7 and 8 ) under Wine. There will be improvements in compatibility and stability as Wine improves, but frequent saving should do.
A PSP "lite" could be PhotoFiltre (link), also under Wine. As I now read, retrieving the link, there is a Linux project for PhotoFiltre started! Keep an eye on that. Super-lightweight and in few ways even more powerful than PSP!

[ubalderdash]

Thanks guys, some really useful advice in there and I appreciate it. Much as I enjoy sketching I still prefer pencils and paper for that. However, for modifying photos PSP was really quick, easy, and refreshingly user friendly. Gimp is probably supremely powerful but using it as infrequently as I do means that I've invariably forgotten the lessons learned in previous visits.

[michy99]

If all you want to do is crop, rotate, resize, make indexes and simple stuff like that, check out gThumb.

[ubalderdash]

I've just downloaded Xara Xtreme and Gthumb. Gthumb seems to be simply about managing photo files and Xara, although much closer to requirements, doesn't appear to manage colour and gamma settings and I couldn't find any filters etc. Trying to run PSP on Wine does sound interesting, albeit somewhat insulting to the efforts of our hardworking community developers.

[Giblet5]

I've had no trouble running PaintShop Pro 9.01 under wine on an x64 Karmic install.

I had a little trouble getting it to load some photoshop plugins and some picture tubes, but even that works great now. I avoid the file browser...