Adobe recently announced that the only way to buy Creative Suite products like Photoshop from now on will be through their Creative Cloud. In the wake of that announcement I've heard nothing but criticism from Photoshop users with a great many looking for viable alternatives. Corel must have heard them too because they're very wisely offering CS users special pricing on the Corel suite of creative products which include Corel Draw and Paintshop Pro. In their press release Corel promised that they would continue to offer both subscriptions and perpetual license "boxed copy" style purchasing options.
“We strongly believe that users should be able to choose how they would like to purchase their software,” said Nick Davies, EVP & GM Graphics, Digital Media & Productivity Software at Corel
So if you're one of the many upset Photoshop users looking for a product to switch to you might be wondering how Paintshop Pro holds up? I'm happy to report that it's a pretty smooth switch over. Paintshop Pro emulates much of the way Photoshop works with layers and most of the keyboard shortcuts are the same. Best of all Paintshop Pro has 16-bit per channel colour support so there's no need to compromise the quality of your images like you would with Photoshop Elements.
I'd say Paintshop Pro is well worth a look. Check out their page for CS users looking to switch. You can see the prices and download a free trial there. Paintshop Pro is Windows only.