PaintBuster Review

PaintBuster Review

Submitted by Willakan on Thu, 2010-01-07 22:24.
Author's Product Rating:
Ease of Use: 
Effectiveness: 
Help/Support: 
The lowest price: 35$
You can buy it at RegNow for that price.
Pros:
Easy to use. Good range of basic features. Good documentation to ease the learning process.
Cons:
Superior free alternatives. Very expensive for the features offered.
Review:

In this day and age, it seems that everyone has a digital camera, but when their photos seem somewhat lackluster, few know where to turn. PaintBuster is aimed squarely at the market of inexperienced photographer - someone who wants to tidy up a few family snaps, but is interested in doing more than just removing red-eye.

The program installs cleanly and has an intuitive user interface. Reading a standard range of formats, it provides a much larger range of tools than the standard Microsoft Paint program, offering sharpening, cloning brushes and many other basic features that could traditionally only be found in software such as Photoshop.

However, whilst offering all the features that it's target market will probably want, it is vastly inferior to various free photo editing packages that can be found on the Internet. For example, Paint.Net offers a similar feature set, as well as an equally intuitive interface, without costing a penny. If the user felt like they required more features, they could simply progress to the unfortunately named GIMP - an open-source program with a wide array of features and tools for any situation.

This could be forgiveable if the product cost somewhat less. However, it costs a somewhat unreasonable $35.00, which, considering the free competition, is totally unreasonable.

However, for this premium their website does at least offer some basic tutorials,and the documentation included with the product is comprehensive and progressive, offering a clear path to mastering the application.

Conclusion:

There is no real reason to purchase this software over free alternatives. Whilst it offers a reasonable range of features and is relatively user-friendly, it brings nothing new to the table and is vastly overpriced.