Edward
The British Journal of Photography (BJP) recently ran a comparison of cheaper alternatives to PS and Paint Shop Pro came up very high on their list of an acceptable alternative to PS. ACDSEE PRO rated their highest I believe.
The survey was conducted by Sony A900 pro user David Kilpatrick, so although he didn't exactly compare the RAW conversions camera by camera you can bet that his A900 (and A700) raw conversions would have been the first to go through the program!
Whilst PS is of course the excellent Premier image editing and production software (and I have been using it since version PS5!) as photographers we only use a fraction of what it is capable of and the alternatives are just image editing software packages and so much cheaper!
I always use C1 for my A900 Raw conversions and whilst I have RT, LR, Silkypix and CR I always come back to C1 as producing the best Tiff file for me. I know that this is a very subjective and personal thing and others will have other preferences.
It does mean that I have to upload my images to C1, adjust and save as a Tiff before opening again in PS......but that's the way I work and it took longer to write it than do it!
I hope that this helps and good luck with Paint Shop.
