RAW is a file format generated by a digital SLR camera, which contains a lot of scene details and color information. Only with Adobe Camera Raw or other professional raw file editing software, can you really manipulate the data, so as to create a perfect photo. Working with raw files can be a nerve-wracking and a difficult problem for digital photographers. Because this kind of file usually takes a long time to process, and the raw files generated by different digital cameras vary widely.

Adobe seemed to have met a development bottleneck, that is why you might have found that its many popular apps such like Photoshop are completely refreshing their version number in recent years. Because since the big version introduced 3D features, I haven't seen any significant functionality or usability improvements happened on Photoshop (it even stays in the level of 10 years ago, i.e.: the functionality of Photoshop CS6 ≈ Photoshop CC 2014/2015/2017...). In other words, all things happened to Adobe apps are merely patching in some inessential places. This case, some software developers saw this chance and took advantage of its weak points. One of them is Affinity Photo - which has become one of the most popular photo editing tools now.

Corel's PaintShop Pro (originally called Paint Shop) is a fully functional, easy-to-use professional digital photo editing and graphic designing software. Compared with PhotoShop, its significantly smaller file size, much flexibility, and faster and easier operation make it more popular. Even though in the aspects of comprehensiveness of functions and support for third-party plugins it is slightly inferior to PhotoShop.