You should download the 30 day free trail from corel.com, and see what you think first. Specifically, it can open Raw files, but it is no Raw editor. Check out some online reviews, like
Corel PaintShop Pro X6 Review (read it carefully, every word).
That program (and a few others) can open Raw, and then you can use the regular editing tools to edit them, and then you have to save it as JPG or TIF. Next time, unless you want to start over from scratch, you have to open the JPG or TIF. There are no Raw advantages. It is not a Raw editor. It is a regular editor, said to be an excellent one, but it is not a Raw editor. Aftershot is the Corel Raw Editor.
Raw editors have specialized tools designed for digital cameras (like exposure and white balance, etc, which these regular editors don't have), which is great, but Raw is more of a philosophy than features.
You open the Raw file, and edit with these special Raw tools, but when you save it, what it saves is the list of the changes your edits described. Next time, you open the Raw file, and it also accesses this saved list, and applies those previous changes to the original Raw data, and you are back where you thought you were, but you still have Raw. This is called Lossless Editing, always starting over from the original Raw file. When you are ready to use the image, then you output it as JPG for that use. Then when you discover you want additional or different changes, you discard that JPG file, and open the Raw file again, and change the edit in the desired new way (and output another JPG to use).
So when you have to open the edited JPG from Paintshop Pro, the data has already been shifted around, and the next edit has to shift it again, some other way, shifting shifted data.
With the Raw file, you never have more JPG artifacts than the one final JPG save, which can be High JPG Quality. But the non-Raw editor accumulates more JPG artifacts each time, which get compounded every save.
When you open the Raw file again, the original pristine Raw file is opened, and only the final shifting is necessary. Lossless editing. Not shifted back and forth every time you change something. Only the "list" is changed, not the data, not until the one final output. For example, with Raw editing, you can crop, and later uncrop, and all the pristine original data is still there. Raw is really wonderful.
Just an opinion, but if you want Raw, I'd suggest looking at something like Adobe Lightroom. It also has a free trial download at adobe.com.
