Disappearing selection bug - still not fixed...

[int2str]

Problem
When de-floating a selection on a raster layer, the bottom pixels of the selection will disappear.

Status
2011-01-12 Paint Shop Pro Service Pack 4 - STILL BROKEN

Background
Ever since PSP X3, I have encountered a critical issue with floating selections. Steps to reproduce are as following:
1. Create a new image (any size is fine)
2. Create a new raster layer
3. Draw a 1 pixel wide, non-aliased, horizontal line on the new layer
4. Select the line using the selection tool and move it
5. De-float the selection

At this point the line will disappear.

This is just the quickest way to reproduce this. There are many many other cases where this crops up. Writing text for example (non-vector). After writing the text and de-floating the selection, the bottom part of the text will be randomly cut off.

I've contacted PSP support on this issue and the problem was acknowledged, with no specific ETA for a fix.

Here we are, 4 service packs later and this very, very, fundamental issue is still not fixed.

Rant...
I've been using PSP since version 3 and have always found it to be a great editing tool. Since Corel took over, since have gone downhill severely. The RAW editing tools are horrible, the media browser is a fiasco and half of the new features stink. Don't even get me started on the thinly veiled ads posing as the "message center". But none of that has deterred me from using PSP as my image editor since most of the stuff can fortunately be turned off.

But to have such a fundamental bug in the program is in-excusable! A besic editing bug like this should never have escaped Corel's testing. I'm deeply disappointed. The only thing worse than having such a bug escape testing is the customer support response...

Of course nothing will happen on this issue since Corel is too busy trying to copy Lightroom half-heartedly and make Paint Shop Pro into something it was never supposed to be.

I'll try to update this post down the road and keep track on how long Corel will go without fixing this issue.

I know that not many of you encounter this issue, but those who do probably feel equally let down by Corel. Feel free to chime in.

[Kathy_9]

I know - it's very frustrating. I've experienced this on text in selection mode.

[LeviFiction]

My tendency is toward a very non-destructive fashion if I can avoid it. So defloating, because it will overwrite pixels, not an issue with me because I just promote it to its own layer. The process for float/defloat is no more cumbersome than promote/merge so until I'm sure about the change I keep it on its own layer and work with it. I also always keep my text as a vector for future editing and only merge it down when I'm done. It's better for my work flow so this has never been a problem for me.

I also must admit I don't understand the rant. I realize it's frustrating for certain work processes, but unless you know they aren't working on a fix (and it could be harder than you think, something that popped up unexpectedly and is not easy to iron out) it only makes sense to be frustrated that it wasn't caught in testing in my mind. And even at that it's most likely because there was no beta-testing because if you're testing selections on a product that they are trying to gear more toward the Photo-Editing scheme they will most likely test it with photos and this isn't as noticeable there, so beta-testing would open it up to people who use it for more than just photo-editing. That I can understand as being the problem....then again even at that it's not guaranteed that the beta-testers would have caught this bug either. So a general public beta-test would need to be conducted to up the odds of catching hard to find bugs in the system, but even then there is no guarantee that this bug would not have still made it out into the real world and caught by the initial finder of the problem.

There's a lot of "what if"s, "could be"s, and "should have"s that we can use but in the end the frustration only at what we know and understand makes the most sense. Don't know if you'll agree with me or not, or if you have information that I don't but that's about as far as I can take it.

[int2str]

My tendency is toward a very non-destructive fashion if I can avoid it. So defloating, because it will overwrite pixels, not an issue with me because I just promote it to its own layer.

This makes no difference (since that still de-floats the selection. As far as I can tell (and according to Corel), there is no workaround that I'm aware of.

I also must admit I don't understand the rant. I realize it's frustrating for certain work processes, but unless you know they aren't working on a fix (and it could be harder than you think, something that popped up unexpectedly and is not easy to iron out) it only makes sense to be frustrated that it wasn't caught in testing in my mind.

Well, my rant is just that, a rant... It's just extremely frustrating that a product that I've used and supported for many, many years no is so fundamentally broken. The frustration only piles on when there's 4 (!!!) service pack and this glaring bug is still there.

a product that they are trying to gear more toward the Photo-Editing scheme they will most likely test it with photos and this isn't as noticeable there

I would imagine that the ability to move stuff around is pretty important for photo editing as well.

Also, we're pretty far from beta testing, no? At service pack 4, this bug has been documented since the initial X3 release (not by me, by others). So Corel must have been aware of this for how many month now?

In the end, it's just hugely disappointing and frustrating. I feel like I've paid $100+ for a product that is completely, fundamentally flawed. Joke's on me, I guess...

[wick]

Just discovered the disappearing pixels on deselection bug. What a nightmare.

The way it got me was I was creating solid raster objects (filled rectangles), applying a drop shadow to the object & then moving the objects around with the select tool (rectangle selection). After about an hour of work I noticed ~3px had dropped off the bottom of some of the drop shadows. What a waste of time.

PSP X3 is unusable in its current form to me.

[mrshift]

There are new videos of this bug here:

http://forum.corel.com/EN/viewtopic.php?f=56&t=40236

[LeviFiction]

This makes no difference (since that still de-floats the selection. As far as I can tell (and according to Corel), there is no workaround that I'm aware of.

int2str, allow me to fix what I said so you can understand what I'm getting at. Since defloating just drops the selection onto the current layer I don't float it to begin with. I just promote the selection to a layer without floating it at all.

However, I did a test and promoting a floating selection to a new layer does not produce this bug for me. And the current work-around for it is to press the edit selection button and deselect it before defloating the selection. This has been placed in a script and used as the default de-select option previously. So there are ways around this problem because it only occurs for floating and defloating.

Unless you experience something else altogether.

I would imagine that the ability to move stuff around is pretty important for photo editing as well.

Yes but, again, unless you're moving the part of the image into an exact position you won't notice one a single pixel line like you do a solid graphic. Didn't say it wasn't as important, I said it wasn't as noticeable which would explain it passing testing as the testing would not have been thorough and based in images, where, again, it's not as noticeable except in certain circumstances.

And how long the bug has existed means nothing unless they actually are not working on it. And since we don't know if they are or not, patience is the only reasonable reaction. That and helping others deal with this problem because they will get as frustrated as you are.

I believe that if they are working on it than while the need is fundamental the bug is not quite so easy. So there's nothing to do but hope they manage to figure it out. It's not such a big bug that X3 is unusable as Wick suggests. There are ways of dealing with it.

[wick]

For what it's worth, I blogged about it here on Netscraps.com. Since it seems Corel isn't taking a very proactive approach about this bug, I think the more this gets mentioned outside of Corel forums, the better. I own CarComplaints.com & I hope Corel doesn't give me a reason to start CorelComplaints.com

[LeviFiction]

Don't make assumptions, Wick. They may be being proactive, they may not be. I fully admit they could just be ignoring the problem. We don't know. But best not to make assumptions in our frustration with this silly bug.

[Ron P.]

I don't think you're ridiculous blog is going to sway Corel to do anything. Coming here posting what amounts to a threat is not going to get you much help here. If you read the top, header of this web board it is a User to User Web Board. While recently there have been a couple of representatives from Corel that have been helping out here, it is still maintained by users. Don't run them off by posting threats directed toward Corel. !!!

[LeviFiction]

EDIT: Quick edit to this post.

I decided to contact tech support directly to see if they could answer some questions for me on what they knew about the bug mentioned here and if a correlation has been made to the Merge Down function. The person said that they are already aware that Merge Down is the issue, that they have actively looked at the issue from all angles and were actively working on it. Naturally he couldn't say anything about potential patches for later on but this does answer the question of whether or not it's even being looked at.

On to the rest of the original post:

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I don't think this is a selection bug anymore.

I think this is a layer merging bug.

Allow me to explain. I was so confident in my work-around for this bug because promoting it to its own layer did not result in this problem. And since, as I described above, I don't merge layers until I have finished my image (I try to work non-destructively if possible) I never tested merging the layer down again.

Once I attempted to do a layer merge the bug reared its ugly head again. Which means I was wrong. I know shocking isn't it? XD But it revealed something interesting. If the selection was no longer selected, and it was on its own layer, and the pixels were still intact how did a selection bug show up when merging the layer down?

So I duplicated the layer. I then created a new layer underneath the duplicated layer and hid the original layer. I then selected "Merge Down" from the layer menu and low and a behold the pixels disappeared. I was surprised to say the least. I hadn't even used selections this time and the bug happened.

So I hit "Undo" and select "Merge Visible" this time. Since the original layer is hidden it wouldn't be a big deal. The bug did not occur. So while "Merge Down" caused this bug "Merge Visible" did not. I tried putting them in a group and doing "Merge Group". No bug. I tried "Merge All(Flatten)". No bug.

It seems to be related to the code for merging layers down one. Which is what "Defloat" does. It merges the floating selection layer down onto the layer beneath it.

So this isn't a selection bug at all. It's entirely possible we've been asking Corel to look in the wrong place for the error.

[wick]

@Ron: I contacted Corel about the bug, & the answer I got was "reset your workspace". That is what I wrote about in my "ridiculous" blog as you called it. What I wrote is helpful user-to-user to people who are getting the same bad advice from Corel about this bug -- Corel suggesting I reset my workspace was an exercise in futility. You don't agree? Why not? Let's have a discussion without the name-calling.

@Levi: I know what you mean but my assumptions were based on my personal experience contacting Corel. Since Corel handled my complaint that way, chances are they handled a significant number of complaints from other users the same way. That's a logical assumption, right? I was happy to read for some people they acknowledged the issue & responded appropriately but I was pretty disappointed from my experience. Again I think it's clearly very helpful user-to-user for people to know that apparently some people may be receiving a helpful response from Corel Support, while some people are not. I'm at a loss to understand what Ron was talking about.

Also:

It's entirely possible we've been asking Corel to look in the wrong place for the error.

That's very kind of you to say, but realistically when users start reporting a bug, the trick is for developers to replicate it. Once that happens, it's generally far easier for the developers to track down what's causing the bug by troubleshooting their code with breakpoints in a dev environment. My point is I don't think the delay in Corel fixing this is due to people telling Corel it's a deselect bug vs a merge down bug. Luckily this bug is very easy to replicate. I'm not saying fixing it is easy but it should be fast-tracked since it's involves very common, very basic editing functions.

I am sorry I wasn't aware of the workaround at first. However consider for every person who finds this forum & digs enough to find the workaround, it's safe to assume there are a lot more who aren't aware of the workaround. Getting the word out beyond this forum would help. That was my point. It would be helpful to have a resource that said here's the problem & HERE IS THE WORKAROUND ... rather than a disorganized forum discussion (no offense, it's just how forums work) where the workaround post eventually gets pushed down into oblivion.

[Tadjio]

EDIT: Quick edit to this post.
I decided to contact tech support directly to see if they could answer some questions for me on what they knew about the bug mentioned here and if a correlation has been made to the Merge Down function. The person said that they are already aware that Merge Down is the issue, that they have actively looked at the issue from all angles and were actively working on it. Naturally he couldn't say anything about potential patches for later on but this does answer the question of whether or not it's even being looked at.
On to the rest of the original post:
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I don't think this is a selection bug anymore.
I think this is a layer merging bug.
[snip]
So this isn't a selection bug at all. It's entirely possible we've been asking Corel to look in the wrong place for the error.

Well done, Levi, for tracking this down and squaring it with Corel

[df]

I am sorry I wasn't aware of the workaround at first. However consider for every person who finds this forum & digs enough to find the workaround, it's safe to assume there are a lot more who aren't aware of the workaround. Getting the word out beyond this forum would help. That was my point. It would be helpful to have a resource that said here's the problem & HERE IS THE WORKAROUND ... rather than a disorganized forum discussion (no offense, it's just how forums work) where the workaround post eventually gets pushed down into oblivion.

Maybe we could suggest to the moderators that a sticky thread be created with links to threads with fixes and workarounds. Just a suggestion.

[wick]

Maybe we could suggest to the moderators that a sticky thread be created with links to threads with fixes and workarounds. Just a suggestion.

That would help, absolutely!