Paint Shop Pro Photo X3 Released

[victorianartist]

I have been buying from Corel for almost 8-10 years now and they used to be unbelievable with the customer support. Kind of the Nordstrom phylosophy. Sadly during the last year or so, it absolutely sucks. And, if you get any info at all, it may not be accurate.

For example, on December 2, I bought the Painter 11 upgrade. I asked the customer service guy if PSP X2 was going to be updated given the price on the web was at 29.99. He said they were abandoning the program and there was nothing set for update that he knew about.

So, I kept looking and saw nothing. Until I went looking online for some tips on x2 that I needed yesterday and discovered x3 was out there, I would not have known. During Jasc reign, it would come up in your program... tada! we have an upgrade, patch, new version, etc.

So, you have to do your own research. Since you bought x2 in Dec and the x3 came out in Jan, I would think they would give you the upgrade as part of that purchase. Have you checked your account at corel, the upgrade download could be in there!!!??? I would be calling customer service and if not satisfied with response from the person on the phone, I would be asking for their supervisor. It is a rip otherwise.

[victorianartist]

As for opinion on x3. I dislike the organizer because it digs up every single photo and image on your computer and hogs resources. I have tons of images. So, I disable the organizer immediately before using PSP at all. I bring in what I need ... when I need it. That said, there seems to be a few tweaks most likely to make it win7 happy. I am still using xp as I have a tendency to wait until all the software etc catches up with the new windows environment. I never went to vista at all.

It is worth the 20.00 upgrade I just bought. Been using since version 4, so I upgrade each time. Loved Jasc and was sorry to see them sell out. They had an online contest at ver 4 and I won. They sent me a check for 100.00 and I bought the program then with that. Been using it ever since.

Like the RAW as I only shoot RAW with my Canon. Amazing pictures it takes.

Would love to see a noise reduction (other than raw as I typically get photos from someone to magically make perfect from less than perfect conditions and cameras) program like Noise Ninja incorporated into this.. (wishful thinking).

[dfyffe]

That's the problem, they wont answer and their hours of support are very limited. I remaino disappointed.

[victorianartist]

Well, if you cannot get to them, and since the upgrade price of 19.99 is only good until Feb 7, I would bite the bullet and follow the link. I don't know, but in dec they had the x2 at 29.99, so, it still is cheaper than I paid and the full price.

I got my x2 for 60.00 when it came out. I am thrilled with x3 for 19.99.

[dfyffe]

Looks like we are on the same page. If I cant get through, Ill bite by Sunday. Thank you for your help

[victorianartist]

Sometimes I consider my time and aggravation in the process. This price to me is low enough to save me some grief. I opted to buy the boxed version and it was an extra 9.99 Shipping.

Since there seems to be a bit of turmoil at Corel right now, most likely due to the Corel Holdings finalization at end of Jan, getting answers may be nuts. And from everything I read, I am unsure of any of the products continuing. It is anybodies guess right now. Just have to wait till the dust settles. I am sure there is lots of haggling going on. I just hope Painter 11 and PSP survives for some time to come.

[Tim Morrison]

As for opinion on x3. I dislike the organizer because it digs up every single photo and image on your computer and hogs resources.

This is a common misconception, and would only be true if every image on your computer was stored in the My Documents\My Pictures folder.
When X3 is first run, it only catalogues that folder, the Shared Pictures folder (which will only hold a few sample images on most machines) and your "My Corel Shows" folder, which is almost certainly empty. Any subfolders of those three folders are also catalogued.
If X2 or X3 find an existing PSPP XI Organizer database, it will add any folders in that to the list to be catalogued. This database could be left over from an old trial installation of either XI or Snapfire. Their Organizer database wasn't deleted when the program was uninstalled, and early versions of it could be damaged and cause problems for X2 or X3. The solution is to delete both the XI and the X2/X3 databases and let the program create new ones. (see this Corel Knowledgebase article for instructions).
The Organizer only ever hogged resources in early versions of PSPP XI. Since then it suspends cataloguing when the computer is being used.

[victorianartist]

Glad to hear that so I might just try it again. It just took and (of course a prior version) and cataloged everything and I did not want it to do that. I even went so far as to remove any pictures I stored in "My pictures" and renamed the folder and put it on another drive. It found them. So, I renamed "my Documents" and today still, I don't store one thing in My Pictures because of that early mess.

I hated it. I only wanted stuff that I might be working on or a folder I am using. Or mostly, not the whole folder just a subfolder. I found it to be a complete hastle and I believe it was 11 or 10 that caused my dislike of it. I am still hiding my pictures elsewhere. I have disabled it in every version including this one.

I recently took professional raw shots at a dog show and had about 800 photos snapped. Now, I did not want PSP to load 800 raw shots. I am thankful it was disabled. I preview my folder and pick and choose. I do not want to use my resources to have all that "ready." At least not until I am ready.

[sjj1805]

This seems to be the way Corel have been going - attempting to make their suite of programs similar in appearance and behaviour. It seems the latest releases of software such as Paint shop Pro, VideoStudio, Factory and Digital Studio have this thing termed a Media Manager.

It seems this Media Manager is common to all of these programs so you can populate it from any of the above programs, create projects and that stuff all appears in the other programs. The idea is that you then drag stuff from the Media Manager down to a Media Tray to use in the Current project.

I have already informed Corel that this is a nightmare and whilst it might have seemed a good idea (Bit like the Sinclair C5) it is in fact cumbersome and unusable. I have over 15,000 photographs and over 6,000 sound files on my hard drives. They are nicely organised, indexed and cross referenced.
I do not want or need yet another program - or suite of programs - attempting to organize things for me.

Corel did listen and are giving it a second look. Let us hope they do something about it.

See also.....
Authoring - VSX3

[dfyffe]

I finally got through this morning wit about a 10 minute wait. This was 20 minutes after they opened. They do not offer free upgrades at all I was told. I did get the 19.99 price for the upgrade. I paid over the phoe and w sent a e-mail with my serial number so I can upgrade. I will do that tonight. At least I got it cheap, but it makes no sense why it was not free. I hope it is a good upgrade. I'll post my thoughts on that in afew days. Thanks everyone for your help. Have a great weekend.

[df]

I for one can't get X3 to stay running on three different computers, two are Windows 7 computers (one's 32 bit and the other is 64 bit) and a Vista computer. It's the same thing every time. Load an image, do anything and the program crashes. It happens on all three computers.

I've gone so far as to turn off the antivirus, turn off the firewall, turn off the antispyware, turn off everything in MSConfig, turned off UAC, clear the cache on my web browser, reboot, upload and install and it's the same thing. No change.

I've downloaded from Corel and from Cnet just to see if the files were different. I've downloaded with Firefox and with Internet Explorer just to see if the files were different. I've ran the installer in administrator mode with compatibility mode on, as admin with comp. mode off, installed as admin and ran as admin.

I'm out of ideas.

Ever single time it's the same error message too.
Does anyone know if Corel's going to fix this? I've emailed them a few days ago and haven't heard anything yet.

[sjj1805]

df
Please submit your above post in a new thread. Thank you.

[sjj1805]

This thread is now becoming confusing because members are starting to post specific problems which should of course be subject to a new separate thread. To avoid further confusion I am now locking this thread.

When creating a new post please begin PSPX3:

examples:-
PSPX3: Problem with layers
PSPX3: How to remove a background
PSPX3: How to create a transparent overlay

Thank you