Seeking differences between CROP tool in PSP 7.04 & PSP 12.5

[DudeBoyz]

I use Paint Shop Pro 7.04 and am considering getting 12.5 Ultimate for its RAW support and the substantially discounted price.

I would like to request help in comparing the CROP feature in both 7.04 and 12.5. What new features there may be, changes, removal of capabilities that might have been in the 7.04 CROP tool, etc.

I'd welcome any useful information you can provide.

Thank you

[LeviFiction]

I must admit I'm not overly familiar with version 7 anymore. And it was the one that got me hooked on PSP. But I figure you can do your own comparisons easily.

The crop tool has a special floating toolbar that occurs underneath the crop box for faster access to the crop options. This bar includes the apply checkbox, crop to new image button, cancel button, and rotate the crop rectangle. It also has presets for common print sizes, not to mention you can save presets that you make yourself.

Of course all of these are also still available on tool options palette.

They also have a display grid that you can turn on and off when cropping for the sake of looking for the rule of thirds.

You can set the exact width and height of the crop rectangle in the tool options, defining it in Inches, Centimeters, or pixels. Obviously inches and centimeters are based upon the image's print resolution. If you select, "Specify Print Resolution" then PSP will automatically adjust the print size of the image to fit the image size you set in the toolbar options.

And then you have the buttons that will crop to the edges of a selection. Crop to the opaque area of a single layer. Or crop to the opaque area of all layers combined. Really nice for getting rid of any excess pixels in your image should you need to.

It's not great but here's a small tutorial I did on the crop tool using 12.5. I don't mention anything different.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CCUarE9NKxU

[DudeBoyz]

Thanks for the link. I was wondering which application you used to capture the screen contents as a video. If you'd share the info, I'd appreciate it.

[LeviFiction]

I used CamStudio. I used it because it's free.

No...wait....did I use CamStudio for that one? No...I used Magix Move Edit Pro's built in Screen recorder. After upgrading to Windows 7 I appeared to be the only person in the world experiencing a problem with that no longer working. So I moved to CamStudio for later tutorials. But this one was done with Magix Move Edit Pro.

[DudeBoyz]

Cool. I used CamStudio on a brief tutorial. I sort of just wanted to learn how to make one and upload it to YouTube, and it worked out pretty well.

Hey, on this CROP thing, I'm using version 12.50 and I am finding that instead of having the boundary snap at the edge of pixels, it snaps by default to the middle instead. If I toggle that off it still is not precise and I find with either setting I have to do something like zoom in/out with the scroll wheel to get the edges to show properly.

It's strange. I'm not quite sure what would be the best way to accommodate my preference in v12.50. Any thoughts or suggestions?

Thanks for the help,

DB

FOLLOW-UP: I do wish that the selection tool worked as well as it does in GIMP 267. That's about the best selection tool I've ever seen.

Also, a thought on the Crop / middle pixel thing - I could just set the grid to 1 pixel and set it to "Snap To Grid". I'll give it a try.