X3 is really a mess... when will be fixed?

[df]

I have it on "good authority" that it will be fixed for every single user, no matter what their computer configuration, by tomorrow.

So was this just sarcasm?

[pdxrjt]

And I'm saving my pennies so I can buy the "enemy". I just hate starting over at my age.

If you are looking at the programs of the "enemy" look at PE and also (depending on what you want to do) LR.

[Joelle]

And I'm saving my pennies so I can buy the "enemy". I just hate starting over at my age.

If you are looking at the programs of the "enemy" look at PE and also (depending on what you want to do) LR.

Aren't we going off the subject a bit?

As for spending money (lots of it) of PS, even the lesser flavour, no thanks.
PSP is an excellent program, but, yes, the latest version needs repairing.
It's up to Corel to fix the application and up to Vector Capital to put some money where their heart is supposed to be and save a once excellent program.

Joëlle

[pdxrjt]

And I'm saving my pennies so I can buy the "enemy". I just hate starting over at my age.

If you are looking at the programs of the "enemy" look at PE and also (depending on what you want to do) LR.

Aren't we going off the subject a bit?

As for spending money (lots of it) of PS, even the lesser flavour, no thanks.
PSP is an excellent program, but, yes, the latest version needs repairing.
It's up to Corel to fix the application and up to Vector Capital to put some money where their heart is supposed to be and save a once excellent program.

Joëlle

To each his/her own. There was a time I would have agreed with you, whole-heartedly.

[Wallace333]

I have had the program for about a year and have experienced ongoing instability issues resulting in frequent loss of work when the program abruptly stops working and has to be shutdown. Initially the program would stop responding when trying to go from one component to another, that is, when trying to switch between the Full Editor, Organizer and the Express Lab. I contacted Corel tech support via email and several days later they responded with a message to do a clean installation of the program, which I did. This did not resolve the problems which also included the program crashing while editing images. I tried to provide follow up to Corel on this issue but the link they provided to me for responding with further concerns, was a bad link. I had to generate another incident report and several days later they responded via email with recommendations that included disabling various programs and services one by one to try to track down potential conflicts. I’m a computer user but not a programmer or technician and it seems unreasonable to me to ask the customer to jump through a lot of hoops in an effort to track down potential conflicts with other programs and/or services. Although I paid $100.00 for the program, I gave up trying to resolve the issues for almost a year. During that time I continued to experience frequent crashes and lost work.

After almost a year I decided once again to try to resolve the problems by uninstalling and re-installing the program. The Corel software for removing the program did not work so I used another tool to completely remove the program. Prior to re-installing the program I created a Windows Restore point, disconnected from the internet and disabled my firewall and anti-virus programs. The installation would hang and then abort at a point where it stated “Please wait while we configure DirectX.” Multiple attempts at installation failed, always at this same point. I contacted Corel via email and several days later they responded with various recommendations for resolving the issue and advising me to call if I was still having trouble. They did not offer any new ideas about how to get the program to install but I followed their recommendations anyway but had no luck.

I called Corel and was pleasantly surprised when I got a live support person after only a very short wait. He asked to remotely take control of my computer in an effort to troubleshoot the problem and I agreed. He made multiple attempts to install the program but they all failed at “Please wait while we configure DirectX.” The support person had me download a newer version of the program and then he tried to install from that setup file but again, no luck. Initially he indicated disabling firewall and AV programs was not really necessary during an installation. When the program would not install he then proceeded to disable my firewall and AV programs which made me nervous. Doing so did not help with getting the program to install. He indicated he would send me a link to yet another version of the program to download and recommended I try to install that. The tech support person was courteous and was persistent in trying to help but unfortunately he could not get the program to install.

I then downloaded the other version of the program he made available but that too would not install, hanging and aborting at the same place. Another call to Corel resulted in an automated voice telling me my wait time on hold was expected to be less than one minute. About 40 minutes to an hour later, I got another live tech support person. While I hold I listened to loud and annoying elevator music and repeated recorded messages that Corel was experiencing unusually high call volumes (how can it be that at least 75% of the time I try to get help from some software vendor, they are “experiencing unusually high call volumes.)? The support person reviewed the notes from earlier and indicated there is nothing wrong with the PaintShop Photo Pro program but there is some problem with my computer that is preventing the installation. Even if the program could not be installed, I would not be eligible for any refund based on the fact that I purchased the program about a year ago. He suggested that I uninstall my Norton Internet Security software, try to install PaintShop Photo and then re-install the Norton program. This was not something I was willing to do. He did offer to make one more attempt to install the program remotely and I agreed. Again, my firewall and AV programs were turned off during this process. He was able to get the program installed although it is not clear why it worked this time. I then installed the 4 service packs. I was pleased the program installed but unfortunately, it now has a new set of issues. I can run the program but every single time I go to save an image, without exception, the program temporarily stops responding and I have to wait it out. It eventually will come back to life and save the image. Also, when I go to open an image, again without exception, the program stops responding and again I have to wait for it to come back to life before the image will open. Because working within the program is now so slow, I have not experimented with it much to determine if there are additional issues with it. After having my firewall and AV programs turned off while Corel tech support tried to install PSP Pro, I ran a full AV scan and fortunately no viruses were found but it still makes me nervous to be online without this protection enabled.

When I bought the program it had been recently updated and that’s why I ended up paying full price. Corel was offering a free copy of Painter Photo Essentials with the purchase of PSP Pro so I felt this may justify paying $100.00. Photo Essentials never ran right and one of the above tech support people verified it will not run on my computer. I run Windows 7 64 bit with 8GB of RAM and an Intel Core i7-860 processor 2.8GHz. I also experimented with a trial version of Corel’s VideoStudio Pro video editing software but it was slow and buggy. I ended up getting CyberLink’s PowerDirector 9 Ultra video editing which installed without problems and runs very well on my computer. It’s not perfect but it only rarely stops responding and for the most part is very stable.

I can only speak from my experience but I have tried three Corel products and none of them work on my system. I have seen reviews that also speak to instability issues with various Corel products. PaintShop Photo Pro looks to have great potential and has a wide variety of powerful features but it simply is too unstable on my machine. I do have the free Paint.NET image editing program installed and will experiment with that to see if it meets my needs. I have used it a little bit to this point and have not had any stability issues with it.

[c_j_ryan]

Not to be a whiner, but...in March of this year, because I became somewhat annoyed that my computer was "slow" when I was using it for for 3D modeling, and rendering. I decided to bite the bullet, and get what at that moment, was the most powerful consumer computer I could get.

It took my rendering times from 3 and four hours, to 13 to 17 minutes. (not that my old one was all that old, a duo-core 2.2 Ghz, Intel processor).

Of all the programs I run, (The list is long, and the and very cpu intensive, I can whip around a 20 Mb 3D model, with 35 million faces, like it is nothing), my be-loved PSP, is the only one that crashes my computer, gives me "not enough memory, to complete the operation, etc.

I am now working in CS5, it's not crashed on me once. Why am I bothering posting this? Because after 10 years of using PSP, I'd still rather use it! But I can't deal with the memory issues!

I see a few here saying that they "love" X3. Good, so how about a few tips as to how you make it work for you? What do you do, that saves you from working for an hour on a photo, and not being able to save it? Opening and closing, and re-booting is NOT a solution!

[Joelle]

I wouldn't call it whining, you are telling the truth.
Many others have seen the same thing, a lot of people are very unhappy (with the exception of Tadjio).
Some people who, like you, use the program very intensively have good reason to be annoyed (I am being very polite here).
I am glad I uninstalled the X3 trial.

Unfortunately, we can get annoyed, angry even, but Corel is unlikely to do much about improving PSP they don't sound remotely interested. Anyway, they fired all the development team, which is not very helpful.
Once Vector Capital have extracted as much money as they can out of Corel users, that will be that and the whole thing will cease to exist. Very sad.

Joëlle

[Tadjio]

I wouldn't call it whining, you are telling the truth.
Many others have seen the same thing, a lot of people are very unhappy (with the exception of Tadjio)...
Joëlle

I'm sat here using X3 Ultimate to process a series of photos of my grandchildren.
They are all taken with my Canon 550D in RAW, full-size (5184x3456 pixels) and pre-processed using Canon's DPP into TIFF files (100 Mbyte each) before loading into PSP.
With the one proviso that I cannot load too many images at the same time (using DPP's Batch Process), I find that editing these images in PSP and producing large JPG Files as output works fine for me
I use a Compresion Factor of 6 and the output JPGs are typically at least 5Mbytes in size.
Within PSP I use High Pass Sharpening and Levels in 16bit, with frequent Straightening and Persepctive Correction and then in 8bit I use Clone and Painting with Light as required. I also use some of the 'unused' Auto XX commands.
The only time I have to be careful with X3 is when Cropping in that if I 'rush' things and click ahead, the program sometimes crashes but otherwise it is stable for me.
If I load too many images, or keep the same X3 session open for many images in turn, some sort of 'memory leak' occurs and the program slows down, indeed grinds to a halt.
I have an almost new Windosw 7, 64bit, quad-processor i7 with hyper-threading, 8Gb PC.
When I run PSP tasks such as Levels, I can see extra Processors 'kick into life'...

[c_j_ryan]

Well Tadjio,

I'm certainly jealous, I'm just using JPGs, straight from my 1DsIII, and my 5DII. 8 Mbytes at the most. And by the time I edit about 4 layers, and go to save, I almost always get the "not enough memory", popup. I can't even fathom trying to get 100 Mb tiffs to work. I use the 12 compression factor, because I have a 42 inch 12 color printer, and I need to be aware that some of my clients might want poster sized prints.

But I'll tell you what Tadjio, I'll give it a shot in raw, and pre-process in DPP, to Tiffs, just to try your theory. But my gut instinct tells me it will be an even worst experience. Maybe it's your "saving" at 6 that's "saving" you?

(FWIW, I've been using PSP, since version 4, I think version 5 I'm sure of, and upgraded to 6, 7, 8, 9, and X, never had and problems, X3... nothing but problems)

[Tadjio]

Well Tadjio,

I'm certainly jealous, I'm just using JPGs, straight from my 1DsIII, and my 5DII. 8 Mbytes at the most. And by the time I edit about 4 layers, and go to save, I almost always get the "not enough memory", popup. I can't even fathom trying to get 100 Mb tiffs to work. I use the 12 compression factor, because I have a 42 inch 12 color printer, and I need to be aware that some of my clients might want poster sized prints.

But I'll tell you what Tadjio, I'll give it a shot in raw, and pre-process in DPP, to Tiffs, just to try your theory. But my gut instinct tells me it will be an even worst experience. Maybe it's your "saving" at 6 that's "saving" you?

(FWIW, I've been using PSP, since version 4, I think version 5 I'm sure of, and upgraded to 6, 7, 8, 9, and X, never had and problems, X3... nothing but problems)

My impression is that PSP is a mess when too many Images are open or there are too many Layers.
I find that more than about 4 large images opened at the same time slows PSP down, especially when using Crop.
(It seems to try and check the same crop / rotation in all the open images).
I never use many Layers - usually a maximum of two but I suspect the same issue applies there.
I too have been using PSP a long time - since v1.03, including PSP XI and X2 (which you skipped c-j).
On balance, all things considered, once patches have been applied, I think X3 Ultimate is better than the earlier Corel versions.

btw c-j a compression of 6 produces a larger, less compressed file than one of 12.
I settled on this as the resultant JPEG is almost the same size as my original Canon JPEG.

[pmanzari]

At least you guys can install X3.

After having X2 give me an incorrect and unfixable "illegally modified" error, I decided to try X3. After the "Initializing Install" message, the dialog screen goes black and nothing happens. It's not hung since I can still click on the Cancel button to close the install.

Corel tech support closed my support case without any additional help.

What kind of company is this that sells faulty products and provides no support.

[Joelle]

Maybe Corel Tech Support don't support Try-Before-You-Buy versions ..
I hope that's what you have done and not bought X3 without trying - or in your case, attempting to try - it first.
As far as I am aware, if you have bought it within the last 30 days, you can demand a refund.


Joëlle

[bigfatron]

Well Tadjio,

I'm certainly jealous, I'm just using JPGs, straight from my 1DsIII, and my 5DII. 8 Mbytes at the most. And by the time I edit about 4 layers, and go to save, I almost always get the "not enough memory", popup. I can't even fathom trying to get 100 Mb tiffs to work. I use the 12 compression factor, because I have a 42 inch 12 color printer, and I need to be aware that some of my clients might want poster sized prints.

But I'll tell you what Tadjio, I'll give it a shot in raw, and pre-process in DPP, to Tiffs, just to try your theory. But my gut instinct tells me it will be an even worst experience. Maybe it's your "saving" at 6 that's "saving" you?

(FWIW, I've been using PSP, since version 4, I think version 5 I'm sure of, and upgraded to 6, 7, 8, 9, and X, never had and problems, X3... nothing but problems)

Even if your JPEGs are 5-8MB, to be worked with they're going to need to be decompressed. Now coming from a JPEG it'll be 8 bit rather than 16 bit that you might export from DPP or the RAW package of your choice. Even so, based on what my 7D churns out (which is of a similar ballpark sensor density to the two bodies you've mentioned), then you're looking at a real memory footprint of 25MB or thereabouts (16 bit knocks that up to about 100MB).

[pmanzari]

Maybe Corel Tech Support don't support Try-Before-You-Buy versions ..
I hope that's what you have done and not bought X3 without trying - or in your case, attempting to try - it first.
As far as I am aware, if you have bought it within the last 30 days, you can demand a refund.


Joëlle

No it was a trial version. But no way do I spend the money to upgrade

[ghw7192]

I have X3 Ultimate installed on a desktop and on a laptop, both running Win 7/64 bit. I also have X2 Ultimate installed on another desktop running XP-Pro/32 bit. Aside from speed, I've had no issues with X2, but X3 has given me "white screen" lock-up on too many occassions. When it is behaving, X3 does many things easier and better than CS5 and that is why I installed it on the laptop.

I've looked for patterns and I've not had any problems working with layers, but "adjusting" anything, especially hue and saturation, seems to be a trigger. The size of the file has never been a key, nor has the type.

I've learned to save frequently, but paranoia now has me often doing important restorations and retouching in either Photoshop or Lightroom and that defeats my purpose in installing PSP.

Oh, I recently installed Corel Office X5 and am having issues with it as well, after a decade of running Corel office products with no complaints, and VideoStudio Pro X2 has never worked properly, so Corel's problems run far deeper than just PaintShop Pro.

However, while X3 crashing appears to be a problem with no immediate solution, I can see from browsing this forum that I am going to be able to gleen a lot of helpful information on how to best work with the product. Prior to purchasing X2, I'd not used Paint Shop since Pro 7 and that was a lot of years ago!

Thanks for sharing your info and insight.

Gary