Setting the Crop tool in X3

[edwinn]

New to this forum but non new to PSP (read v7 and v9.) Now a corporate user of X3 and running X3 Ultimate trial at home. Having difficulty setting the CROP tool outlines. It seems to snap to the CENTER of pixels? and the edges are difficult to grab, especially when zoomed way in to the corners/pixel level. Also dragging the outline edges seems sluggish and I don't see four numerical readouts in the CORP tool palett like earlier Jasc versions. Please help, as cropping it taking a LONG time compared to before.

-Ed

p.s. I almost always crop to the hearest 5 pixels, i.e. 675x495.

[LeviFiction]

Yes we haven't been pleased with the crop tool changes. Been asking for a restoring of the settings. But there isn't a whole lot you can change about the crop tool. You definitely can't get certain aspects back. Might be able to make a script that allows you to enter the starting point but that's not very fast.

In my testing only the shading area snaps to the center of the pixel. The nodes themselves snap to the pixels exactly (I turned on a grid with 1x1 pixel size) So visually it's a little off-putting but the nodes and vector lines are what you should go by.

Dragging edges, at least as far as I can tell, is limited to dragging the nodes. So it's best to select a corner and nudge once you've dragged it into an approximate position. However I haven't noticed a speed problem. If there is one it might be due to the shading options and you can change that in the general preferences for the program.

I'm just hoping that they fix these complaints in future versions.

[SJS]

Just to second (third & fourth) the wish that Corel give us back the four positioning input dialogues for the crop tool rectangle.

They are so NECESSARY for accurate precise cropping, and fast too! I am reduced to very tedious zooming and panning on each side of the roughly positioned rectangle in order to crop accurately, and even that does not always help since I can no longer see the whole image!

[edwinn]

Just to second (third & fourth) the wish that Corel give us back the four positioning input dialogues for the crop tool rectangle.

They are so NECESSARY for accurate precise cropping, and fast too! I am reduced to very tedious zooming and panning on each side of the roughly positioned rectangle in order to crop accurately, and even that does not always help since I can no longer see the whole image!

I've been using X3 trial for about a week now, because I didn't bring the PSP9 install disc along on this road trip. IIRC.. you could grab the crop boarder anywhere and drag it? Memory isn't too clear. Now it seems the image has to be zoomed in 10 to 12x and the corner node clicked and nudged. That may be ok if the user could find a suitable routine for doing so. The code should KNOW which corner of the node pixels is the INSIDE corner and snap accordingly. What's the reason for snapping to the CENTER of the pixel? How awkward.

-Ed

[Radim]

Sometimes I find more useful convert selection to crop. It is fast.

First select selection tool (key - "S"). Do your selection/selections. Then select crop tool (key - "R"). And there is icon in crop toolbar to set size of selection to crop area. That's it.

[Idontknow]

Now there is a new Service Pack for PSPP X3 out and the cropping tool is still flawed. The selection snaps to the center of the pixels when moving and you can only grab the nodes to resize the selection. Very bad when zoomed in.
Contrary to the support it has not been changed to the PSP3-PSP8 (at least) behaviour. Statements that it can't be changed due to special code are absurd...

[edwinn]

The function "Move the rotation axis point of the crop rectangle" is not working on either of my two installations, but more fundamentally.. I'm having trouble FINDING A ROUTINE TO CROP IMAGES that works for me without aggravation. "Special Code" means nothing and as I said earlier, there must be some advantage to, or features of the current coding. Maybe they are programming using a new development suite?

-Ed

[hipshot13]

What special code means in geek speak is "we don't know how to fix it" or it's to time consuming to do without creating a new income stream. X2 was and is my favorite. It does have a few minor bugs but I know how to get around them. When they went to X3 they decided to throw out the wash, eg. create a whole new way??? They decided to fix what wasn't broke and in the processes basically started over from scratch. Giving up backward compatibility and creating a whole new and very restrictive,very buggy interface. Then rather than work on removing the bugs they decided to gouge us for the the costs by calling it a new version. Now we have 2 completely dysfunctional programs instead of one. I wouldn't count on any substantial fixes on this or future versions.