PaintShop Pro X4--Wishlist for Future Versions

[Ron P.]

Every so often I have contact with a Corel employee or software engineer regarding new versions. It is always handy if I can point them to a thread such as this.
Please keep any suggestions sensible - plus this is not a place to complain about what YOU may consider to be bugs or faults. Those items should be placed in a new thread or tagged onto an existing one dealing with that same issue.

Link to previous Wishlist
http://forum.corel.com/EN/viewtopic.php?f=56&t=36939

[MarkyM]

Hi Ron and Thanks for this.

I am liking X4 so far and can think of 2 things I'd like to see in the next patch/update:

1) A return to the color icons. The monochrome icons look like a step back. Maybe provide an option to select either color or mono.

2) With the navigation and Organizer easily available from the Edit view, I have no need for the "Manage" view (and the IQ there doesn't seem as good) but I really like the new "Info" palette that seems only to be available there. In Edit view, we still have the same old clunky "Image Info" window.

So I would really, really like to see the "Info" palette from the Manage view implemented in the Edit view.

--Mark--

[JStanley]

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[JStanley]

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[MatsW]

Paintshop Pro is a painting program. It should be reflected in any update.

Mats

(To clarify: to continually improve the painting functions, and to emulate a real painting experience, and not so much focus on photo stuff, etc. The problem is that if Corel does this, then they compete with themselves and Painter-12, which better emulates "real water colours", etc.)

[Ken Berry]

????

[LeviFiction]

PSP is a "Paint" program not a painting program. And it was Jasc that started the emphasis on photos not Corel.

A crop tool that let's us grab and drag the edges not just the nodes.

The ability to sample a color point from the image into the curves tool.

Improved vector support, I happen to know for a fact that our vectors have many of the same values as the SVG format so we should be able to import more than a bitmap rendering of the SVG file. We should also have the ability to save to an SVG.

Better vector tools. Vectors, while powerful, are still very weak in PSP. I don't expect a lot but the ability to change properties quickly would be a huge plus. We somewhat have that if we select the pen tool and select our vector but we don't have that same thing for text. If we want to change text we have to go in and highlight it which can actually get in the way of what we are designing.

The ability to curve out an edge by shift clicking on it and dragging. Right now we have to right-click on both nodes that the line is connected to and curve one before and one after to get a single curve.

More of the standard combining options for vectors. Right now we have merge and merge cutout as scripts but these don't really cover all that is possible in other areas. For example a boolean cutout. Or a difference combination.

Some layout option such as snapping to the edge of the canvas or snapping to object centers while dragging. The alignment commands are great but I would like a more dynamic option if possible.

Alignment commands for regular raster data. Right now most of the alignment is for vector.objects only. And I can just make my own using scripts but I think they should be but in.

An Undo option in the text tool. It is very easy, was even easier in X3, to hit a key while your text is highlighted. Mistakes like that, especially if you have a lot of text, is very annoying. To be able to get that back with just a express would be invaluable.

A textbox option for dynamic word wrapping.

A blending tool for regular colors not just art media.

Either text boxes or labels on all sliders for those of us who like to know exactly where we are. Invaluable for photographers, photo editors, and graphic artists alike.

A minimize button on the tabbed view to go straight into windowed mode to finally seamlessly integrate these two preferred ways of working. The menu option to switch them is too clunky.

Some sort of gradient tool. Right now going back and forth between the material.dialog just to see.how.different directions look or how often they repeat is very tedious, especially for vectors which are what I use gradient for mostly other than masking.

The ability to merge layers onto masks. Right now if you merge a mask with anything it just becomes a regular raster layer. But I would like to be able to take my drawings or an image and directly merge it into the mask beneath it. The current method of defloating a selection of creating a special mask to merge with the old one is just a bit awkward.

If not that then the ability to make a mask from the current layer not just the whole image.

The ability to view the mask itself on the image specifically. The ruby-lithe overlay is nice but sometimes it's just not as effective as being able to see what you're doing when you're editing the mask.

I would still like variable line width for vectors but I can understand how that would be hard.

Smart-objects - big one for me here. Raster deformations are just too destructive, we need a good way to preserve quality of raster objects and smart-objects are a great way to do it. And I'm just asking for preservation of quality. If you wanted to get really crazy with it you could do what Photoshop does and allow for effects to be changed and re-applied to smart-objects. But I figured I'd start small.

De-fringing options for the object extractor. I won't lie, when it first came out in X3 I had a laugh about it because it was bragged that the object extractor was maintaining the small hairs on the giraffe's chin. Problem was it was also maintaining the sky around the hairs as well. The Object extractor is a useful tool but without a de-fringing or de-mixing option it just doesn't always do the job very well. I do like it and I do use it, but sparingly.

Can we please move the crop options out of the general preference dialog? Seriously, they have no influence anywhere but with the crop tool it makes no sense for them to be there when there is more than enough room on the tool options palette. I've proven it.

I'd like to see the icons for the various layer properties moved underneath the layer name. As it is right now the icons fully over-write the layer name making naming the layer a pointless en-devour. Link the layer, add layer styles, do some blend ranges and lock the transparency and what do you have? Too many icons on the same line as the layer name when we have more than enough space at the bottom of the layer list display item. This will also allow you to place the link set number next to the link set icon for quick visual reference of which layers are linked to each other. Which is something else I want.

Also improve Brightness/Contrast filter. Right now it's as bad as Photoshop's used to be. It's a destructive command that clips shadows and highlights. The best way to deal with this is how Photoshop addressed this problem in CS3, anchor the shadows and highlights and focus on the mid-tones. I'm not saying that the old method is not useful but it's a terribly destructive method that could be so much better.

[JStanley]

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[Radim]

Better support of vectors to some extent we have in Inkscape, and we can save from Inkscape and import as vector/editable image in PSP X3/X4 but there are of course some limitations.

[JStanley]

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[flagpole]

black and white icons have to go. have to. it is a classic case of style over substance.

there can be no better example that the saturation up/down icon, which is intuitively indistinguishable from the lighten/darken icon. the fact that the saturation up/down icon shows a gradient from one shade of grey to another would be funny if it wasn't true.

[LeviFiction]

Better brush engine, this one is so slow.

The ability to rotate the source for cloning. Right now, and it's not bad that it's this way, you have to clone then flip the source onto its own layer and sample from that to get the same effect. Simple to do but if we could do it with some simple options quickly and easily that would be awesome.

The ability to do a superscript and subscript in text. Right now we need to create a completely different text object to simulate that option.

Inclusion of an actual "Special Character" dialog box so we can choose from special characters. The inclusion of (c) (tm) and (r) is handy, don't get me wrong. But there are more special characters than those and it would just be easier if you built in the selection options.

[eriq smith]

i have several versions from 3 through x4 and I wish they would load first a small version like 7.04 (anniversary version) and then load the rest IF you ask for it (or set a preference for it) - I usually have 7.04 set as my default for images as it loads fast and has 99% of the commands I use; ten (X) X2, X3, X4 (I have all 4) all take forever to load if I just want to view or crop images, etc.

As a programmer I have often found the number 1 crime programmers do is not sit down with the user to see what they actually do; program from the supervisor's or other non-users specs or worse from competitor's product. PSP has become so slow tyhat many users either are still using old versions 90% of the time or else switching to other products

[flagpole]

Canvas Size to be able to import dimensions of current canvas.

a simple feature but it would make my life easier. I use image > Canvas Size.... quite a lot and one inevitably wants to do something that works around the current canvas size. increase it a little, shrink it a little etc. The current canvas size is displayed, so a little button that populated the original dimensions into the new dimensions would save me some time. and it would mess anything up because the default would still be last number entered.

small change i know.

[siptec]

Paint Shop Pro prior to version X3 would allow you to select font with the font tool in the PSP file and scroll through the available fonts on your system. Now you have to select the font and click back to the font selection to advance to the next font. It really slows down the process of getting the best font or if you are trying to match a font.

I would like to see this ability of selecting text with the text tool and then allowing the user to scroll through the fonts re-enabled.