Crop Tool box adjustment...

[sheilsoft]

Folks,

PSP is and has always been THE best graphics app with a truly intuitive interface and useful set of features & tools.

I have been using it for many, many years... sniffed around other products, but always returned, fully satisfied with what I can achieve. I've also written a suite of scripts to further enhance my use of it alongside my photography hobby.

HOWEVER... since Corel took it over and the start of the X series, there has been a serious and very annoying omission concerning the Crop tool. Previous versions up to v9 allowed the user to grab hold of the edges of the crop box ANYWHERE along ANY side, and drag/extend/reduce the size of the box. This allowed us photographers to zoom in to pixel level and grab any part of the visible box to adjust the crop dimensions very accurately. This is a very important feature for photographers.

The new X interface has changed the crop box to 'vector node handles' only for adjustment, which are not always visible when zoomed in. This means that instead of being able to align the box accurately to an image feature or row of pixels, you have to zoom out until you can find the nearest handle to use, or scroll up/down left/right, which either takes you away from the area you want to work on, or zoom too far out to see the detail you want for alignment. Sorry Corel... this isn't good enough! It's available in Photoshop & Elements, and was in earlier PSP, so why not now? I don't understand.

Please, please, pulease... in Freeform crop mode, please at least give us an option/preference to ditch the vector handles and grab the sides as before. I know you may think it a backward step, but you've taken away the very function that photographers need for cropping a composition, which is available in other products.

Please think seriously about correcting this omission in a future service pack or 'update'.

Many thanks.

Rgds,
Howard Dickson

[Joelle]

Folks,

HOWEVER... since Corel took it over and the start of the X series, there has been a serious and very annoying omission concerning the Crop tool. Previous versions up to v9 allowed the user to grab hold of the edges of the crop box ANYWHERE along ANY side, and drag/extend/reduce the size of the box. This allowed us photographers to zoom in to pixel level and grab any part of the visible box to adjust the crop dimensions very accurately. This is a very important feature for photographers.

The new X interface has changed the crop box to 'vector handles' only for adjustment, which are not always visible when zoomed in. This means that instead of being able to align the box accurately to an image feature or row of pixels, you have to zoom out until you can find the nearest handle to use, or scroll up/down left/right, which either takes you away from the area you want to work on, or zoom too far out to see the detail you want for alignment. Sorry Corel... this isn't good enough! It's available in Photoshop & Elements, and was in earlier PSP, so why not now? I don't understand.

Please, please, pulease... in Freeform crop mode, please at least give us an option/preference to ditch the vector handles and grab the sides as before. I know you may think it a backward step, but you've taken away the very function that photographers need for cropping a composition, which is available in other products.

Please think seriously about correcting this omission in a future service pack or 'update'.

Many thanks.

Rgds,
Howard Dickson

Hola Howard,
We complained about this during the beta testing of X2, but as you've noticed, it hasn't been changed back.

Asking again and again has not got any response.
I agree, it is a nuisance to only be able to use those nodes.
Sometimes an image is so textured that the nodes are almost invisible.

Unfortunately a lot of things have changed, for the sake of change - as it certainly isn't for the better.
I don't know what it is with Corel, who constantly have to mess with perfectly good tools and break them in the process.
We will have to see what the much mentioned, but so far not seen, Service Pack will bring.
You can bet on one thing: the Curves filter won't have been put back to the way it was either.

Joëlle

[sheilsoft]

Joelle,

Hi again! Nice to see someone else agrees about the loss of functionality on some tools.
I really don't want to go into 'winge mode', nor stem the flow of genuine improvements, but felt that the loss of one of the best features in PSP with it's crop tool makeover needs to be addressed... Soon! It's an easy fix.

Are you listening Corel?

Been a PSP 'power user' and photographer for many years, so kinda know what's required, but would be interested to hear Corel's raison d'etre if they decide to leave as is.

Rgds,
Howard

[Tim Morrison]

I hate not being able to grab the crop outline anywhere to resize it. I feel a little guilty about it too. One feature I'd often requested was the ability to rotate the crop rectangle. Apparently it became too hard to calculate if the mouse pointer was on the crop border once the outline was rotated, because only being able drag the outline at the corner and centre nodes came in at the same time as the rotate feature was introduced.
As far as I can see, it's only a bit of mathematics, so it shouldn't be impossible to work out. The program draws the crop outline at an angle, so if it can work out where to draw the crop outline pixels, and it knows the position of the mouse pointer, it should be able to figure out when to enable drag.
If it's all too hard, I'd be happy to settle for a compromise. Let us drag anywhere on the crop boundary if the crop outline isn't rotated, and revert to nodes only dragging when the outline is rotated.
Also, two other bad missing features related to crop boundary rotation... being able to set the angle in the Tool Options palette, and something to click to reset the angle to zero.

[sheilsoft]

Tim,

I'd be more than happy to have the grab sides capability only if the box is not rotated. Personally, I only crop my images with a vert/horiz aligned box anyway, and have never felt the need to crop at an angle, as I always correct wonky verticals and horizontals with the Straighten tool first. I teach this method at our photo club as the primary post processing method... Straighten, Crop & Clone.

It makes sense though for the node handles to be the only adjustment points when the crop box is rotated. I wouldn't have a problem with that.

If you can do anything to bring back the original functionality it would be wonderful!

Rgds,
Howard