Any way to get true HSL (360/100/100)?

[Timberline]

Is there a configuration or plugin or hack that can make PSP show HSL values the way they're officially defined (360º - 100 - 100) instead of 255 - 255 - 255?

Now I'm remembering this is why the last version on my computer was v7, just before this issue led me to drift over to the competition, about 10 years ago I guess. (I've sure spent a buckload of money with them, up in four figures. And now they want a monthly transfusion from my wallet in perpetuity. Makes me think they may have harder times ahead.)

I understand the need to continue supporting everyone who has learned Jasc's proprietary pseudo-HSL but it is a major, major interoperability and credibility issue not to offer an option to have the real thing. There are excellent reasons to use HSL over HSB (and especially over RGB or CMYK) but nobody who understands and cares about those reasons is going to start using a program with these meaningless numbers. As I say, I understand there are many people whose introduction to the whole concept of HSL was the wacky Jasc version through no fault of their own and who are very attached to it. At this point they should not be forced to change. I get that. Really. But to claim that PSP supports HSL when it does not by any generally accepted definition only turns off potential users.

I've been thinking of coming back to PSP for, um, medical reasons (see above re transfusions) on my next computer and I'm giving PSP x5 another whirl. There has been a lot of evolution. So I'm hoping there must be some reasonably available way to use real HSL by now. I see it's correct in the adjustment layers these days, just not in the color chooser or eyedropper. Are those user-rescriptable with only reasonable effort? Even that might enough for me, I think.

[LeviFiction]

It would be possible to script it, yes, if you knew the proper conversion equations.

Heck with proper knowledge of GUI programming in Python you could even make your own color picker.

Always had to deal with this when doing PS tutorials in PSP. The way I got around this was a third party color-picker application that would return the RGB values (in HEX format for faster input) for any HSL or HSV selection. Though I don't remember what it is now.

[Timberline]

OK, thanks.

Since reading your reply the other day, I've sifted through all the objects and properties I can find exposed, and it appears the only viable scripting/programming route is either a separate PSP color picker or a widget external to PSP. Fixing the intrinsic eyedropper or picker doesn't appear to be possible.

But reading threads here about support of other features, I get the impression Corel may be on the road to abandoning PSP, making it a doubtful choice for me at this point. Do you think that's an accurate perception? Any evidence one way or the other?

[Cassel]

I dont know about specific features, but i doubt very much they would be abandonning PSP.

[Ken Berry]

I would have to agree with Cassel... PSP is a major money spinner for Corel, and (mostly) pretty popular to boot. So I doubt very much whether Corel is planning to dump it in the foreseeable future...

[LeviFiction]

Yeah PSP is not going anywhere any time soon. People have been upset with PSP, as well as about Corel Support in general for all products. Their actual technical support policies are what are in question most recently (assuming I know which topics you're talking about) not Corel's support of PSP as a software. But actual evidence from Corel, how they approach things, the brand new team manager, PSP is no where near being on the way out. It's a big money maker. It's powerful, and more affordable than Corel's other offerings making it a very good deal for Corel.

As for scripting, yes you cannot "fix" what's already there. They offer very little interaction with the actual backends. But the conversion to and from RGB is the important part. Since that is what you'll be shoving back into PSP is the RGB conversion from HSL. You can make your own widget or picker using Tkinter or you can install a 3rd party Python widget if you want to. There are a lot of options as far as that is concerned.

[Timberline]

OK, what gave me the wrong impression was people complaining that the plugin API is not being maintained and so newer Photoshop plugins don't work in PSP. I would have thought Corel would want to maintain plugin compatibility as one of their primary selling points. Of course the continual addition of muscle to PS Elements does make it harder to position PSP as "the affordable, more understandable Photoshop alternative" but it still seems a profitable niche. Then again PSP already has its name recognition and could probably coast a good long time doing nothing but continuing to stay compatible with emerging versions of Windows.

[LeviFiction]

Yeah plugin complaints. Those are all over the place.

Some plugins used to work that don't work anymore. Some plugins have never worked and people assume PSP is just not supporting the basic functions of the Adobe Plugin architecture (no one knows what functions PSP properly supports, there is no documentation on it). There are some things PSP just can't do due to licensing limitation (I think Adobe does limit portions of their design) or feature limitations built into the program. In some cases Corel and the plugin designers go back and forth "it's their fault, we can't do anything about that" with no sign of a resolution at all.

Plugins are just so messy, and no one is offering a clear cut explanation of what's going on.

Corel did update the plugin compatibility in X3, X4, and some fixes in X5. So it is actively worked on to some degree. Just not enough to make people happy.

[Timberline]

Levi, I see from other posts of yours that you have some depth of insight about PSP scripting. My more recent experience is PHP, C, Java, .NET, some JS, no Python yet. Before I delve into it, maybe you could sanity-check a couple of approaches to the problem for me.

1. Can a process external to a running PSP instance invoke a PSP script on that instance? Or directly invoke the API that a PSP script would invoke? In particular, could an external customized color picker do that in order to change the foreground or background color?

2. Or going at the problem from the other side, can a PSP script initiate communication and query data from a custom app written to support interprocess communication?

Any place I should be looking for potentially relevant examples? Any strategic or tactical advice about going for one of these approaches? Or should I just plan to learn enough to make a TKinter widget? I'm thinking I could do more a more sophisticated picker more quickly with a more familiar tool, if I can just make the communication work.

There really is a lot to like in PSP, and PS and PSE don't support HSL either, except in adjustments. HSB/HSV (which they do support) is still better than RGB, but you can rarely pick one hue and stick with it through one spectrum of saturation or brightness. The perceived hue changes too much.

[LeviFiction]

You understand programming concepts better than I do. In fact with your background in C I wonder if a Photoshop Plugin might not be a better option for you.

Here is what little I understand about Python's capabilities.

1) No. If I understand it correctly, PSP is using an embedded Python engine with a special interoperative object between that engine and PSP's internals. So an external program or process cannot invoke a PSPScript and have it interact properly.

2) This should be possible to some degree. I'm not familiar with Python's more advanced capabilities but I believe Python is capable of COM interop. TKinter is a special wrapper around the TCL GUI framework. It's the more universal option if you want to share with other people, with libraries built into PSP's edition of Python. However, you're not limited to that.

Python's ability to talk with DLLs means it's possible to call Windows base APIs as well if you want to build your own DLLs for use. PyWin is a library specifically designed to call Windows APIs that you could install yourself. If you wanted a pre-formed option.

The one real issue that comes to mind, is that what is presented by Corel to the screen may not be the exact color you're aiming for. I'm convinced that grabbing a screen color will be slightly off from selecting a color direct from the image inside PSP. But I could very easily be wrong, and maybe this isn't big enough to be a problem.

[Timberline]

Thanks for the pointers.

Good point about grabbing a color off the screen. I've run into that when using screen captures in the past, don't remember if it was PSP, but particularly (of course) with some types of color management/correction in place.

The bit that gives me pause is the "smear field" that has saturation on one axis and lightness on the other, which needs to change hue interactively. Worst case use a static gray one, I suppose, and show the true color only in the solid "tracker" swatch. Maybe I'll find a colorize option in the toolkit that makes it easy to solve that problem. The rest feels straightforward, not having looked into it yet.

I'll also ponder the plugin option, which I was about to overlook.

[Timberline]

I guess for now I'm leaning towards PhotoPlus, though there may be limitations (beyond scripting, obviously) important to me that I haven't yet noticed. They do have a good layout and excellent or nearly excellent HSL support. But once PSP x6 comes out I'll certainly take another look at that.

[LeviFiction]

So long as you're happy with it. Hopefully this request will get seen, heard, and implimented. We'll see how everything goes.

But considering how long X5 has been out I doubt they'll do HSL improvements before X7. But there's always hope.

[Timberline]

One thing I found fairly quickly that PSP does somewhat better than Serif PhotoPlus is camera raw conversion. PSP gives you some control, although not as much as one is accustomed to, whereas PhotoPlus just applies a stock normalization over which you have no control. With PSP I was able to save some nearly-blownout clouds by merging two separate conversions. In Photoshop it's a trivial operation to rescue the cloud highlights in a single image without impacting the rest of the image as PSP seems to require. I don't recall whether that's available in PSE, however, which is more of a fair target of comparison I suppose.

[photodrawken]

Timberline,
Just a note in case you haven't tried it, the free RawTherapee application
http://www.rawtherapee.com/
offers an astounding number of controls over image adjustments.

Because of its capabilities, I couldn't care less what either PSP or PSE have to offer for RAW processing....