Paint Shop Pro X5 New User Questions

[Flyguy]

Hi Everyone,
I'm new here.
I'm using a trial version of Paint Shop Pro X5. I like it pretty much so far; but, I have a couple questions:

1) Is there no "Tech Support" before I actually purchase the program?
It seems I must have a support code which is only available if I have registered the purchased product.

2) Do some of the operations perform rather slowly? Is there a setting I can change or a selection I can make to speed things up?
My computer is fairly fast, never seems slow with any programs (including LR4), but with Photo Shop Pro X5 my
computer seems to take a long time for copies, pastes, and several other operations. My computer took so long
the other day that I thought it had locked up.

Thanks in advance for your help.

[LeviFiction]

1) All Tech support, after the first 90 days covered under warranty, is pay for. So you would have to purchase a support ticket.

2) Usually PSP is pretty speedy. So, no, normally what you're seeing should not be happening.

First make sure there is nothing hogging memory. PSP is a 32-bit program and can only access 2-3GB of RAM.

Other options such as cataloging. In some cases PSP's photo cataloger will really slow down the rest of PSP's functions.
Especially if you have a lot of photos, or a lot of large photos on your harddrive.

Turning off cataloging options sometimes helps. Though I don't remember how at this moment in time. It's been mentioned a lot of times on the forums here, and there are some here who are experts at it.

Next under the File -> Preferences -> General Program Preferences

There is an area for caching. You'll see an option for a scratch disk. This scratch disk should never be on the same Hard drive as Windows if you can avoid it. If you can't avoid it, then I suggest you turn the scratch disk off and see if that improves performance. In some cases this has helped a lot of people.

If you see the program getting slower and slower the more and more you use it consider decreasing the number of Undo steps you're allowed. Int he General Program Preferences under "Undo" you'll see that the default number of undo steps is 250. When PSP saves an undo step it's saving the actual changes made to the image which takes up space on your HDD and in memory.

[hartpaul]

Hi Flyguy,
A bit more information would also help.

1). Tech support and support code before purchase - Is this because of the other problem? When problems of a minor nature occur I google search for that problem on the various Paint Shop Pro (PSP) sites and also general web .

2). ...some of the operations perform rather slowly? " Which operations are you experiencing slowness with. I know if I use the skin smoothing feature on an image which is 6000 x 4000pixels , yes it does slow down a bit on that operation because as Levifiction has mentioned it is only a 32 bit program and has a limited amount of RAM that it can access (programs and their use expand to fill the available memory that can be used )
Are you using the program in Manage, Adjust or Edit mode when you experience this slowness.
I only use Edit mode and have most extras turned off.

[Flyguy]

Thank You Both for your responses.
Now I understand how tech support works and how to get help in other ways.

Today I was retrying something that seemed slow the other day.
In my beginner's terms, I copied an image of a person onto a large picture of some scenery.
My process involved some layering and erasing. I made a 4 x 6 print of the finished product.
Everything seemed to go at a reasonable rate. The scenery picture is about 8 MB and the person
came from another 8 MB picture after some erasing.

Next I did a similar set of steps; but, this time my picture files were RAW NEF from my D800 and they were about
47MB each. As I experienced a few days ago, some of the copying, pasting, and printing setup steps went
pretty slowly. The better news this time is that I didn't think my computer locked up. The other day I was
thinking that it had because things took so long.

My conclusion is: The larger files are what is actually slowing my PSP5 program down.
Do you think that is what's happening?

I plan to purchase the PSP5 program because it can do some things I like that aren't doable with LR; but,
I think LR4(5) will be my main program, as it seems simpler to use. If you haven't figured it out yet,
I'm quite a beginning amateur; but, I really love taking and processing my picures.

Thanks again for helping me.

[photodrawken]

Flyguy,

I think you've discovered the cause for the slowness -- large file sizes.

There are a couple of things to do/consider:

1. As Levifiction mentioned, if you have two or more internal physical drives, use PSP's File...General Preferences...Display and Caching to set your scratch disk to a secondary drive -- one that is not your system drive.

2. Your Vista Home Basic, even though it's 64-bit, doesn't allocate a whole lot of RAM to 32-bit applications. You need to have Home Premium or better to get the advantage of better memory allocation. At least that's the way it is with Win7, and I suspect it was the same for Vista.

P.S., You're right that PSP can be a bit intimidating, but that's because it's a very powerful program. Just take it in small steps, using the Help to figger out the things you need to do. FWIW, I found that there are three skills to get comfortable with (for any image editing program):

1. Making selections.
2. Using masks.
3. Using layers.

If you have any questions, you know where to find us....

[hartpaul]

Hi Flyguy,
As Photodrawken has mentioned PSP is a powerful program and was intended originally as a pure editing program, in the same way that Photoshop was mainly a graphics arts program. With the advances in digital photography, more has been expected and as a result both have fallen short and so have their offsiders like Batman has Robin. Thus came Lighttroom and AftershotPro..

Vista is a resource hog and I avoided that and run with XP and W7.
Have you already purchased lightroom and are you eexperiencing any slow downs with it with large files?

[Flyguy]

Here's a New Question:
I'm determined to get this program working. I thought that I was unable to print because I only had the trial version. So, I purchased and downloaded PaintShop Pro x5 Ultimate. Now that I have the actual full program in my computer, I still can not print. I've followed the help instructions:
1 Choose File Print.
2 In the Printer group box, click Printer. The Print dialog box appears.
3 Choose a printer from the Name drop-list, and click OK.
All I get is an error message that says "There is no default printer installed".
There is no Name drop list to choose a printer from, just the error message. I have the Epson 3800 and Epson R800 and they both work fine from my other programs.

HELP ME PLEASE. I'm going bonkers

[photodrawken]

In Windows, use Start...Control Panel...Devices and Printers. Select one of your printers and set it to be the default printer.

[Flyguy]

Neither of those ideas worked.
I'm not sure where hwy 61 is located; but, I do have a deep lake nearby.

[Kathy_9]

Are you able to print from other applications and is it only PSP X5 that doesn't work for you?

[Flyguy]

Are you able to print from other applications and is it only PSP X5 that doesn't work for you?

I can print just fine from LR4 on all my other printers.
I don't have printing problems with any of my applications except PSP5.

[Kathy_9]

Okay, so we know your computer recognizes your printer. That's good. Just out of curiosity, what happens if you click on the printer icon on the toolbar? or if you type Ctrl+P?

You mentioned printers (plural). At the risk of being redundant, do you have one of those printers set up as the default?

Here's instructions for setting a default printer in Vista http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/wind ... lt-printer

[Flyguy]

Okay, so we know your computer recognizes your printer. That's good. Just out of curiosity, what happens if you click on the printer icon on the toolbar? or if you type Ctrl+P?

You mentioned printers (plural). At the risk of being redundant, do you have one of those printers set up as the default?

Here's instructions for setting a default printer in Vista http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/wind ... lt-printer

Kathy,
"Print", "CtrlP", "Print Layout", and the printer icon on the toolbar all give me the same message: "There is no default printer installed"
I've made my Epson Stylus Pro 3800 and then tried making my Epson R800 the Default printer. This doesn't help.
There is suppose to be a list of printers show up when I select "Print" etc. I'm suppose to select a printer to use from that list.
I don't get the list; I just get the error message. I've looked in "Preferences" and all over the rest of PSP5 and I can't find any settings that
apply/relate to this issue. I'm not a computer wiz; but, I've installed many softwares and printers in several operating systems and I don't
recal anything like this happening.

I'm Puzzled!
Thanks for trying to help me!

I guess I'm going to contact the computer wizards at Corel to see what they can do.
I'm betting they know about this problem and have a fix.

[Kathy_9]

You could always try the "resetting your workspace" trick to see if that helps. If you have customized your workspace, it would be a good idea to save it (File -> Workspace -> Save) before doing the reset. To reset, close PSP and then reopen it by holding down the shift key while double clicking the PSP icon on your desktop. When it asks if you want to revert, say OK. This procedure seems to correct a multitude of sins so maybe it will take care of your printer issue. If not, the only other suggestion I can make is to uninstall and reinstall. . . or contact Corel as you mentioned.

Good luck!!

[Flyguy]

You could always try the "resetting your workspace" trick to see if that helps. If you have customized your workspace, it would be a good idea to save it (File -> Workspace -> Save) before doing the reset. To reset, close PSP and then reopen it by holding down the shift key while double clicking the PSP icon on your desktop. When it asks if you want to revert, say OK. This procedure seems to correct a multitude of sins so maybe it will take care of your printer issue. If not, the only other suggestion I can make is to uninstall and reinstall. . . or contact Corel as you mentioned.

Good luck!!

Thanks for trying Kathy.
The "revert" didn't help.
I've got a nice explanation of the problem, along with my computer, printer, & camera stats ready to send to Corel.
I have an email that says I get 90 days of help for free. Looks like I'm going to need it. The program is also
incredably slow for some of its functions including copy/paste. I'm going to present that to Corel also.

If I get it fixed, I'll post the fix here.