Paintshop Pro - Wishlist for version X7

[junker404]

save incremental

[Rick_R]

This is both a help request and a Wishlist item:

How can I stop PSP from automatically showing PNG resolutions as pixels per centimeter when I have the default set to show pixels per inch?

It works fine for the other formats I usually use (JPG, GIF, TIFF, PSD) but it always shows PNG's in centimeters. I get the same problem on X3, X4, X5 and X6.

[LeviFiction]

This is a result of the PNG format and the PNG importer/exporter.

The PNG format always saves sizes in millimeters. There is a single byte that defines how the measurement is made. 0: Unknown type 1: Meters.

If the type is unknown, then the software can make its own assumptions. Some applications read it in inches, others leave it as meters since that's what PNG actually does. If the type is set to meters then it'll read in the PNG default.
PSP always saves in Meters and reads in meters from PNG because of this.

So it's a wishlist item.

[Rick_R]

Thanks!

I guess there has to be an electronic equivalent to fingernails on a blackboard, and that's a pretty good candidate!


Sorta reminds me of one of my favorite jokes:

• You know something you never hear in Hell?
  
  "Have a nice day!"
  
  They do have smile buttons though!
  
  Know why?
  
  Just to tick people off!

[lphilpot]

1. PLEASE allow docking of Materials, Layers, Palettes, etc to the left.

I'm still dumbfounded at the reasoning behind restriciting the UI layout so that those items can only be docked to the right.
I upgraded to X5, discovered I couldn't dock many items to the left, and haven't used it since. That limitation alone was a show stopper. Still using X3 for this reason.

+1
This was mentioned almost a year ago, but I agree. I've just "upgraded" from X2 all the way to X6 (he said facetiously ) and I cannot believe docking the materials palette to the left has been intentionally disabled. Toolbars can dock left, but not the palette. What's the logic behind this, other than maybe just an arbitrary decision by the developers/designers?

Is there really no way to dock a palette to the left, at all?

Unbelievable.

[Rick_R]

Is there a way to change the color of the lines used for the straighten and perspective correction tools?

Frankly, I don't care about the perspective tool since I rarely use it, but it seems that if one can be changed so should the other.

I basically work with black and white scans of old documents such as census records, ship passenger manifests, etc. They are all laid out in lined-paper format. That makes it easy to find a straight line, but the hard part is finding the tool's line -- especially if it is partly lined up with the sample line! It would be a lot easier if I could change it to something that stands out, like red.

[Muriel]

My wishlist would include a tool to fill a selection with text, making the entire text fit the selection! I know this is possible in PS.

[Monteiro]

Tilt–shift photography effect

[LeviFiction]

There already is a tilt-shift effect inside of PSP. They call it "Selective Focus" it's found under the Effects -> Photo Effects menu

[tomkinsrichard]

As you go through this list of things that people want, the big thing that is just crying out to be wanted, it's there, in front of everyone,

How about a really good manual and help system?

I hate it when I see something in a Corel menu, thta I don't know what it does, so I use the menu item as a search term in the help and BOOM, nothing, nada, empty, go home, nothing to see here, the lights have been turned off and everyone has gone home.

C'mon people (Corel) get wiht the program. You cannot win the game playing I'm the cheapest or I have the most features, or crap like that. The only way you can win the game is on service. Service means you have a great manual, it's that simple.

[dsigman]

As you go through this list of things that people want, the big thing that is just crying out to be wanted, it's there, in front of everyone,

How about a really good manual and help system?

I hate it when I see something in a Corel menu, thta I don't know what it does, so I use the menu item as a search term in the help and BOOM, nothing, nada, empty, go home, nothing to see here, the lights have been turned off and everyone has gone home.

C'mon people (Corel) get wiht the program. You cannot win the game playing I'm the cheapest or I have the most features, or crap like that. The only way you can win the game is on service. Service means you have a great manual, it's that simple.

If you think PSP is bad, try Photoshop. The online help is often for an older version.

[tomkinsrichard]

That's an upvote for great manuals.

[Rick_R]

As you go through this list of things that people want, the big thing that is just crying out to be wanted, it's there, in front of everyone,

How about a really good manual and help system?

I agree that the help is lousy. But unfortunately, with the advent of the Internet, that is pretty much now the norm. Nowadays MS's "help" in Word, etc., is outright useless. I don't even bother with it -- I go straight to Google.

I have found that Corel's on-line learning videos and in-program Learning Center are quite useful. Also, LeviFiction has put together an excellent set of over 60 videos on YouTube showing what the various tools do. There are also a huge number of videos by others. And there are numerous books, although those can get expensive.

One major problem with Help is it takes a huge amount of work -- much more than most folks realize. Descriptions are generally almost useless. Most people need a step-by-step example. And then there is the formatting. Maintaining consistency of fonts, indenting, color of separator lines, etc., takes a huge amount of time. Doesn't seem like a big deal, but people really notice even minor discrepancies.

As I've pointed out previously, software manufacturers have to consider what it will cost to implement anything, how much demand there will be for the item, and whether it will significantly improve sales of the product -- whether that is a new feature, changing interface colors, tool icon size, etc., creating learning videos, or improving the help system and help manual.

Photoshop Elements has the advantage that it is a stripped-down version of a high-end product, whereas PSP is a separate product. So Adobe can offset most of the cost of PE help, etc., by allocating it to the full-blown product, but any PSP help is fully charged to PSP development costs. Although it would be great to have very detailed help, etc., the fact is that most users are interested in more program features.

There's also one more thing to consider, with Unix/Linux as an example: Most Windows command-line commands such as copy, move, etc., have *nix equivalents, e.g., cp, mv, ls (list). The thinking of the original Unix geeks was, "You learn it once and use it thousands of times." Same with a manual. Users will check a particular section maybe once a year, but use program features thousands of times. And whatever feature isn't explained in the manual will be the one they'll complain about, "Why doesn't the manual explain this???"

[tomkinsrichard]

As a Technical Writer, I am well aware of what goes into a manual.
As a Technical User, I am well aware of what a manual gives me.

To highlight the failings of other corporations in providing adequate user documentation and then to hold those firms up as representative examples of the norm is a complete cop-out. This simply represents the decay in competitive industry.

There are hundreds of third party books available for all the products you mentioned, all purporting to be the missing user guide. There is a market for user guides, people are buying them. That means there is a market for a product with a great user guide. Corel has sold PaintShop Pro from $29.99 to over $129.99 and everywhere in between. My last upgrade was $29.99, with free shipping by UPS. If there is profit for Corel in that price point, then at $100.00 with a great manual, there is profit as well.

I will not pay upwards of $600 for Adobe Photoshop. I have considered DxO Optics Pro and Nikon Capture NX2. Neither of these superb products provide Layers, or Masks which I make use of.

As to everyone going to the bottom of the ladder into the mud to beat each other up over price, that's a very old idea that never made sense. If the marketplace really was like that, no one would buy an Apple product, or a Rolex product, or a BMW, or an Audi. All of those firms sell their products at premium prices, not because they have to, simply because they can. The cache in the quality of their product in conveyed at every level and people buy them.

If PaintShop Pro had a great manual, the perception of it's quality would rise and it's selling price could stabilize around $120.00 per unit.

For comparison, take a look at the offering from Serif, very similar in features, similar price, and good manuals and resource guides as well. They have an aggressive sales force, they call me, twice a year, and while they have me on the phone, they makes me an offer that is 45% off and they upsell me as well.

No, mediocrity is not an excuse for a poor product, mediocrity is a disease in the industry.

[Klindar]

I would like to see the Color Management facility fleshed out. You can do pretty much anything with CM the way it is presently implemented but often the process is very inconvenient or it isn't obvious how to proceed:

1. Allow the user to change color Working Space without having to close images in the Editor.
2. Display the Color Space for all images loaded into the Manager and Editor. In Image Information this almost always is blank at present or we see "Uncalibrated". Something is wrong. If I load these same images into Capture One, the color space is always correctly displayed.
3. Allow the user to select Color Space for an image from a menu with optional conversion. That is ... present the option of leaving image pixels as they are or converting them to the newly chosen space. *We want to be able to do this while editing, not just when the image is loaded*.
4. Support batch conversion and/or assignment of Color Space for multiple images. Suppose I have 20 Adobe RGB images and I want to convert them all to sRGB for Internet display. Yes, I could prepare a Script to load the images into an sRGB Working Space and turn off the conversion warning, then save but you can appreciate how cumbersome that would be.
5. Filter images in a folder based on a user specified Color Space (provide a drop-down list built by automatically scanning all images in the folder to determine their Color Spaces). For example ... create a new folder with contents comprising only those images in another folder having sRGB color space .
6. PSP currently will ignore an ICC profile embedded into an image by a camera (at least if it is a D800 or D7000). This complicates the situation because you go through a possible CWS change and then "Save as .." get a profie in there you can later use for color space conversions.

I realize what I am asking is to make Color Management more like we find it in Photoshop (only better) but not everything Adobe does is a bad idea :~ Color Management has gone mainstream these days and we need robust, comprehensive tools for working with color spaces - assigning them, converting and inspecting. I find PSP superior to any other image editor I have used (which is just about all of them, including Photoshop) by a long shot but Color Management tools area is weak. Put some developers who really understand Color Management on this and give us a "killer" CM toolkit. I'd pay extra for that.

Finally, I would like to see RAW Lab upgraded as follows:

1. A slider for highlight brightness and another for highlight threshold.
2. The slider for shadows needs to be able to *lighten* as well as darken them. Again, a threshold slider would be a big help.
3. The preview image is way too small. It can prove very difficult to assess some changes. I realize there is a zoom but that's not as good as having the whole image nearly full-screen.
4. Support assigning color space right from within RAW Lab. Provide a drop-down list of Color Spaces to choose from.

Because of the weaknesses in RAW Lab I use Capture One for my RAW/NEF conversions and then have Capture One launch the image into Paintshop for eidintg and presentation preparation. This works surprisingly well but I'd just as soon do everything in Paintshop.

Best wishes,
K