Corel and psd files

[MikeFromMesa]

Playing with trial version of PSP7.. slick program, lots of capabilities, but not gonna work for me I guess. I have tons of .psd files, each of which has up to 100 layers. Thought PSP7 would open them and allow the normal manipulations of individual layers, but now I see this is not the case. Too bad. Going back to photoshop.

Works for 8 bit files, not currently true for 16 bit files. Based on the support team's response to my email you might want to check back in another month or so.

[Radim]

Try this one - http://pl32.com/

[MikeFromMesa]

Try this one - http://pl32.com/

I downloaded the trial once but never spent enough time working with it to tell if it was worth the purchase price. How does it stack up against Elements? And does it support Photoshop compatible plugins like Topaz?

[photodrawken]

Try this one - http://pl32.com/

I downloaded the trial once but never spent enough time working with it to tell if it was worth the purchase price. How does it stack up against Elements? And does it support Photoshop compatible plugins like Topaz?

When I abandoned PSE in favor of PSP, I posted that PSP was "a thousand times better" than PSE. When I discovered PL, I realized that it was a thousand times better than PSP. So, that would make PL a million times better than PSE.

PL does support PS plugins; but, as always, confirm that with your plugins.

[MikeFromMesa]

Try this one - http://pl32.com/

I downloaded the trial once but never spent enough time working with it to tell if it was worth the purchase price. How does it stack up against Elements? And does it support Photoshop compatible plugins like Topaz?

When I abandoned PSE in favor of PSP, I posted that PSP was "a thousand times better" than PSE. When I discovered PL, I realized that it was a thousand times better than PSP. So, that would make PL a million times better than PSE.

PL does support PS plugins; but, as always, confirm that with your plugins.

I have played with it enough to get a feeling for how it works and I have to admit that it is pretty impressive. But, unless I am missing it, it seems to be missing some stuff that seems pretty basic to me. For example,

I could find no history to allow me to step back when I want to re-do stuff. Yes, I know I can "undo" but that does not work for some steps. For example, calling a plugin to do some basic work cannot be undone. At least when I tried it would not undo some of my plugin work using some of my plugins.

The selection tool is very clever, but I have repeatedly found that it never seems to actually form the selection. The "wait" wheel spins and spins, but never finishes making the selection.

There is no context-sensitive fill. Or at least none I could find.

There are a couple of other tools that I have not been able to get to work but that might be my lack of experience in using them. I will continue to play with them and perhaps find out what I am doing wrong, but I am not sure that I see how it is "a thousand times better" than PSP or, for that matter, PSE. And no, I am not intimidated by the complexity of the interface even though I spent quite a bit of time working with PSE. I am one of those "scientists and engineers" that I mentioned in another post.

[photodrawken]

I could find no history to allow me to step back when I want to re-do stuff. Yes, I know I can "undo" but that does not work for some steps. For example, calling a plugin to do some basic work cannot be undone. At least when I tried it would not undo some of my plugin work using some of my plugins.

From the main menu bar, use View...Panels...Undo List. You can drag and drop that Undo List panel into the right-hand "well" to dock it as a tab in any section you want. The Ctrl+Z hotkey will also undo any plugin effect that was applied.

The selection tool is very clever, but I have repeatedly found that it never seems to actually form the selection. The "wait" wheel spins and spins, but never finishes making the selection..

You seem to be describing the Quick Selection tool, correct? As the Help file explains, the tool's functions are always "live" -- there's no need to wait for the spinning wheel to stop.

There is no context-sensitive fill. Or at least none I could find..

Every one of the 6 selection tools, as well as the AutoMask and AutoTransparency tools, has a "Remove Object" button that does the content-aware fill. They also have icons that let you define the area to be used as a fill, in addition to defining the structure of the incoming fill:

remove button.png (20.14 KiB) Viewed 6441 times

Added:
I forgot to mention that PL also has a Remove Brush which allows you to actually paint (with the full complement of brush styles such as softness, etc.) over an area. When you release the mouse button, that area is filled using content-aware. Does PSP X7 still force you to use that cheesy Makeover Brush that only allows a single click?

[MikeFromMesa]

I could find no history to allow me to step back when I want to re-do stuff. Yes, I know I can "undo" but that does not work for some steps. For example, calling a plugin to do some basic work cannot be undone. At least when I tried it would not undo some of my plugin work using some of my plugins.

From the main menu bar, use View...Panels...Undo List. You can drag and drop that Undo List panel into the right-hand "well" to dock it as a tab in any section you want. The Ctrl+Z hotkey will also undo any plugin effect that was applied.

Working through these one at a time.

I did find the Undo Panel. Thanks for the pointer. However on my Mac it does not seem to work well and only shows the last step taken. Or what it thinks is the last step taken. Let me try to be a bit clearer.

I went through a series of steps. Each time the Undo List showed only the Start and the last step taken. All of the intervening steps were removed from the list when it was updated with each new step. So, if I went through 5 or 6 steps, the Undo List showed only the Start and the last step taken.

I then tried to return to the original state but it took me back to the second step I had taken (flattening the image in preparation for calling a plugin).

Opened another image, did a Histogram Correction, called a plugin and then did an Undo (Cmd-Z on my Mac) and it did remove the plugin affect but did not remove it from the Undo List. I then did a curves adjustment but it did not show the curves in the Undo List. Here is a photo and, as you can see, it only shows two steps and shows the PerfectlyClear plugin, which was undone, as the last step, not the curves.

As I said it probably works better on Windows machines. I find that true of quite a bit of software and I understand why. Aim for the profitable market and don't spend so much time on the far less profitable market. Completely understandable from a company's point of view. A pain in the neck for those working on a Mac.

[MikeFromMesa]

The selection tool is very clever, but I have repeatedly found that it never seems to actually form the selection. The "wait" wheel spins and spins, but never finishes making the selection..

You seem to be describing the Quick Selection tool, correct? As the Help file explains, the tool's functions are always "live" -- there's no need to wait for the spinning wheel to stop.

I did read the Help file concerning the Quick Selection tool and, as I understand it, the user is supposed to draw a rectangle about the area to be selected and the tool is supposed to do its best to select the area inside the rectangle. Sometimes that has worked well for me (the wheel spins during the compute, the selection is made and the wheel stops spinning) but sometimes the software never actually makes the selection inside the rectangle. I have waited for 30 minutes without getting a selection. Of course I am using it based on my understanding of the procedure described in the Help file. But perhaps I have misunderstood. It would certainly not be the first time ...

As I have continued to play with PL I have found that the history sometimes works and sometimes does not. For example, I opened a photo, did some basic adjustments (which did not show up in the history at all), did the above selection (which worked this time) and, from that point on, all adjustments were recorded in the history. Not before the selection, but after. I then reset to the Start entry which, of course, removed the selection, and from that point on no adjustments showed up in the history. A bit puzzling.

I should install this on the Windows VM I have running under Parallels and see if it works any differently there than on the Mac. Don't know if they wrote this using cross-platform software or not.

> Does PSP X7 still force you to use that cheesy Makeover Brush that only allows a single click?
I am not an apologist for any of the Corel software.

While I do have X7 on the Windows VM on my machine I rarely use it because I don't much like working cross-platform and I have found Corel software to be buggy. I was the one complaining about its inability to open 16 bit multi-layer psd files created by any other software that started this thread. I believe the software to be adequate, but not really good. And you don't want to get me started on ASP ...

However I have found PSE, when used in the "Expert" mode (a categorization I find silly) is not bad software at all and will take care of most of what I need to do. I also have my old Windows version of Photoshop CS5.1 which I can, and do sometimes, revert to to take care of special cases. If I could get PL to work properly I might use it instead. Perhaps practice makes perfect.

[photodrawken]

However on my Mac it does not seem to work well and only shows the last step taken. Or what it thinks is the last step taken.

OK, that's something you should definitely post in the PL user forum.

[photodrawken]

Hi Mike,
I understand what you're saying -- your questions about the Quick Selection tool and the Undo List are valid, and are probably best addressed in the PL user forum.

However I have found PSE, when used in the "Expert" mode (a categorization I find silly) is not bad software at all and will take care of most of what I need to do.

Sounds good to me. I've said this in one of the PSE user forums, and I don't mind saying it here, too: PSE can be enjoyable to use and can give nice results. The important thing is that you're happy with your image editing software. If you've done "due diligence" and realistically examined your options, you're golden....

[Tadjio]

I am told this issue will be fixed in the coming SP1 (Sevice Pack)