X6/X7 Text Tool and Vector Property changes running slow

[Jean-Luc]

You should download and try the HORLOGE remembering to install the included font first before opening the example in PSP. I've added the additional numerals up to 12 in the HORLOGE2 example. Editing it using the type tool will soon show you what the problem is.

Done, thanks for the file, and I take it back, it must be PSP.

But, if you uncheck Warp Text when trying the horloge test, things go faster.

[Romag]

You should download and try the HORLOGE remembering to install the included font first before opening the example in PSP. I've added the additional numerals up to 12 in the HORLOGE2 example. Editing it using the type tool will soon show you what the problem is.

Done, thanks for the file, and I take it back, it must be PSP.

But, if you uncheck Warp Text when trying the horloge test, things go faster.

If there's a slight gain I'm not really big improvement. Once I have several layers with Vector text and objects, which is not unusual for my work, the whole job slows down for every property change. Also if you want Warp Text then turning it off doesn't help much.

Unless this is mass hysteria, you've all seen what happens with the Horloge text, there's something wrong with PaintShop Pro's vector engine. It's not good enough for a modern application and I really hope it gets the improvement it deserves.

[hartpaul]

slower..faster... these are person and task dependent terms with little comparitive meaning.
After seeing the continuing complaints I decided to try some tests.
This was done on a Windows XP machine which has the advantage that the fonts can be accessed without installation by just double clicking the font and so long as the window is open (even if minimised ) the font is available fo use in PSP.
Test 1
I opened the psp file and placed the cursor after the III and started a timer and typed in IV V and VI with the spaces between and stoppped the timer.

With Dust West it took 1 min 47 seconds.
Repeated but closed the Dust West font window and reloaded the PSP file and was offered to choose an alternative font and chose Arial.
With Arial it took 29 seconds

Test 2
Does this slow down occur doing text from left to right across a transparent canvas?

What I did -opened a transparent canvas 1000 x 1000 pixels and had finger poised above the "a" key and started a timer, typed aaaaaaaaaaaaa and then the enter key to drop a line and repeated til the screen was filled with lines of "aaaaaaaaaaa"s and then stopped the timer. I then calculated the number of "a"s typed in 10 seconds.

Dust West 20 per 10 sec
Arial 40 per 10 sec

I noticed that with Dust West as I reached about the third row that the letter did not appear immediately and there were increasing delays such that by the time I reached the 5 th row I could type 10 letters without seeing them until about 1 second after I completed them.
So is it PSP or is it a problem with PSP and that particular font. I have not tested other fonts, and will leave it up to others to carry out other tests. If it occurs with only Dust West, then it is not a PSP problem, but a problem / feature of PSP/Dust West.

[Jean-Luc]

I noticed that with Dust West as I reached about the third row that the letter did not appear immediately and there were increasing delays such that by the time I reached the 5 th row I could type 10 letters without seeing them until about 1 second after I completed them.
So is it PSP or is it a problem with PSP and that particular font. I have not tested other fonts, and will leave it up to others to carry out other tests. If it occurs with only Dust West, then it is not a PSP problem, but a problem / feature of PSP/Dust West.

On the French group, we have made many testing about this feature.
Someone observed that Warp text was set by default.
Warp text enabled is slowing down the process. Unchecked was very faster.

But... as you well observed, time processing varies also between different fonts. Arial is faster and some "exotic" fonts are slower.

It is also possble that the rendering engine of PSP is the culprit. It would be interesting to do the same test with CorelDraw.

[Romag]

If it occurs with only Dust West, then it is not a PSP problem, but a problem / feature of PSP/Dust West.

When I reported the problem originally, I wasn't even using Dust West as I didn't have it installed. The problem occurs with lots of different typefaces that aren't Dust West in PSP, even with something as mundane as Impact (a default font included in Windows) if enough text or layers are used. It also occurs when the number of vector objects increases.

It would be interesting to do the same test with CorelDraw.

Yes it would. I don't currently have CorelDraw installed, but I suppose I could download the latest trial version and give it a go. I did just try it in Adobe Illustrator and had zero difficulties switching between fonts, typing at speed and changing line weights.

Edit: I just did a bit of testing with CorelDraw graphics suite X7 and Adobe Illustrator CC. Dust West is a particularly challenging font for either program to render and alter quickly, probably because it is a messy mass of vector nodes. However, a reminder before someone says "oh it's just the font that's the problem" I already noticed the slow down problem in PaintShop Pro when was using normal fonts such as Impact, Helvetica, Cooper Black & Times New Roman as well as on images with no fonts whatsoever that were using vector objects I'd drawn myself.

[JoeB]

When I reported the problem originally, I wasn't even using Dust West as I didn't have it installed. The problem occurs with lots of different typefaces that aren't Dust West in PSP, even with something as mundane as Impact (a default font included in Windows) if enough text or layers are used.

Could you please do what hartpaul has done and provide a bit more specificity? Use the Arial font, which for hartpaul doesn't cause issues. And then please tell us what you mean by "...if enough text or layers are used." It is impossible for others to test using your conditions without knowing the details of those conditions.

Also, use the Dust West font under the same conditions that hartpaul used it and let us know how your results compared to hartpaul's. Then use it under what you would consider your usual conditions and report the details of those conditions and the results of how long it took.

[Romag]

When I reported the problem originally, I wasn't even using Dust West as I didn't have it installed. The problem occurs with lots of different typefaces that aren't Dust West in PSP, even with something as mundane as Impact (a default font included in Windows) if enough text or layers are used.

Could you please do what hartpaul has done and provide a bit more specificity? Use the Arial font, which for hartpaul doesn't cause issues. And then please tell us what you mean by "...if enough text or layers are used." It is impossible for others to test using your conditions without knowing the details of those conditions.

Also, use the Dust West font under the same conditions that hartpaul used it and let us know how your results compared to hartpaul's. Then use it under what you would consider your usual conditions and report the details of those conditions and the results of how long it took.

I just tested Arial under the same example, HORLOGE2 where I changed the font to Arial, and it causes the same problems - the busy cursor appears often when changing the properties. It's repeatable.

I also encountered a related error in running X7 in Windows 10 (current build) when trying to edit the properties of the text. When I click OK it comes up with the error message "Enter no more than 255 characters.".

[Jean-Luc]

I just tested Arial under the same example, HORLOGE2 where I changed the font to Arial,

I don't see the Arial font on your screen capture...

[Romag]

I just tested Arial under the same example, HORLOGE2 where I changed the font to Arial,

I don't see the Arial font on your screen capture...

No, that particular error was screen capped when I was using Dust West. I replicated the error using Arial as well.

[JoeB]

I just tested Arial under the same example, HORLOGE2 where I changed the font to Arial,

I don't see the Arial font on your screen capture...

No, that particular error was screen capped when I was using Dust West. I replicated the error using Arial as well.

Well, unless I'm missing something, if you're doing this under the same conditions as the others are and they aren't having the issue but your are then it can't simply be only something to do with PSP.

[Romag]

Well, unless I'm missing something, if you're doing this under the same conditions as the others are and they aren't having the issue but your are then it can't simply be only something to do with PSP.

Yes, you are missing something. The screen cap shows a bug that also happened while I was doing other testing - a bug with the vector property window in PSP X7 64bit running under Windows 10 64bit, it's not the main problem so you can ignore it. It was just an odd bug I thought worth mentioning here rather than starting another thread.

I appreciate all the efforts to help, especially from those trying to do so in another language. Perhaps I am not making myself clear enough. I will try to explain...

At a certain point of complexity in an image, changes made in the vector/text properties window become slow with the busy cursor appearing for increasingly longer periods when making changes to the values. The HORLOGE2 file is a good example of this, regardless of which font you use. Obviously Dust West is a very complex font which causes a longer delay than Arial, though the problem will manifest itself to a lesser degree even with Arial.

I have been able to repeat the problem on 4 machines (3 desktops that are all top end intel i7s and 1 laptop a core2 duo), under 3 operating systems (Windows 7, 8.1 & 10, all 64bit). I have also tested it on Virtual Machines (WMWare) to simulate all manner of hardware configurations such as altering RAM, drive space and CPU capability. PSP X7 will run on a wide variety of hardware, but PSP X7 will always start to slow down on the vector/text dialog box once the image becomes modestly complex. As the complexity increases, the delay in operation increases.

If anyone has misunderstood what I have wrote, tell me what you part don't understand and I will try to explain it better.

[hartpaul]

To add to my previous results, have now tested with Win 7 and Win 8.1
Win 7 using 64 bit version of PSP X6
Test 1 (clockface) Arial 20 sec, Dust West 69 seconds
Test 2 lines of "aaaaaa"s Arial 42 per 10 sec, Dust West 30 per sec, Batavia 45 / Sec


Win 8.1 using 64 bit version of PSP X6
Test 1 Arial 20 sec, Dust West 1.31
Test 2 Arial 37 per 10 sec, Dust West 22 per 10 sec.

Now I do not do these clock faces and I wonder if the poster is doing this every day or is this just a particular case. I doubt that Corel will spend time investigating and trying to solve this problem if it only affects less than .1% of its clients. If I was doing the clock faces on a regular basis and needed to always use Dust West then i would be looking for a different vector text operating program.
You can use a hammer to drive home nails, but a nail gun will do it much faster. The advantage of a hammer is that you can also us it to remove nails.
PSP is the hammer a better program is the nail gun. Use the tool that suits your requirement.

[Romag]

Hartpaul, you're barking up the wrong tree.

Add a Stroke and alter the width using the Properties dialog box on 2nd example of the clock face. Then you should see what I mean.

Step by step.
1. Load horloge2
2. on the Layers panel expand out the objects
3. still on the layers panel, left click the text sublayer (called "I II III IV V..." etc)
4. while still hovering over that sublayer, right click and select properties
5. in the Vector property window that opens, tick the check box to add a stroke
6. increase the stroke width by clicking the up arrow one click at a time and keep doing it
7. You can do it with whichever font you like

[hartpaul]

Woof!! Woof!!

Followed your directions to change the stroke and fill colors and also the size of the stroke
With XP about a 1 second delay in changing colors, changing size of stroke, no delay.

With Win 7 about a 5 second delay in changing color and no delay in changing size.
Nothing really to complain about as how often are you likely to change color ?

Thse delays were also present in some of the effects like drop shadows where each time you incremented a value it then had to re draw the image and you would have to wait 5 seconds for each nudge.
Similarly in the skin softening tool Adjust > Skin Softening, a couple of moves of a value there would result with a 5- 10 second delay depending on the size of the image.
So yes there are delays in some of the changes but nothing inordinate for the amount of times they are used.

[Romag]

OK, thanks for testing that and being meticulous about documenting the times. I appreciate it.

For some of my tasks it gets progressively worse. The Clock face is a fairly simple object (thanks to Jean-Luc, or whoever came up with it first). My work might feature a number of vector text objects on several layers so once you start tweaking things over and over the delays start to get really tedious.

Delays get even bigger, although I try to take them all in one hit, if I've grouped several vector text objects together so that I can change the properties of the group and it apply to the all the parts. The problem is some things need a lot of slight incremental tweaking, so getting the busy cursor often enough causes the job to slow down to a crawl.

If someone is going to overlay a photo with a bit of text, it won't bug them. But if someone is going to create a poster or get even more creative, then PaintShop Pro starts to show its age. I love how quick I can do everything else in the program, learning how to use another program as well as I know PSP just to get faster text and vector objects is something I'd rather not have to do.