Wish List for PaintShop Pro version X9

[JoeB]

Epi: No. You'd think a graphics application could resize an image to, say half size, without the user having to open also a calculator, but nope. Basics please, Corel, code the basics.

You can resize to a percentage in all previous versions. Are you saying that this was removed in X8?

[JoeB]

For crying out loud! People have asked to be able to customize the icons for bound scripts from the Jasc days! It's a "must have" to make scripts identifiable by their icon. This should be a simple fix for Corel and could likely even be added as part of a patch to V8. So please get with it, Corel!

(Anyone notice the frustration seeping through??)

[spitfrog]

See my video, please
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/892 ... slider.mp4

How to work with such tools? When I want to use eraser or or brush, the increment is from 1 to 63 pixels and next 126 and so on.... why, because you increase the scale value of slider (3000 pixels for X8, it was 2000 for X7 (too much), 1000 for X3 (great), and 500 pour Jasc 9 (good)), the tools are useless now.
What can we do with an eraser or a brush of 3000 pixels ?!!!!!
My wish : a patch for X8 to scale from 1 to 500 pixels for the tools. I think nobody used 3000 pixels brush, this is nonsense!
And slider scale for X9 tools which automatically adjust accordingly to the size of the active image

[Cassel]

(3000 pixels for X8, it was 2000 for X7 (too much), 1000 for X3 (great), and 500 pour Jasc 9 (good)),

It all depends on how you use brushes. Some people will use brushes to paint. In that case, i agree that they likely wont use a 3000 pixels image. However, brushes have often been used as a way to "stamp" a design in color. In that case, for example, a basic scrapbooker would work on a 3600x3600 pixel image and would possibly want a single "stamp" for most of its project. Same for photographers working on very large images and want to do some composites.

It does have its uses, in many cases, even if it is not for everyone.

[hartpaul]

I rarely use that bottom slider for fine adjustments, and see it as a coarse adjustment only.

Use the bottom slider to get to 1/4 1/2 3/4 of the 3000 and then use the up / down arrows to fine tune to what you want.

Although I rarely use those as I can roll the mouse wheel to get the fineness I require.

You can also high light the value and type an exact value in and lastly holding down the Alt key and moving the cursor / brush up or down to quickly change your size.

So that's 5 ways to change the size of the brush: 2 coarse ways and 2 fine ways and an exact way.

[spitfrog]

Hi Miss Cassel and hartpaul

I know the shorcuts, but things was done in PSP 9, are not efficient in PSP X8
For exemple, the slider have the same size (X8 in black, 9 light grey)

slider.jpg (8.69 KiB) Viewed 8542 times

Do you think it's confortable ?

My wish (because it's the topic purpose)
Do a vertical slider !

[hartpaul]

That is still not comfortable nor efficient. It is similar to what Photoshop uses .
Move your cursor to the slider bar and guess what size you will need for your brush, move to the part of your image / diagram and find that it is too big or too small, back to the slider and nudge it a bit , back to the image and repeat if necessary.

I am increasingly placing the cursor in position on the diagram / image and holding down the Alt key and dragging the brush up to decrease the size and down to increase the size. This is far more efficient than using that slider. If I need finer control then click once in the size box and then back to image roll the mouse wheel.

To compare these slider values in PSP7 (way back about 2003 when the largest photo images were about 3000 pixels on the longest side ) to PSP X8 when we have 50 Mp images that are 8700 pixels on the longest side is not so important.
The larger brush size is needed but rather than worrying about the size of your slider we should be more concerned about the speed of processing these larger images as well as the maximum size allowed by the programs .

[JoeB]

There are only 2 things which come to mind that Photoshop has that are still missing in PSP and that I think are worth having.

The first and most important of the two for me would be Content Aware Scaling/Resizing, which admittedly works best with outdoor landscape type images where there is lots of open space in the form of sky, grass, sand, trees, etc. but which is a great tool for achieving resizing that creates a different perspective or impact in some circumstance because of how easy it is to resize the landscape without resizing important elements like people, buildings, animals, etc.

The second (and less important IMHO because there are plenty of available software options that do it) is panorama stitching. This also becomes less important as more and more modern digital cameras include panorama features in the camera software.

[spitfrog]

To compare these slider values in PSP7 (way back about 2003 when the largest photo images were about 3000 pixels on the longest side ) to PSP X8 when we have 50 Mp images that are 8700 pixels on the longest side is not so important. The larger brush size is needed but rather than worrying about the size of your slider we should be more concerned about the speed of processing these larger images as well as the maximum size allowed by the programs .

You just care about yourself hartpaul, there are more people who don't use shorcuts than people who handle images of 50MB. But, you're right, Alt+ up/down is more accurate if you use shortcuts. There are many situations in which the other hand is not available (call, write by hand, smoking ciga rette, support his head, se gratter le cul, and many more ...)

[Joelle]

There are only 2 things which come to mind that Photoshop has that are still missing in PSP and that I think are worth having.

The first and most important of the two for me would be Content Aware Scaling/Resizing, which admittedly works best with outdoor landscape type images where there is lots of open space in the form of sky, grass, sand, trees, etc. but which is a great tool for achieving resizing that creates a different perspective or impact in some circumstance because of how easy it is to resize the landscape without resizing important elements like people, buildings, animals, etc.

The second (and less important IMHO because there are plenty of available software options that do it) is panorama stitching. This also becomes less important as more and more modern digital cameras include panorama features in the camera software.

You can cheat and use the Makeover Tool>Thinify as a kind of content aware re-scaling. I have used it when flowers were too far apart for a good composition. It's a bit hit&miss though

Panorama stitching has been asked for many times before, but with programs like ICE, which seems excellent from what I have seen in the Photography newsgroup, why would Corel want to risk messing up PSP by adding panorama stitching.
(You know the expression: add one thing, break two .. )
But who knows, it might appear in version XX!

Joëlle

[LeviFiction]

Technically the "Smart Carver" is what you would use for content-aware scaling. It's meant to intelligently decide what the most important areas of the image are and maintain those during the scale. You can also define those areas manually. But you then enter in the new width and height inside the dialog and it resizes it can stretch or compress the image maintaining the details to a degree.

[JoeB]

Technically the "Smart Carver" is what you would use for content-aware scaling. It's meant to intelligently decide what the most important areas of the image are and maintain those during the scale. You can also define those areas manually. But you then enter in the new width and height inside the dialog and it resizes it can stretch or compress the image maintaining the details to a degree.

Thanks for the info! It's a feature I didn't know existed in PSP but apparently has been there for some time. Will have to experiment and see how it compares to Photoshop's seam carving tool. I do like the feature in PSP having remove and preserve brushes, which is more convenient than Photoshop's feature where you have to actually save selections/masks prior to having it start the resizing, which is somewhat more cumbersome.

Do you know if they have upgraded the feature since it was first introduced in X3?

[JoeB]

You can cheat and use the Makeover Tool>Thinify as a kind of content aware re-scaling. I have used it when flowers were too far apart for a good composition. It's a bit hit&miss though

Panorama stitching has been asked for many times before, but with programs like ICE, which seems excellent from what I have seen in the Photography newsgroup, why would Corel want to risk messing up PSP by adding panorama stitching.
(You know the expression: add one thing, break two .. )
But who knows, it might appear in version XX!

Joëlle

I have now downloaded ICE v.2 so that takes care of that issue. Apparently - if some comments are to be believed - it works better and faster than Photoshop's stitcher and than others on the market - and it's free.

And LeviFiction has just pointed out to me that PSP has a Smart Carver, which seems to be a content aware resizing tool, and apparently it was introduced in X3. I'll have to compare it for quality of output and speed compared to Photoshop's tool, but a quick glance shows that it has quick masking brushes that I don't see in the Photoshop seam carving tool so that's a plus.

[Joelle]

The Smart Carver and moi have never become friends

If I want to use proper a Content Aware utility, I use a different program, or as I said, sometimes the Thinify utility

Have fun with the panorama stitching

Joëlle

[JoeB]

The Smart Carver and moi have never become friends

If I want to use proper a Content Aware utility, I use a different program, or as I said, sometimes the Thinify utility

Have fun with the panorama stitching

Joëlle

Haven't really had time to do more than one quicky test of Smart Carver. I did read one review of X3 (when it was introduced) that pointed out the ways in which Photoshop's tool was much better than that in X3 and will have to do a comparison to see if those differences still exist. In the meantime, what tool besides Thinify cheating would you use? And, out of curiosity, why did you have a problem forming a friendly relationship with Smart Carver?