Using raster layer for sharpening in PSP?

[gbotes]

I watched a Youtube tutorial by Chris Oneil about using raster layers for cloning and sharpening in Paint Shop Pro. The cloning worked well but for some reason I could not get PSP x8 to do sharpening in a raster layer. Has anybody tried it? If so, does it work, or am I encountering another bug?

[LeviFiction]

Can you post a link?

[gbotes]

Yes - here it is: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lhl18dy7g34

[LeviFiction]

EDIT: I'm gonna start this reply again.

I do not think this is a bug. I'm not convinced he's actually sharpening the image.

He has the Opacity of that brush set to 100. With those brushes the opacity is the strength of the effect. Also it's not an effect that builds up over time like the air brush. It doesn't build up the more you drag over it with a single click. It builds up with each successive click. So after 2 or three clicks the sharpening should have been greatly pronounced. After the first time, no it wouldn't show up all that much. But two or three clicks would have been sharpening on top of sharpening. And he clicked twice around both the eye and ear with little to no change at all. At least none that was visible in the video. And those were already high contrast areas with the hair and shadows. It should have been easier to see if he was actually sharpening like he claimed.

So, no, I do not believe this is a bug. If you want to see the sharpen tool make use of "Use all layers" you need something on that layer to sharpen. It will then grab colors from the transparent areas where the layers leak through and pump up the contrast between them. It may not be the expected result but I don't think this is a bug.

But someone will have to test in an earlier version to prove otherwise. I no longer have anything earlier than X8 on my system.

[gbotes]

Thanks, LeviFiction. I appreciate your effort and feedback. I did also contact Corel, and they suggested that I delete all the temp files from my system, reset the workspace preferences and delete the cache files. I have done so and found that some PSP X8 tools do indeed have an effect on a blank raster layer. The one that seems as if it could be most useful was Soften. With regard to Sharpen, your view is similar to my experience - I could not produce any significant effect.

[hartpaul]

Further info on that sharpen:
in that group of tools there is a Soften brush and below it the Sharpen brush.
What I did.
1. load an image
2. New transparent raster layer and active.
3. Selected soften brush and Use all layers
4. Applied the brush and then turned of the background
You will see the softened area now cloned to the previous transparent raster layer.

If you repeat that with the Sharpen brush below on a new transparent raster layer you do not get that cloned section with the effect.
However go back to the soften brush and instead right click and drag and you do get a sharpened cloned bit on the transparent layer.
So for the Soften brush -- left click to soften and right click to sharpen does what teh video is purported to show.

Use the Sharpen brush and - left click drag to sharpen and right click drag to soften but this only works on a layer with pixels present and not on a transparent layer.

So you can argue whether this is a bug with that Sharpen brush or a different feature like the Flip global and Flip local which do the same but different

[trueblue]

After you have cloned on a transparent raster layer, that layer should remain active whilst you use sharpen. I did it and it worked perfectly. It does not affect the original image.

[gbotes]

Only smudge, push and emboss work for me on a transparent raster layer in PSP X8 64-bit. Zooming in to 100% shows no difference with sharpen or soften. Hmm... strange.