Performance: How can PSP improve?

[DaveQ]

I agree ... with Bruce where the desktop icon has to be clicked 2 or 3 times in my case for PSP to start loading.

Are you sure that's PSP's fault? I'm the main person who maintains my employer's computers, about 15 2010-era Dells dual-core Pentiums running Win 7 32-bit with 3GB RAM, and a Dell server running Windows Server 2008 Standard (not R2). I often find that double-clicking icons does not start programs and I wind up right-clicking and selecting Open. We have many different brands and models of computer mice, so that definitely isn't the problem.

PSP is the only program on any of my laptops (Acer, Lenovo, Asus and Toshiba) where the icon has to either be clicked 2 or 3 times with intervals in between, or double-clicked.

[LeviFiction]

I can always open PSP with a double-click just like every other program. The only times I can't is immediately after closing PSP. PSP does not automatically unload after closing, it takes a few seconds and because PSP can't have multiple instances open it stops you from opening a new instance until the original has been unloaded. But at all other times, it's just a double-click for me. No more.

[Ken Berry]

I have my mouse set to single click execute, and this works with PSP -- except in the same circumstance as outlined by LeviFiction. In that case I call up Task Manager to close the previous version residual files, and after that the single click again works fine to reopen the program.

[Jan Shim]

I confirm...
I add : I run a laptop Intel i7 2.50Ghz, 16 Go RAM and SSD 1To. When using the Brush or Eraser or Pen tool, there is a very long "lag" between the applying and the rendering on screen (too many seconds). When using the brush for drawing hair or many lines, I must wait before to see what I have done. It should be almost instantly.

Occasionally I encounter the lag you described and the following step has always worked for me.

File | Preferences | Reset Preferences | Check "Delete all cache files. (Active caches rebuilt on restart)."

Hope it works for you too.

[Jan Shim]

I can always open PSP with a double-click just like every other program. The only times I can't is immediately after closing PSP. PSP does not automatically unload after closing, it takes a few seconds and because PSP can't have multiple instances open it stops you from opening a new instance until the original has been unloaded. But at all other times, it's just a double-click for me. No more.

It takes exactly 10 seconds for the Corel PaintShop Pro.exe process to unload from Windows Task Manager. Why the program was coded for this delay only the developers know. Photoshop takes less than 2 secs while DxO Optics Pro takes 1 sec to unload.

[Jean-Luc]

Occasionally I encounter the lag you described and the following step has always worked for me.

File | Preferences | Reset Preferences | Check "Delete all cache files. (Active caches rebuilt on restart)."

Hope it works for you too.

No difference...
But I observed the lag is not "active" every time. So, I'll make some testing to discover when it appears... I think with layers and more than 500 pixels brush or tool... But I need to confirm...

[Jan Shim]

Increasing or letting users customize the size of the scroll bars would be an instant 'efficiency' improvement. They are too small on my 27-inch 2560x1440 screen and I spend a fair bit of time and effort having to carefully place the mouse cursor to navigate across an image in between zooming in and out for close-up work.

[Nev]

The last two or three versions have a small but annoying fault which we have reported in consecutive beta testing, but it has not been corrected. On first opening PSP and clicking on a menu, the drop-down appears, but it takes a couple of seconds for the menu items to actually appear. After that first time, the drop downs appear immediately. As I say, only a small fault, but enough to annoy quite a few of us.

Thanks Ken. We're looking into this right now.

Best,
nev

[Nev]

In addition to what Ken Berry said, even worse in the speed department is that when you have a lot of plugins (mine spill over into Plugins 2) it takes a very long time for them to show up under the Effects menu. On my older machine it can take two minutes or more before I can access plugins, while other tasks are available much faster.

Thanks JoeB.

Anybody else experience long lag to access plugins as well? If so, how many plugins do you have and what kind of lag time?

Best,
nev

[Nev]

Would love to see scripts run faster.

Thanks csh2000.

Any details you can provide me would be great. Also, is this a common feeling towards scripts?

Best,
nev

[Cassel]

Any details you can provide me would be great. Also, is this a common feeling towards scripts?

I think the speed of scripts might ALSO depend on the commands used in them. As i have mentioned before, some commands are quite slow to execute.

[Jan Shim]

Would love to see scripts run faster.

Thanks csh2000.

Any details you can provide me would be great. Also, is this a common feeling towards scripts?

Best,
nev

While we're on the subject of script performance, I use Quick Scripts to launch my Nik and Topaz Plugins from a shortcut assigned to various toolbar buttons. Many a time when I change my mind about using that plugin, I hit Cancel and I immediately get a dialog box prompt "Would you like to continue the script?".

Is there any way to suppress the prompt?

[rondo]

If Paintshop Pro wants to be a serious competitor, it needs GPU acceleration. Aftershot has it, no reason not to.

[csh2000]

Thanks csh2000.

Any details you can provide me would be great. Also, is this a common feeling towards scripts?

Best,
nev

Nev, as Cassel pointed out, this may have to do more with the commands and how they operate. However, if there was a way to allow the script to work in the background (i.e. not refresh screens on every command) this would significantly speed the scripts up. For example, by hiding the "marching ants" , I was able to cut speed in half on many of my scripts. Also, if we could pre-compile the scripts prior to running I believe we would save additional time.

[LeviFiction]

One option would be to allow us better backend access. Instead of a script running full commands on the current image, let us grab the pixel data and run commands on the pixel data. Then we can run not only PSP's commands but also make our own. This would handle the background processing issue and give us a lot more power to work things faster.

The easiest option would be to have an option that disables updating the UI as suggested by csh2000. But if you wanted to make it really good, give us backend access.