Ideas for a "wow" feature?

[Nev]

Hi there,

I would like to thank the forum members who took time to chat with us over Skype about tool improvements for PSP in the past few weeks.

Here's another question. Do you have any ideas of that one "wow" feature that's cool and userful you would like to see for PSP X10? Perhaps, a feature that PS, LR, or Serif Photo has that you would like tailored for PSP?

Thanks,
nev

[Cassel]

Raster to Vector conversion would be my WOW feature.

But if i can dream, how about a "unblur" feature: a way for the program to mathematically calculate a blur "direction" and amplitude and find out where each pixels SHOULD be.
Yeah, every photographer would love that, i think.

[LeviFiction]

All of these would hold equal "wow" factors for me. So pick whatever you think would be of the biggest value.

1) Direct channels manipulation built into the layers palette, let's you see the individual channels and direct filters to them. Channels can be in RGB, CMYK, HSL, and HSV. Also be able to use Alpha channels. And view masks directly on the image instead of just using the ruby-lithe edit mode to see it.

2) Layer alignment functions, lets you select multiple layers and try to auto-rotate and translate and scale to make them match.

3) Smart Object options - let us apply multiple effects to a layer non-destructively. Even better if we can do this on rasters and vectors equally.

4) Cage warp - much more targeted distortion and warping using self-set points.

5) The ability to sample and map any color from the image directly into the curves tools. Right now we can only sample white, black, and grey points which is nice. But I want to be able to click on a color in the image and have a node setup on the R, G, and B channels representing that color for targeted adjustment.

6) Direct access to image data from scripts, as well as the ability to perform actions on image data from a script and have the result returned the script avoiding the UI. This will speedup certain processes, by avoiding UI redraws for every function, and gives us a lot more power to develop filters for PSP.

7) Preview window for the arithmetic command?

8 ) Proper SVG support

9) Vector Tracing (converting images into vector shapes)

10) Fixing as many of the years worth of long-standing bugs in the program as possible

[Kathy_9]

Puppet Warp (PS)

[Cassel]

Puppet Warp (PS)

That too!
Although i think warping to fit a vector shape would also be great. I think that all the warping tools could be improved to add major new functionalities.

[brucet]

WOW?
How about no new gimmicks and simply working on fixing existing issues?
No. I'm not joking. Many users simply want a 'good/better' editor that works across many platforms.

The 'best' car in the world is only a pile of plastic and metal if it keeps breaking down.

Corel should spend time, and money, on better reliability and better PR. Reading these forum should give any competent engineer a long list of projects that would make them an over night hero if they were to fixed them.

And that's all I have to say about that!

[JoeB]

And to add to (or perhaps clarify further?) @brucet's comment, I would suggest that they don't mean just fixing various bugs but mean re-introducing some of the small features that worked - and that people still want back - in previous versions. For example, lots of people seem to stick with v.X2 because there were some actions they could perform more efficiently in that version that are no longer available. In future, if Corel wants to provide what they think are "improved" features, at least provide the option to revert that feature back to the way it worked in previous versions for those who find that the previous version's action works better with their particular workflow.

[Jean-Luc]

A "WOW" feature could be a "visual wow".
Suggestion : a tool like the Particle brush (Photoshop) :
http://wegraphics.net/blog/tutorials/cr ... photoshop/

The tool could be inspired by the Scratch Remover tool.
Actually, it takes some pixels from the tool borders and mix them in the central area.
The derived tool could draw a rectangle divided in two areas (origin and target).
Both areas should be adustable (for example 1/3 top - 2/3 bottom).
On my screen capture, the rectangle is divided in equal parts.
Some "particles" (size and form to be selected) are copied and deleted from the top area and placed in the bottom area.

[Joelle]

WOW?
How about no new gimmicks and simply working on fixing existing issues?
No. I'm not joking. Many users simply want a 'good/better' editor that works across many platforms.

The 'best' car in the world is only a pile of plastic and metal if it keeps breaking down.

Corel should spend time, and money, on better reliability and better PR. Reading these forum should give any competent engineer a long list of projects that would make them an over night hero if they were to fixed them.

And that's all I have to say about that!

-

X 2!
PSP has many good features that could be a lot better, as in other, similarly priced software.
with every new version there is more clicking to get the same things that used to be one click previously.
Bring back the sampling from an open image in Curves Adjustment for a start.
Get the Text tool to work as well as it does in Xara.
Get the Magic Fill to fill properly, it only works on very small and 'easy' areas. etc. etc.

Joëlle

[df]

How about supporting multi layer tiff. Seriously you've probably passed up a lot of customers over this one. When your competition went to a subscription based service many users asked each other what format they should save their work in and still be able to edit what they need in other programs. The resounding answer was multi layer tiffs, and to only look for alternative programs that support that.

In the competition's program you can set a vanishing point with a single click. To replicate that you'd need to do a lot of manipulating.

If you want WOW you could add a sky replacement feature.

If you want WOW figure out how to make 32 bit plug-ins work in the 64 bit program. I'd think you could export image to a 32 bit external program, run the plug-in, return the image, but do it seamlessly. After all that's what it appears to be happening now, image exports to the plug-in then gets returned when you're done.

Thanks for asking the question.

[Rick_R]

1) SAVE A GROUP OF ADJUSTMENTS AS A USER-DEFINED "EFFECT".

2) HAVE SOMEPLACE WHERE USERS CAN UPLOAD AND DOWNLOAD THOSE EFFECTS, TO SHARE.

3) THE USER CAN CHANGE CERTAIN ASPECTS OF AN EFFECT.

Check out the Effects Gallery feature of Smart Photo Editor from Anthropics.

(By the way, the Studio version does work as a PSP plugin although Anthropics doesn't officially support it. However, it only affects the topmost layer.)

[Joelle]

A 'user defined effect' is a script, which can easily be saved.

F3, highlight the steps you have done>Save to Script. Save in Scripts-Restricted. Easy peasy, I have lots of those

As for uploading.. here?
Corel had newsgroups, a large part of which were dedicated to PSP. Users could upload and share.
the groups have now been discontinued.
Although they're still there.
Very Corel-esque!


Joëlle

[Radim]

Mesh grid tool like Photoshop has.
So we can freely play with any object - deformation/transformation. For now it is very limited.

[ehume]

For WOW! features:

1. Dehaze (already present in many software packages)(the dehaze filters in your plugins are not the best; you could go with several).
2. Separate White adjustment (already present in many software packages), with adjustable sense of what "White" is (already present in only a few image editors; the ones I have seen work only in raw, but that is not necessary).
3. Polarizer - gives the same effect as a polarizing filter (already present in many software packages).
4. Improve selection of complicated objects. When I want an object that has holes in it -- you can see the background in the interstices -- I want to be able to select the object and leave the background behind. As you can see in this 50% reduction, the gazebo presents a difficult selection target:

In attempting to capture the admittedly in-shadow rear latticework, I inadvertently captured some sky:

So: either improve the Selection Brush or otherwise make it easy to copy complicated selections like this.
(You can't imagine how I used to pore over the images of computer fans and like hardware, expanding them so I could select the interstices for a flood fill of white.)

[CHoffman]

Well, you could always fix the color management conversion for printing wide color gamut images. Or, if you think it's not broken, prove it with a demo.

I've never used a healing tool, but it sounds like something useful.