How would you "simplify" PSP?

[JoeB]

I would like to see psp open .ufo files without merging them. That would simplify it a lot for me because i don't know what to do with my .ufo files left over from PHOTO IMPACT. I hate having a new program that won't open my old files. Why did I spend the money for PSP?

* NOTE: These are the types of situations that cause people to go for cheats/hacks/illegal codes and such. I choose not to participate in such things because software developers should be paid for their work.

If you go back to the original thread you started about opening .ufo images you'll find recent replies that show that PSP does open them with all layers intact.

[JoeB]

Return the Resize dialogue to the one used in X7! I am led to understand that Corel thought that changing that dialogue to the new format where you have to select from 4 radio button options for resizing might be less daunting for new users. My experience from reading forum posts asking how to change resolution and/or how to change pixel size indicates the contrary and that it is actually a frustrating experience requiring more clicks than necessary.

I can't see that it is less daunting for new users given that they now have to go to different UI's to get the same result(s) they used to be able to get from the same single dialogue interface. When all of the options are on one interface the user can see - at a glance - all changes you make and how they might affect other settings. With the new dialogue that is not the case, and they have to change from one view (e.g., print size to change resolution) and then another view (e.g. pixel size) to also change pixel size. And then they (new users particularly) end up wondering if changing the pixel size might have changed the print size because they can't see the effect - if any - on print size without going back to that interface.

I think the KISS principle should be applied here. Get back to the single dialogue with all options available. And there's really no benefit whatsoever to the fourth option of resizing by long or short side! Talk about complicating things for no useful purpose. Sheesh!

[Forriner]

... And there's really no benefit whatsoever to the fourth option of resizing by long or short side! Talk about complicating things for no useful purpose. ...

Not so fast, Joe

I don't have X9, but I have often wished I had that option in PSP. I can see the usefulness of resizing by long or short side: landscape (w×h) 5184×3456 pixels, and portrait (w×h) 3456×5184, plus crops of images, all in the same batch to 5000 longest side.
As a matter of fact it's an option that might make X9 worth the upgrade, but I'll wait until XX is out so X9 will be as stable as it will get. Plus what you described about the "new and improved interface" would indeed make it less valuable.

[hartpaul]

I have used Irfanview for bulk resizing because of its easy interface (once you get used to it). Corel could take a tip and do similar in Corel's style.


Contains all the controls that Corel spreads over 4 dialog windows.

[JoeB]

... And there's really no benefit whatsoever to the fourth option of resizing by long or short side! Talk about complicating things for no useful purpose. ...

Not so fast, Joe

I don't have X9, but I have often wished I had that option in PSP. I can see the usefulness of resizing by long or short side: landscape (w×h) 5184×3456 pixels, and portrait (w×h) 3456×5184, plus crops of images, all in the same batch to 5000 longest side.
As a matter of fact it's an option that might make X9 worth the upgrade, but I'll wait until XX is out so X9 will be as stable as it will get. Plus what you described about the "new and improved interface" would indeed make it less valuable.

Actually I did briefly think it might be useful for batch resizing but given that scripts are already available that do this I didn't bother editing my original post.

[rondo]

Not exactly simplified, but I'd like to see a tablet mode similar to what Corel Painter has, they call it a Simple UI where you get a simplified and optimized UI with larger icons and buttons that can easily be switched back and forth.
With hi-resolution screens on a 12-13" tablet PC, PSP is not only too cluttered the icons, buttons and tools are almost too hard to see, even when scaling is increased.

[Rick_R]

I do a lot of on-line genealogy, which involves downloading images of documents from Ancestry's very extensive records. (And I've uploaded about 1,500 images to Ancestry and have about 1,000 more.)

Although over the years those images and others online have gone from being scanned at around 150 dpi to now routinely 300 dpi and sometimes higher, they routinely are set to display at 72dpi. I routinely wind up resizing them (without resampling) to 300 dpi. I'd like a drop-down resize option with just 72 => 300, 96 =>300, etc. Optionally, the "from" and "to" sizes could be changed in Preferences.

Allow the user to change the color of the "straighten" line and other guidelines. Trying to see a black line against a background such as a census form that has dozens of lines is pretty difficult. It would be a great help to be able to set it to red or some other "standout" color.

Multi-format Save As. Click Multi-format Save and it automatically saves a copy in formats set in Preferences. Load an original, click that and it auto-saves in JPG, PNG, PSPIMAGE, TIFF and any other specified formats, performing any necessary merges without prompts. For JPG you might want to allow a settable compression option, i.e., JPG 20 rather than just JPG. You might also provide that JPG can be selected more than once (e.g., JPG 5 and JPG 20) and something will automatically be added to the name to distinguish (perhaps MYFILE [c5].jpg and MYFILE [c20].jpg).

[Jean-Luc]

Multi-format Save As. Click Multi-format Save and it automatically saves a copy in formats set in Preferences. Load an original, click that and it auto-saves in JPG, PNG, PSPIMAGE, TIFF and any other specified formats, performing any necessary merges without prompts. For JPG you might want to allow a settable compression option, i.e., JPG 20 rather than just JPG. You might also provide that JPG can be selected more than once (e.g., JPG 5 and JPG 20) and something will automatically be added to the name to distinguish (perhaps MYFILE [c5].jpg and MYFILE [c20].jpg).

Very clever ! I vote for.
I'm preparing images for websites. I'm working in pspimage format (retaining layers) but I need to save each image in 3 formats (PNG, GIF and JPG) selecting the best, or more appropriate, after saving. A one step saving could save many time in my workflow.

[Joelle]

.

Allow the user to change the color of the "straighten" line and other guidelines. Trying to see a black line against a background such as a census form that has dozens of lines is pretty difficult. It would be a great help to be able to set it to red or some other "standout" color.
.

The Straighten line 'adapts' to it's background.
If the background is light, the line is dark and the other way around.
If I find it hard to see the line because the background is as you describe, I lower the opacity of the layer.

The grid has a Grid, Guide and Snap Properties setting where you can change the colour. I have set mine to a dark-ish red.

Joëlle

[JoeB]

I do a lot of on-line genealogy, which involves downloading images of documents from Ancestry's very extensive records. (And I've uploaded about 1,500 images to Ancestry and have about 1,000 more.)

Although over the years those images and others online have gone from being scanned at around 150 dpi to now routinely 300 dpi and sometimes higher, they routinely are set to display at 72dpi. I routinely wind up resizing them (without resampling) to 300 dpi. I'd like a drop-down resize option with just 72 => 300, 96 =>300, etc. Optionally, the "from" and "to" sizes could be changed in Preferences.

You can't, and you can.

First, what you can't do is adjust DPI in any graphic software. Neither PSP or any other graphic editor can adjust DPI - that's a function of printer software and therefore no such option exists in the Resize dialogue of PSP. Also, if you look at the Image Information of the images you'll see that this dialogue also does not show DPI but instead shows the PPI setting of that image. However you CAN adjust PPI in the Resize dialogue.

What you can do, if you're looking for a one-click way to resize images to 300PPI without resampling (i.e., with Resample Using unchecked) is record a simple script and bind it to a button. Simply open an image in PSP, hit the Script Recording button, open the Resize dialogue, select the By Print Size button, uncheck Resample Using if it's checked, then change the number in the PPI box to 300 and click OK. Then save your recorded script with a name like Resize to 300PPI, then bind it to a button which you can place on a toolbar. To make sure it runs with one click regardless of the Execution Mode set in the toolbar you can edit the script by changing the Execution Mode shown from Default to Silent. Otherwise, if you don't want the Resize dialogue to pop up just make sure the Execution Mode toggle is set to Silent.

You do not need separate scripts to resize from different original PPI's to 300PPI.

EDIT: Out of curiosity, if the images you routinely download have a resolution of 72PPI (or 96PPI), how do you know at which resolution they were originally scanned (i.e., 150PPI, 300PPI, etc.)? Images are displayed on a monitor in pixels (i.e., an image of 800x600 pixels will take up 800x600 pixels of your monitor). The PPI resolution has no effect on how the image is displayed on a monitor, so not sure what you mean by saying that these images are "routinely set to display at 72DPI" - which should be PPI by the way

[Luxi_Turna]

That's the dumbest idea I've heard that didn't come from Washington, D.C. There's a lot of stuff that PSP doesn't even do that Photoshop does.

Load time doesn't matter. I load it at boot and leave it running (where it is swapped to disk until I need it, then it pops right up). If PSP is too big and powerful for you, use a freeware image editor. When I want to edit naked pix with toy software, I'll use Windows Paint.

[TimW]

That's the dumbest idea I've heard that didn't come from Washington, D.C. There's a lot of stuff that PSP doesn't even do that Photoshop does.

Which previous post are you referring to ??

[Rick_R]

I do a lot of on-line genealogy, which involves downloading images of documents from Ancestry's very extensive records. (And I've uploaded about 1,500 images to Ancestry and have about 1,000 more.)

Although over the years those images and others online have gone from being scanned at around 150 dpi to now routinely 300 dpi and sometimes higher, they routinely are set to display at 72dpi. I routinely wind up resizing them (without resampling) to 300 dpi. I'd like a drop-down resize option with just 72 => 300, 96 =>300, etc. Optionally, the "from" and "to" sizes could be changed in Preferences.

You can't, and you can.

First, what you can't do is adjust DPI in any graphic software. Neither PSP or any other graphic editor can adjust DPI - that's a function of printer software and therefore no such option exists in the Resize dialogue of PSP. Also, if you look at the Image Information of the images you'll see that this dialogue also does not show DPI but instead shows the PPI setting of that image. However you CAN adjust PPI in the Resize dialogue.

What you can do, if you're looking for a one-click way to resize images to 300PPI without resampling (i.e., with Resample Using unchecked) is record a simple script and bind it to a button. Simply open an image in PSP, hit the Script Recording button, open the Resize dialogue, select the By Print Size button, uncheck Resample Using if it's checked, then change the number in the PPI box to 300 and click OK. Then save your recorded script with a name like Resize to 300PPI, then bind it to a button which you can place on a toolbar. To make sure it runs with one click regardless of the Execution Mode set in the toolbar you can edit the script by changing the Execution Mode shown from Default to Silent. Otherwise, if you don't want the Resize dialogue to pop up just make sure the Execution Mode toggle is set to Silent.

You do not need separate scripts to resize from different original PPI's to 300PPI.

EDIT: Out of curiosity, if the images you routinely download have a resolution of 72PPI (or 96PPI), how do you know at which resolution they were originally scanned (i.e., 150PPI, 300PPI, etc.)? Images are displayed on a monitor in pixels (i.e., an image of 800x600 pixels will take up 800x600 pixels of your monitor). The PPI resolution has no effect on how the image is displayed on a monitor, so not sure what you mean by saying that these images are "routinely set to display at 72DPI" - which should be PPI by the way

I abbreviate it dpi but I actually mean pixels per inch.

As I mentioned, those are standard sets on Ancestry--literally tens of billions of pages. Pretty much all the companies that do mass scanning like yearbooks and old newspapers now scan at 300 dpi but resize to 72 dpi. So, for instance, if I download a page from Newspapers.com it will contain information indicating 72 dpi but it was actually scanned at 300 dpi. Everything from them is scanned at that resolution. When I import the image into Acrobat, Acrobat goes crazy because it thinks the page is something like 35x47 inches instead of 8-1/2 x 11 or similar. Most OCR programs won't work on documents larger than a certain physical size.

Although I have recorded scripts, the whole point is I shouldn't have to. Also, PSP doesn't allow custom icons for scripts, and the available icons simply don't make sense for many scripts--so it's in effect "Click the Pizza image if you want to save as JPEG. Click the Helicopter image if you want to save as PNG."

[Rick_R]

.

Allow the user to change the color of the "straighten" line and other guidelines. Trying to see a black line against a background such as a census form that has dozens of lines is pretty difficult. It would be a great help to be able to set it to red or some other "standout" color.
.

The Straighten line 'adapts' to it's background.
If the background is light, the line is dark and the other way around.
If I find it hard to see the line because the background is as you describe, I lower the opacity of the layer.

Straighten_line_colour.jpg

The grid has a Grid, Guide and Snap Properties setting where you can change the colour. I have set mine to a dark-ish red.

Joëlle

I shouldn't have to do gyrations like lowering layer opacity. Most of the images I work with are grayscale, black text on a grayish background, often with many horizontal lines (e.g., census forms). so there is darker, medium, lighter and light throughout the image. That's pretty common on historical documents (bleed-through of ink from neighboring pages, etc.) I don't use grids, since they just get in the way for things like adjusting levels.

[JoeB]

I do a lot of on-line genealogy, which involves downloading images of documents from Ancestry's very extensive records. (And I've uploaded about 1,500 images to Ancestry and have about 1,000 more.)

Although over the years those images and others online have gone from being scanned at around 150 dpi to now routinely 300 dpi and sometimes higher, they routinely are set to display at 72dpi. I routinely wind up resizing them (without resampling) to 300 dpi. I'd like a drop-down resize option with just 72 => 300, 96 =>300, etc. Optionally, the "from" and "to" sizes could be changed in Preferences.

You can't, and you can.

First, what you can't do is adjust DPI in any graphic software. Neither PSP or any other graphic editor can adjust DPI - that's a function of printer software and therefore no such option exists in the Resize dialogue of PSP. Also, if you look at the Image Information of the images you'll see that this dialogue also does not show DPI but instead shows the PPI setting of that image. However you CAN adjust PPI in the Resize dialogue.

What you can do, if you're looking for a one-click way to resize images to 300PPI without resampling (i.e., with Resample Using unchecked) is record a simple script and bind it to a button. Simply open an image in PSP, hit the Script Recording button, open the Resize dialogue, select the By Print Size button, uncheck Resample Using if it's checked, then change the number in the PPI box to 300 and click OK. Then save your recorded script with a name like Resize to 300PPI, then bind it to a button which you can place on a toolbar. To make sure it runs with one click regardless of the Execution Mode set in the toolbar you can edit the script by changing the Execution Mode shown from Default to Silent. Otherwise, if you don't want the Resize dialogue to pop up just make sure the Execution Mode toggle is set to Silent.

You do not need separate scripts to resize from different original PPI's to 300PPI.

EDIT: Out of curiosity, if the images you routinely download have a resolution of 72PPI (or 96PPI), how do you know at which resolution they were originally scanned (i.e., 150PPI, 300PPI, etc.)? Images are displayed on a monitor in pixels (i.e., an image of 800x600 pixels will take up 800x600 pixels of your monitor). The PPI resolution has no effect on how the image is displayed on a monitor, so not sure what you mean by saying that these images are "routinely set to display at 72DPI" - which should be PPI by the way

I abbreviate it dpi but I actually mean pixels per inch.



As I mentioned, those are standard sets on Ancestry--literally tens of billions of pages. Pretty much all the companies that do mass scanning like yearbooks and old newspapers now scan at 300 dpi but resize to 72 dpi. So, for instance, if I download a page from Newspapers.com it will contain information indicating 72 dpi but it was actually scanned at 300 dpi. Everything from them is scanned at that resolution. When I First, DPI isn't an abbreviation of PPI. Both take the same number of characters, and both mean different things. If you mean Pixels Per Inch, then PPI is the correct designation and not DPI. Doesn't take any more typing of characters on your keyboard. Therefore DPI isn't an "abbreviation" of PPI, because it isn't any shorter.
import the image into Acrobat, Acrobat goes crazy because it thinks the page is something like 35x47 inches instead of 8-1/2 x 11 or similar. Most OCR programs won't work on documents larger than a certain physical size.

First, DPI isn't an abbreviation of PPI. Both take the same number of characters, and both mean different things. If you mean Pixels Per Inch, then PPI is the correct abbreviation, and not DPI. DPI is the abbreviation of Dots Per Inch, which is a printer specification and not something over which any graphic editor has any control.

Second, then you are doing it wrong. If you know that the images were scanned at 300PPI (not DPI regardless of what the scanner might say), then all you have to do is open the image in PSP, go to Resize, select "By Print Size", uncheck "Resample Using", then change the PPI (which is all PSP can change so that's why PSP - and all good graphic editors - don't have a DPI setting), and change the resolution from 72PPI to 300PPI. The Height and Width boxes will change accordingly and then it will print at the proper - or at least intended - size.

The only reasons any site would have images that they scenned at 300PPI that download as 72PPI are as follows:

1) The party posting the image reduced the resolution to 72PPI on the mistaken believe that this was needed to post to a website;
2) The website that the poster posted the image to had the same mistaken believe and reduced the print resolution from 300PPI to 72PPI before allowing the posted image to appear.

So you don't need scripts. Just an understanding of the concept. And DPI and PPI are two different concepts. Graphic editors can only change PPI and can't affect DPI because that is only a printer specification set by the printer manufacturer. If you're unsure of the concept about PPI, there is a more in-depth discussion here:

viewtopic.php?f=56&t=61213#p339324