Is the PSP Community dead?

[Dabble Do]

I have recently returned to using PSP after years of not using it. PSP 9 was last version I used and wrote tutorials for. Back then there were a lot of 3rd party sites, but now it seems they are all dead, or still living but with very old tutorials. It seems Corel is the only source now, and the User numbers do not seem that high in comparison to days gone. Point blank, would I be wasting my time creating tutorials for PSP 2018? Are there still forums out there, or is this Corel forum it now? Thanks for any guidance or advice you can provide.

[Cassel]

Can you point to specific communities that you were looking for?

[LeviFiction]

Other communities do still exist. Though not being a member of them I can't tell you how active they are. Personally personal websites have been replaced by blogs or gallery/store type sites and so would probably appear to have less to do with PSP than with the person who is using PSP. I have found the number of video tutorials have gone up on Youtube and such like that. And with Corel stepping up their game we often see users recommending Corel's own tutorials for tools over third-party users because of the quality and simplicity of their tutorials.

Would you be wasting you time creating tutorials? That depends, what sort of interaction would you consider to be worth your time? I don't mean that in a negative judgy way. I'm just saying how you spend your time and whether or not you feel like your time was well spent is individual to you. I never make tutorials for more than one person. For me I'm personally trying to convey a single simple concept to one person and one person only. If others find it helpful, great. If no one finds it helpful then I work on it and try to do better the next time. ;D But if you're aim is specifically to help and teach as many people as possible and only 5 people are commenting or even viewing it you may not find it worth your time. And it'll also depend on venue. If people want your tutorials but have trouble finding them you may not find it worth your time. I don't know if a forum these days is where most people find their information on PSP. Or if they just do Youtube and web searches and Corel's Discovery Center is their main go to as it's near the top of all lists.

[brucet]

Tutorials for PSP? Heck yeah. PSP is arguably one of the 'biggest/best/more popular' editors after Adobes PS. But PS has the huge following due in a large part to all the tutorials available. In print and on the web.

But. And there's always a but. But where to start and what to concentrate on? And how do you get them to a point where they are well known? Another argument is that tutorials are something that Corel themselves should be doing. That fact that Corel is asleep at the helm is a whole nuther story. (Look at the great job Topaz does with their tutorials).

My 2 cents worth of opinion is to create a few 'basic/how to' tutorials. (A UI tutorial would be a great place to start). Post them here on these forums and somewhere like Retouching on the DPreview forums. Sit back and see what the reaction is.

Great programs such as PSP and Photoline simply aren't as popular as Adobe products basically because of the available help out in the market place. Anyone can buy a Adobe product and find a tutorial. The sad thing is that the Adobe machine rolls on not because it's the 'best' but because of the help available. Someone has to do the hard yards to change that fact.

Good luck.

regards

[hartpaul]

Just did a check on videos available on Paintshop Pro tools and there are a lot but in many different qualities.
If you were going to do an up to date sets of videos and tutorials, first you would have to choose a stable , bug free modern version of PSP ( yeah I am still looking for Santa Clause and teh Easter Bunny).
It would then depend on the types of tutorials you intend to do - explanatory videos of the tools and extra features of PSP or complex tutorials showing the combinations of many tools to create a given result.
There is room for both. When doing the video tutorials it would also be good to have link to text tutorial on a website as well for those that have trouble in following tutorials.

Beginners want short clearly explained tutorials on how to use each of the tools - the videos should have a zoom function showing clearly where the tool is as well as good strong voice control for clear listening. It should be relatively short as finding time to look and listen to an hour long video tutorial is both inefficient and probably overkill.

I looked at some of the videos on youtube in relation to the selection tools and also compared to one video on Photoshop.

01) Naturally Timeless Photography Selection Tools Video 1 of 5 3.32 no zoom

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GwEvjH1VHPI

Voice was clear and it used PSP 2018

02) Levifiction Paint Shop Pro Basics 16) - Freehand Selection 5.06 Zoom part of 62 video files

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ihWIX3Ifbe8

Voice clear and with the zoom you could really see what was being done, great teaching videos, but relating to older versions of PSP I think X2 up to number 29 and then X3 up to video 62
Other videos also use later versions of PSP

03) CorelDiscovery Centre different selection tools 16.28 no zoom

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=joJfdVu7ddM

Sometimes a bit difficult to hear the voice but mostly good and using later versions , this one X9

04) Corel PaintShop Pro More accurate selections in PaintShop Pro X8 1.32 Zoom

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DcNmNXi391I

Earlier version of the Discovery center, clearer voice but using a zoom in to show what is being done.

Photoshop CS5

05) BYU Software Training - 9 selection tools in Photoshop 4.53 includes zoom

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=14Jj-nGubf0

I found this interesting in the alternative way of placing the tools and having alternatives. Compared to this PSP comes off very well in its choice of selection tools and their controls.

[rondo]

Here are a few sites I'd bookmarked- not many up to date but still some useful stuff.

http://www.khiba.com/PSP/index.htm

http://www.pspug.org/tut/tutmain.shtml

http://www.the-graphics-tablet.com/pain ... asics.html

http://designertoday.com/Tutorials/Paint.Shop.Pro.aspx

http://psptricksandtips.blogspot.com.au/

http://web.comhem.se/elizabethcreations ... als22.html

And there is an interesting private group on Facebook that does some really creative stuff- https://www.facebook.com/groups/9839808 ... et&fref=nf

[Zantara]

The Dutch and Flemish PSP community is still very active.
However, each time I check the links to my PSP friends, there is another tutorial site or forum gone.
It's not a money issue. Lots of people use free website hosting and still write their site in html. Even the up-to-date ones, of which there are very few.
It's because maintaining a website and writing tutorials is such a time consuming business and people don't seem te have that time anymore.
The members on my forum are either 65+ or not working for health reasons. But they have been part of the PSP community for many, many years and been there, done that.
You have to offer more than a creative tutorial these days. You have to be different.

Users also got discouraged when the first trouble with plugins started with PSP X6. Most creative tutorials use lots of plugin effects and if you can't recreate the original effect, people won't try to find an alternative. Also there were a few very popular paid plugins that were used by most writers. They were shared with the community using cracks, serial codes etc. Plugin makers such as Alien Skin have protected their plugins better, so sharing is not an option anymore. That stopped a lot of tutorials from being interesting.

There used to be a very strong international community of tutorial writers. Unfortunately there has always been a lot of jealousy in the PSP world. Writers stealing complete tutorials, bandwith-issues, hotlinking etc. The writers community fell apart and it appeared to have a domino effect. Sites shut down and may of the forums as well, because they existed by linking to tutorial sites or materials.

This is a changing society and people simply don't have the time to sit down and spend hours on writing or video-ing a (creative) tutorials.
And yet...there is still a very active community here, with people buying the latest versions.

[jjangfree]

googling with "paint shop pro inner bevel site:blogspot.com" gives some results.

Only a few alives in my bookmark.
http://www.pinoy7.com/psptutorials/phot ... tion.shtml
http://www.asdwebdesigns.nl
https://www.deviantart.com/?qh=&section ... offset=144
http://www.pspbuddies.com/pspTutor/
http://dizz.com/tuts/index.htm
googling "paint shop pro tutorial site:dpchallenge.com"
http://www.lismibaebi.com/Links/LinksT.html
googling with "psp filters"

[Dabble Do]

Thank you all for taking the time to reply, and for providing feedback from your experience of current PSP community activity.

I have looked at a few video tutorials, since that seems to be the way things have gone. I can see how they are much easier to produce than well illustrated, written tutorials that I'm accustomed to producing. The biggest flaw is the lack of indexing. If the video tutorial makes 10 good points, but later down the road I just need to refresh myself on 1 of those 10 points, not only do I have to remember which video tutorial the point was made in, but I also have to remember the approximate frame the point of interest starts in. Without that information I have to do a willy nilly hunt and peck or watch the whole video again assuming I remember which video contained the point of interest. Arggggh.

I am going to search to see if there is an app that allows a video tutorial producer to create an index as the video is being produced. An app that would allow me to pause recording, to enter tags like "unrelated magic selection tip here". The app would record frame information/position, and create a searchable file. Users of the videos could now do a search of the index files to find the video, and the exact position of the tip they are looking for or files that mention the topic they searched for. I hope this is making sense. If something like this exists I definitely think video tutorials make more sense for production and using.

[brucet]

Just a thought. Download/copy the video. Then using a program such as Video Studio cut the video up and give each section a new name. Build your own library.

regards

[JoeB]

I am going to search to see if there is an app that allows a video tutorial producer to create an index as the video is being produced. An app that would allow me to pause recording, to enter tags like "unrelated magic selection tip here". The app would record frame information/position, and create a searchable file. Users of the videos could now do a search of the index files to find the video, and the exact position of the tip they are looking for or files that mention the topic they searched for. I hope this is making sense. If something like this exists I definitely think video tutorials make more sense for production and using.

Type the words creating searchable videos into Google. You'll get a few links that might be useful.

Other than that, the first thing that comes to mind is creating download links for the video tutorials that you might be posting online, making the download in DVD format (i.e., .vob files). Then people would have a DVD format video that can contain a chapter menu, with the chapters titled to reflect what each chapter is about. There would be no need for people to burn them to DVDs because most video players like the free VLC player can play DVD format videos with the menus.

If that approach interests you, there's an inexpensive but excellent program called ConverXtoDVD from VSO Software that can take a video in virtually any format and convert it to DVD format easily, including all sorts of menu options, chapter options, etc. With that (or a similar) program you could first use whatever method you wish to create your video tutorial in a format to upload to YouTube or wherever, and then use the converter software to convert that video to DVD format.

The major problem with DVD format videos is that they are very large file size, so might be impractical for providing for download. However, if you are following brucet's suggestion of creating your own library of video tutorials that you download yourself you could convert those to DVD format for your own use.

[brucet]

DVD's? Heck what do you play them on. My last 3 laptops didn't even have a DVD player in them. So DVD's may not be a good idea.

regards

[JoeB]

DVD's? Heck what do you play them on. My last 3 laptops didn't even have a DVD player in them. So DVD's may not be a good idea.

regards

You may not have read my complete post. I did say that videos in DVD format did not need to be burned to DVD. As I said in the last sentence of the first paragraph of my post, most software video players, like the free VLC player, will play DVD videos. It works just the same as if you had a commercial DVD that you play in a DVD player on your TV set, allowing navigation through the menus embedded in the DVD video where you can choose the video you want to view, select subtitles, navigate to different chapters, etc. The idea is to NOT burn them to DVD but watch them on your computer just like you do any online tutorial, but with more flexibility than online videos.

[rondo]

I have an external USB DVD drive for my laptop- you can also get blu-ray. They are small and cheap at Newegg. I have a lot of programs on disc and it is handy for installs/re-installs.