PSP functional questions

[MikeFromMesa]

I am returning to PSP after several years of using Mac software for editing my photos. That means that I have gotten used to using Mac based pixel editors and when I started to run PSP again I was surprised that I could not find the equivalent of some of the normal layers functionality I had become used to. I am sure it is there, but I just can't seem to locate it.

For example, the photo editors I had been using offered a Light and Shadows adjustment layer, but I can not find that in PSP 2018 Ultimate. I am sure there is some equivalent tool, but I do not know where it is. Perhaps someone could point me to it. I know I can use Curves to do something similar, but the ability to just adjust the light and shadows directly was helpful.

Another example is the selection process. I tried (successfully) to replace a sky, but I suspect that I was doing it the hard way because what I tried did not work. I used the Magic Wand to make a color selection and tried to delete the selection, but the delete key on my keyboard did not remove the selection and I ended up having to use the erase tool to manually get rid of the selected part of the sky. I suspect there is a much easier way to do that.

There are a lot of video tutorials for PSP, and I will eventually get through them, but perhaps someone can answer the two questions above. Wading through all of those tutorials is going to take me some time and I suspect I have to "unlearn" a bunch of stuff.

Thank you for any help.

[LeviFiction]

1) There is no such adjustment layer. We only have the Highlights/Midtones/Shadows command under the Adjust -> Brightness & Contrast -> Hilights/Midtones/Shadows menu.

I think Histogram, Levels, or Curves are your best bet for editing the highlights and shadows using an adjustment layer. White balance ajustment layer lets you target the colors of the shadows, midtones, and highlights. I don't know if that can be used for what you want though.

2) What did happen with the selection when you hit the "delete" key? Did it fill in with a color? By default images open in PSP as "Background" layers. These layers have no transparency. You need to promote the background layer first, then delete your sky. Otherwise it fills with the currently selected background color.

[MikeFromMesa]

1) There is no such adjustment layer. We only have the Highlights/Midtones/Shadows command under the Adjust -> Brightness & Contrast -> Hilights/Midtones/Shadows menu.

I think Histogram, Levels, or Curves are your best bet for editing the highlights and shadows using an adjustment layer. White balance ajustment layer lets you target the colors of the shadows, midtones, and highlights. I don't know if that can be used for what you want though.

Thanks for the suggestion. I had not paid much attention to the Brightness layer as a source for controlling the highlights and shadows, but perhaps that is the way it is supposed to be done in PSP. I am not specifically concerned with a Highlights and Shadows control itself as long as I can control them as I need.

2) What did happen with the selection when you hit the "delete" key? Did it fill in with a color? By default images open in PSP as "Background" layers. These layers have no transparency. You need to promote the background layer first, then delete your sky. Otherwise it fills with the currently selected background color.

Nothing happened that I could see, and that was the surprise.

I was just playing around trying to become more familiar with PSP, so I loaded a simple photo with a clear break between the sound and the sky, duplicated the layer, added a new sky layer, dragged it below the duplicate layer selected the top layer and then selected the sky color. It was largely all blue and the selection was very good but when I pressed the delete key and expected to see the sky layer below I saw no change. The selection still showed up.

I tried this twice with no resolution, but perhaps I missed something so I will try again.

[MikeFromMesa]

Well, that was interesting and it is clear that I will have to remember what I am doing and what hardware I am using when I am working in PSP. The problem, if that is what it is, seems to be that I am running PSP on a Windows VM and the key mapping from my Mac keyboard has some differences to what I would normally expect.

I repeated the entire process, and took a screen shot to make sure I had actually taken all of the steps I should have taken, and attached it to this post.

As you can see I have all of the layers, I selected the proper layer and you can see the selection, but pressing the Delete key did nothing. However (and fortunately there is a "however") I tried combining the Delete key with the Control, Option and Command keys, one at a time, at found that pressing the Command + Delete key removed the selection. That is something I will need to keep in mind when I am working in PSP. It also makes me wonder what other key mapping changes I have to learn about.

Thanks for your help.

[brucet]

Mike a suggestion that may ease the pain and give you more options.
I started using PSP when it was PSP5. Jasc. PSP slowly lost me for various reasons but still I like some of its functions/features. So I'm reluctant to make a clean break.

The solution was for me was to swap to Photoline, (which I see you have been using), then from within Photoline call up PSP as an external editor. This way you can have all the functions/features of both editors. Photoline has a Light/Shadow adjustment layer. (Plus others such as Light?Shadow in filters). So in affect you can make adjustments in either editor and flip back and forth with few restrictions.

bruce

[MikeFromMesa]

Mike a suggestion that may ease the pain and give you more options.
I started using PSP when it was PSP5. Jasc. PSP slowly lost me for various reasons but still I like some of its functions/features. So I'm reluctant to make a clean break.

The solution was for me was to swap to Photoline, (which I see you have been using), then from within Photoline call up PSP as an external editor. This way you can have all the functions/features of both editors. Photoline has a Light/Shadow adjustment layer. (Plus others such as Light?Shadow in filters). So in affect you can make adjustments in either editor and flip back and forth with few restrictions.

bruce

Thank you for the suggestion and I will certainly give that a try.

I have to admit that I had some trouble learning to use PhotoLine initially, although I kept at it and finally figured out that most of my problems were related to the fact that I had to unlearn much that I had become used to doing in other editors. It just worked differently and, after I realized that that, PhotoLine became a favorite for me as it helped me solve some of the problems I ran into with other Mac editors. In particular it ran pretty much every single plugin I had while Affinity Photo, my other Mac pixel editor, did not, and had very nice controls to change colors and luminance into transparencies for sky replacements. I do not do that much, but when I do I want it to work well.

It appears I have some of the same issues with PSP. It is a great editor, but things are very different from Photoshop, and it is taking me some time to get used to how things are done with it. One of the things I have noticed is that the different adjustment controls seem to have been written by different engineers using different ways of doing things. I have used the crop control and got used to seeing the checkmark under the control to accept or reject the change so when I started to use the straighten control, bundled with the crop control in the Tool Bar, I spent a full 5 minutes looking for the checkmark to accept the change. I finally had to open the manual (when all else fails, read the manual) to find out that the checkmark was with with the tool settings, not on the screen with the adjusted image.

But I have been pretty happy with PSP and will continue using it. Thanks for all of your help and suggestions. As I have always said, no day is truly wasted if you learn something new.

[hartpaul]

You can also get the Straighten tool to apply by double clicking after you have the line in place.

[MikeFromMesa]

You can also get the Straighten tool to apply by double clicking after you have the line in place.

I did not know that. I will give it a try. Thanks for the tip.

[brucet]

The 'problem' is the same with all editors. The learning curve. Regardless of which editor you use jumping from one to another has its problems. But if they were all the same wouldn't they all be the same?????

PSP's biggest issue, as I see it, is that it has 'evolved' over the years from Jasc to Corel. And in that time with numerous programmers/coders. All with their own slant on how it should be done. All subject of coarse to what the boss at Corel is telling them. A small organization such as Photoline has been with the same coders from day one. So there is some consistency.

Like any good tradesman you need to have more than one set of tools. Photo editing is no different. I think it's unrealistic now days to expect one editor to do everything. Proof of that is the popularity of plugins. Anyone wanting to take the next step into editing needs a bigger set of tools. Be it PSP or any combination of tools. Companies such as Corel need to accept the fact that a one stop solution isn't the solution. Rather making their product more compatible to other software would encourage users to use PSP as a base for other programs. Users also need to accept the same philosophy and accept the fact that they need more than one tool to gain functionality.

regards

[MikeFromMesa]

PSP's biggest issue, as I see it, is that it has 'evolved' over the years from Jasc to Corel. And in that time with numerous programmers/coders. All with their own slant on how it should be done. All subject of coarse to what the boss at Corel is telling them. A small organization such as Photoline has been with the same coders from day one. So there is some consistency.

I agree with what you say, but there is a reason for coding standards in companies and that is to insure that the code operates consistently across different platforms and routines. If Corel instituted coding and UI standards for all of their engineers on one particular project, then all of the different dialog boxes would work consistently. That is not really a complaint, but as a old and retired software engineer/architect I learned the hard way that the only way to guarantee consistency is to institute standards and enforce them.

I really am not complaining as I like PSP, and there is a lot of fun (and frustration) in learning how to use a new product and that is, for me, part of the reason for doing it. If everything worked identically it would be easy to learn, but a bit boring. What I find is that each product has its own pluses and minuses and the idea is to find out what they are and, when possible, use the one that is best for any particular job. I moved from developing Windows applications to working on the Mac because I was tired of using Windows. Still, I like PSP enough to have installed a Windows VM on my Mac and to plan on buying the app in the next couple of days. I do not know precisely what it is about PSP that I like so much, but I prefer it to Photoshop (an old version of which I also have on my Windows VM).