F12 not working as expected

[terrypin]

I had a number of old .pspimage files I wanted to re-save as JPG.

I open the file by dragging it in from its folder and immediately hit F12. Nothing happens. Repeat many times with same result. Eventually established that it's because PSP 2018 needs activating. Has that always been the case? IOW, opening an image in PSP does not automatically make it the active window?

[JoeB]

I had a number of old .pspimage files I wanted to re-save as JPG.

I open the file by dragging it in from its folder and immediately hit F12. Nothing happens. Repeat many times with same result. Eventually established that it's because PSP 2018 needs activating. Has that always been the case? IOW, opening an image in PSP does not automatically make it the active window?

I'm not sure what you're trying to do nor am I sure why nothing happens when you have an open image in PSP and hit F12. In PSP 2018 the single shortcut F12 is Save As, and should open the Save As dialogue. It does that in my PSP and has been like that at least since X7.

I'm also not sure what you mean about PSP not making a newly opened image the active window. When I open an image in PSP it becomes the active window regardless of what other image might have been active at the time or even if there were no other images open.

[hartpaul]

terrypin - it is a bit unclear what you mean by "by dragging it in from its folder" but I will have guess at what you are doing.

A bit like me I have my files in a folder only on the desktop. When I have PSP open I click the folder on the task bar and it becomes active and then I drag and drop an image from this windows explorer folder into the workspace.
Note that the windows folder is still active as it is still visible and hitting F12 will not do anything here.
If however I click the title bar of the image(windowed mode) or any part of PSP workspace then the explorer window disappears and the last added window is active and now F12 will work.

[terrypin]

terrypin - it is a bit unclear what you mean by "by dragging it in from its folder" but I will have guess at what you are doing.

A bit like me I have my files in a folder only on the desktop. When I have PSP open I click the folder on the task bar and it becomes active and then I drag and drop an image from this windows explorer folder into the workspace.
Note that the windows folder is still active as it is still visible and hitting F12 will not do anything here.
If however I click the title bar of the image(windowed mode) or any part of PSP workspace then the explorer window disappears and the last added window is active and now F12 will work.

Your workflow sounds identical to mine. I drag a file into PSP from its folder. (All files on my PC are in folders!)

Thanks for confirming that opening the file doesn’t give focus to its window, so the F12 KB shortcut doesn’t work. Since first posting I’ve confirmed that’s true in PSP 8 too, so I’m slightly embarrassed that this only became truly obvious to me in PSP 2018

[JoeB]

Ahhh. I see what you're getting at now. The problem, it seems, is not that the image window doesn't get focus. It's that PSP itself doesn't get focus. And that's because the folder still has focus. The image window would get focus if PSP had focus, but it hasn't been relinquished by the folder window. I don't open images with drag and drop from folder but do so within PSP (the Manage tab, unless I do a right-click on some image in Explorer), so when I "open" an image in PSP the program is already in focus, so I missed that crucial step in your procedure. Otherwise, opening an image file in PSP does put focus on the newly opened image window.

I do have a question however. Given that the Manage window, in Computer mode, is basically the same thing as Windows Explorer (and folders - each and every one that might have images one might want to process in PSP) are equally easily available in Manage mode, what is the advantage of putting the folders on the desktop to drag from or dragging from Explorer over just using Manage? It seems to be a particularly relevant suggestion in this thread if, for some reason, you want to do a Save As (F12) as soon as the image appears in PSP, which you can do if opening the image from Manage mode.

[hartpaul]

I think that it becomes advantageous if you have 3 or more folders open on the task bar. To get to that folder and drag that picture in is just 2 clicks.
To use Open and switch to another folder is more than 2 clicks especially if the folders are scattered in different places on your computer / external hard drives.
By pre opening those folders say on three different hard drives and minimising to the task bar they are readily available to be active with one click.