PSP 2018: Crop tool is a big catastrophe

[Pixel_Pusher]

Hello,

I work with PSP since a lot of year but the crop tool of the latest version of PSP is a catastrophe.
I open an image and place some help lines.
Then I select the crop tool. In this moment the image enlarges in all directions and the cropping frame is placed at the left side with 300x151 pixels but in the toolbar I get shown 100x100 pixels.
The result of the enlargement is that my help lines have another position than before. The are useless now.
Why does PSP 2018 enlarge the image? PSP didn't do that in older versions.

After cropping the image I load another image and again select the crop toll. Now the cropping frame again is at the left side with 300x151 pixels.
In older version the crop tool did remember size and position I used before. This was very helpful. Why does it no longer remember the old size and position?

[Richard]

I do not see the problems you describe.

[JoeB]

I do not see the problems you describe.

According to your profile you are using PSP 2013. The problem only exists with PSP 2018 and, as Pixel_Pusher says, Corel made a mess of the crop tool in the latest version.

[Richard]

I do not see the problems you describe.

According to your profile you are using PSP 2013. The problem only exists with PSP 2018 and, as Pixel_Pusher says, Corel made a mess of the crop tool in the latest version.

My profile says 2018. And I just tried it, and don't see these problems.

Edit: That's weird. I checked my profile and it said 2018. After I replied, it said 2013. Anyway, It's 2018, and I'll fix my profile.

[JoeB]

I do not see the problems you describe.

According to your profile you are using PSP 2013. The problem only exists with PSP 2018 and, as Pixel_Pusher says, Corel made a mess of the crop tool in the latest version.

My profile says 2018. And I just tried it, and don't see these problems.

Edit: That's weird. I checked my profile and it said 2018. After I replied, it said 2013. Anyway, It's 2018, and I'll fix my profile.

The issue I'm talking about is the fact that, when you invoke the crop tool, the image window does increase in size, placing scroll bars side and bottom. That is because the new crop tool puts a grey border around the image, which you can see if you use those scroll bars. And the reason for that is because the tool operates differently from in previous versions. That is, when you use the Rotate handle it isn't the crop box that rotates but the image that rotates - and that extra space is supposed to accommodate the rotation of the image. Many of us have asked that there be a change that at least provides the option to make the Crop tool operate the way it did in previous versions - i.e., when using the rotation handle it actually should rotate the crop bounding box, not leave the box stationary and rotate the image.

[Richard]

OK. I see what you mean if you are zoomed in so that you cannot see the entire photo. I don't see what the OP was saying about the crop box resizing to 300 x 151 pixels though.

[JoeB]

OK. I see what you mean if you are zoomed in so that you cannot see the entire photo. I don't see what the OP was saying about the crop box resizing to 300 x 151 pixels though.

I'm not quite sure if you are saying the same thing that I am because I'm not saying that you have to be zoomed in on an image before invoking the crop tool to see the issue. So I'll try to be more specific just to be sure.

Open an image in your workspace, one that is small enough in pixel size that it appears immediately at 100% zoom within the workspace. There should be no scroll bars, just an image window with the image.

Invoke the crop tool. You'll immediately see that scroll bars have now appeared at the right and at the bottom. However, the image itself and the image window haven't changes in size and the image is still completely visible within the window. But the presence of the scroll bars tells you that there is now something outside of the image window. If you now move only the scroll bars you'll see that what is outside the image window is a grey border surrounding the image itself. This is the border that the new crop tool in PSP2018 adds to the image window. It is meant to provide some extra canvas space so that when you use the rotation handle the image has some space within which to rotate. And that is because the new crop tool rotation handle rotates the image and not the crop tool bounding box. That extra canvas space AND the fact that the rotation handle does not rotate the bounding box but now rotates the image are the things many - if not most - of us do not like about the crop tool in PSP 2018.

[Richard]

The OP said: "Then I select the crop tool. In this moment the image enlarges in all directions and the cropping frame is placed at the left side with 300x151 pixels but in the toolbar I get shown 100x100 pixels."

You said: "Invoke the crop tool. You'll immediately see that scroll bars have now appeared at the right and at the bottom. However, the image itself and the image window haven't changes in size and the image is still completely visible within the window."

I see no change in image size, the same as you, but different to the OP.

The OP also said "After cropping the image I load another image and again select the crop toll. Now the cropping frame again is at the left side with 300x151 pixels.
In older version the crop tool did remember size and position I used before. This was very helpful. Why does it no longer remember the old size and position?"

I do not see this either. If the next photo is the same size, the crop window is unchanged (if the next photo is a different size, the crop window may change size, but that is also true in PSP X4).

I don't see the grey border you describe either. Even if it's there, what harm does it do?

[JoeB]

The OP said: "Then I select the crop tool. In this moment the image enlarges in all directions and the cropping frame is placed at the left side with 300x151 pixels but in the toolbar I get shown 100x100 pixels."

You said: "Invoke the crop tool. You'll immediately see that scroll bars have now appeared at the right and at the bottom. However, the image itself and the image window haven't changes in size and the image is still completely visible within the window."

I see no change in image size, the same as you, but different to the OP.

I don't think the OP is seeing anything different from what we are seeing. I believe that what the OP is saying is that the image size has changed BECAUSE the sudden appearance of scroll bars is evidence that there is now something more within the image window than was present prior to invoking the crop tool. And if the image originally opened shows that it's at 100% zoom with no scroll bars, once you activate the crop tool and - if necessary - zoom out until the scroll bars disappear you will have an image window that is substantially larger than the original image window was and that still shows 100% in the title bar. So, with the increase in canvas size you do have what effectively is an image that is larger than what you started with. It's just that the size of the original image content hasn't change (i.e., that image hasn't been resampled, but the total image has increased in size by the addition of the grey canvas background. So it's just basically the use of terminology when speaking of "image".
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SNIPPED BECAUSE I HAVEN'T COMMENTED ON THAT OR TESTED IT.
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I don't see the grey border you describe either. Even if it's there, what harm does it do?

The harm it does is that when you do the crop by clicking the Apply checkmark the cropped image still has the grey borders around it as long as the crop tool is selected. If you then select another tool like the Pan tool the borders are still there. The only way to get rid of them is to first select another tool AND then zoom the image until the original image content as least fills the window. Then you can zoom however you want and the grey borders are no longer there. Doing a similar zoom but with the crop tool still selected will not remove the grey borders. And the same thing happens whether you just do a crop or if you do Crop as New Image. So it's extremely inconvenient and adds further steps to anyone's workflow. I don't know anybody who likes the idea of suddenly having grey borders around the image they have just cropped to, or having grey borders around the new image we have created with the crop. We expect - and want - to get the crop, period.

And that's ignoring the fact that no other editor's crop tool will rotate the image rather than the crop bounding box when using the rotation handle, so that is completely counter-intuitive.

And if you don't see a border on the image using the crop tool with PSP 2018 then you're missing something and your PSP is not working the way it does for everybody else. That was something that Corel specifically added to the new crop tool, so it should be in everybody's PSP 2018 version. Check out the 3 images below:

[Richard]

Thanks for the detailed explanation Joe . Now I understand. That's useful information, because I'm brand new to PSP 2018 (I've been using PSP X4 for years), and you just saved me some painful learning.

Regarding the gray border, I figured I couldn't see it because my background was set to gray. So I changed the background to white, and no gray border. Because then it's a white border . I think that's a case of terminology again. The canvas becomes larger than the image, but I would not say that there's a border, because there's nothing drawn on that extra canvas.

I have discovered that you can only put the "focus" of the new Golden Spiral guide either bottom left or bottom right, which seems like a pretty big oversight (if I'm missing something, let me know). That's not very useful if you want to place it on someones eyes in a portrait. Although I guess you could use the new crop rotate to stand them on their head, then compose and crop, and then rotate the image back again

[hartpaul]

This change to the crop tool by Corel is another experiment in uselessness just like the Save goes to Save As dialog in X8 which has now finally been corrected by an update for PSP X8.

If an image is askew, then I use the straighten tool first and then the crop tool. This change to the crop tool seems intended to help bypass the need for the Straighten tool by doing a crop and straighten at the same time. But whereas you can place the straighten line exactly along the line that must be horizontal or vertical and that makes it easier to get the image straight if you use the crop tool to do the same thing then you have to reduce the size of the crop box so that one of the border lines can be aligned with a straight line in the picture, then use the rotate handle to line the image up with that line, the resize the crop borders and move it to get the final crop image. Thios is awkward and takes up much more time than Straighten and Crop.

[JoeB]

Plus the fact that using the rotate handle is a lot less precise than setting the lines with the Straighten tool. Yep, this unasked for "feature" just made a mess of the Crop tool, and at the very least Corel has to provide the option to be able to use the tool as in previous versions.

[hartpaul]

If they work really hard at it we can probably expect an update in 2020 for 2018. And they will probably have it repaired in PSP 2019.

[JoeB]

If they work really hard at it we can probably expect an update in 2020 for 2018. And they will probably have it repaired in PSP 2019.

Yes, if we're lucky they'll have it fixed for the 2019 version. But if they don't provide a patch earlier for 2018 that fixes it then that will indicate to me that they are trying to force people to pay to upgrade to 2019 to fix what was their catastrophe in the first place.

[hartpaul]

But we still have about 5 1/2 months before that so people testing out will see this big fault and probably turn away from their first purchase rather than wait.
Meanwhile I still use older stable versions , and don't update them unless that update corrects a serious problem that really affects me. Or in the case of PSP X8 I did not use it that much so there was no loss in applying Update 3 (SP3) which corrected the Save always goes to Save As bug. That has now made it a viable program more like PSP X9.
My favorite versions to use in order are X2, X7, X9 and 2018 apart from the crop stuff up.