Fill Light/Clarity has stopped working in X9

[SJS]

Just recently I noticed the Fill Light/Clarity function, that I use quite frequently, is no longer working. When I select this option from the Adjust --> Brightness Contrast --> Fill Light/Clarity the preview & settings box opens, but the preview right pane is solid grey. I can modify the zoom setting, and move the sliders, but nothing shows up in the preview window, and I cannot select the (blank) Preview on Image checkbox. If I try to apply the adjustment, I see the attached error message in a popup window, re: invalid parameter passed to a function.
PSPX9 19.0.2.7 x64 under Windows 10

Error message popup

[LeviFiction]

Have you tried resetting PSP to factory defaults? It's screwy, it's not guaranteed to do any good, but usually when something like this happens we start with resetting PSP. Sometimes a setting just got corrupted and it's causing havoc.

[hartpaul]

Have no problems with either version of PSP X9 under Windows 10 Version 1607.

What version of Windows 10 do you have as this is important as well.

[SJS]

No I have not tried resetting to factory defaults. Fill Light / Clarity is not so very useful that I am willing to spend two hours reconstructing my environment & preferences! This is the primary reason I am reluctant to upgrade to the latest version.

If Corel provided a way to at least export preferences in human readable form! That would help with restoring these between versions, and after resets...

[LeviFiction]

I get that, I do. Especially since there's no guarantee that a reset will fix the problem. It could be caused by something else. Of course if this could fix the problem that means there is something screwy that might potentially effect something else down the line as well. That's the problem with "What if" scenarios.

I do, however, think we could minimize the amount of resetting you'd need to do. For a lot of people the one biggest thing that PSP doesn't backup is file locations. They've created a lot of custom folders and told PSP where to look and once you reset you have to re-assign those folders from scratch. There is a way to deal with this by editing the registry. But I'll get back to that later.

So shortcuts, toolbars, palettes, scripts, all of these are saved in the Workspace. To back these up and restore them is the easiest part. File -> Workspaces -> Save and give it a name.
To reload it File -> Wokspaces -> Load. Reloading the workspace should not re-introduce the bug. Assuming resetting fixes it.

General Preferences can be saved by running my SavePreferences script. And reloaded with the LoadPreferences script.

Manage Mode - If you use Manage Mode for tags, facial recognition, ratings, collections, etc. You need to backup the database. File -> database -> Export. Then to reload later File -> Database - > Import. PSP will close and reopen to make this work.

Okay, so those are mostly simple options for reloading a good portion of PSP. Again, all except for File Locations. To reload those you're gonna need to use the Registry Editor (Regedit.exe). Now things can go wrong, so don't do this unless you truly need all of the file locations back.

Go to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Corel\PaintShop Pro\X10\FileLocations

Right-click on the folder "File Locations" and select "Export" save it somewhere nice.

Then to reload - with PSP closed - double click the file and it'll write those values back to the registry.

[SJS]

OK, with your help and reminders about the scripts to save & reload Preferences, I am back up & running in only five minutes: Fill Light/Clarity is working now! I will just have to deal with a file locations or move some saved pattern files.

Thank you very much! Still don't understand why Corel does not build this stuff into the product ... but yes, I do: too much work for too little reward ($'s). Oh well, thank you again!