Software - - Paint Shop Pro 9

Kraellin · #1 08-04-2005, 03:19 PM

well, i was in town this morning for an appointment and when that was done, it was off to the computer shop to see if photoshop hadnt been discounted by about 90%.

oh well, so much for that (still $599)

but, what i did find was paint shop pro 9 at a discount. it had dropped from $120 to $89 and had a $30 mail in rebate for registered users of earlier versions or users of ps and others. that was too good to pass up. so i bought it.

now, i've only played with it a little bit so far, but the improvements over 7.xx are substantial. just to list a few that i've played with so far are (and dont laugh too much you PS users),

scripts!
warp mesh and other manipulators!
auto-retouching.
nice visible command history WITH removing an action in the middle of the history without removing everything that came before it! now that's cool!
scratch remover.

those are the main ones i've played with so far. the layout is still psp easy and there's a lot of old familiars. a few of the familiars are in different menus now and some have new options. plugins that worked with 7 seem to work with 9 just fine and i found one option for plugins involvin .txt type plugins that would seem to allow those types now.

the only thing i havent been able to find so far that was in 7, is the replacer tool; that thing where you set one color or range of colors and replaced it with another, but i may just not have found it yet.

all in all, with just those additions, and i know there are more, i'm pleased. the mesh warp alone was worth it

Craig

kschulz · #2 08-04-2005, 04:05 PM

Craig - you're right, PSP 9 is definitely a worthwhile upgrade.

The Color Replacer is still there - for some reason they decided to hide it in the Dropper flyout.

- Kurt

Marthig · #3 08-04-2005, 04:49 PM

Good for you Craig !!

I am a PS and FW user but did not laugh when you mentioned the scripts in PSP, I hate scripts!!!, have to admit though that it is because I have some sort of block with those darn things and don't usually get to work well with them.

I was quite interested (envious ?

) about the possibility of undoing one action in the middle of others in the history panel, that is quite, quite, cool !

I don't think PS or FW has it, or if they do I don't know where to find it. :?

Now I can't wait to see your images using the new program ! Congratulations.

Regards - Martha

Kraellin · #4 08-04-2005, 07:23 PM

kschulz,

found it. was right where you said.

martha,
most likely my work will be worse for a while trying to get used to this. played around some more with some of the paint features. the 'oil paint' is kind of interesting. wet brushes also have an interesting look. definitely more settings on all this stuff now.

and yes, i was surprised to see that i could remove actions from the middle of the command history. the only bug-aboo on it seems to be when you use a plugin in there. you get a warning message that it might not work. i tried it with the fast fix plugin in the history and i called up to remove something else and i got the fast fix plugin called up.... bug? but, it did seem to remove the sharpen action i'd done.

there's also a patch on the corel site, so, i'll get that soon too.

i also managed to crash the thing once, but that isnt the program fault. seems 512 megs of ram isnt enough for the program, the plugins and all my huge library of pictures. if i do too much, too fast, i crash. psp 7 was doing this to me also.

one thing i sorta liked about the install was that it didnt overwrite psp 7. so, i've got both 7 and 9 on my machine now.

oh, and martha, what is FW?

Craig

Kraellin · #5 08-04-2005, 08:52 PM

ok, slowly finding things and learning things. definitely like the new perspective tool. used that one in the attached picture. this is just a simple layer thing, but the mirror pretty much demanded that anything reflecting in it had to have the same perspective. this new tool made it pretty easy, once i quit doing it backwards

this new version lags a bit too. some of the tool responses are slower than in 7. so, i'm guessing there's more going on in the background than in 7. i knew this was going to happen... upgrade the software and you end up having to upgrade the hardware; upgrade the hardware and you want to upgrade the software

Craig

Marthig · #6 08-04-2005, 10:24 PM

Quote:

oh, and martha, what is FW?
Craig

FW = Macromedia Fireworks

I like the image you posted to illustrate the reflection tool.

Regards and congrats again !!

Martha

Kraellin · #7 08-05-2005, 07:49 AM

martha,

oh, wasnt even aware that macromedia had a graphic editor. makes sense, i guess, what with flash and dreamweaver. how's it compare with PS? do you use it quite a bit or mostly PS? i had to go look it up on google and the macromedia site and if it's as professional as their flash program, then i'm guessing it's pretty good. i also went to newegg.com to check the pricing. all i found was the upgrade version for $141.95, so i'm guessing the full version is a bit more.

Quote:

I like the image you posted to illustrate the reflection tool.

thanks

umm, i have a reflection tool? i'll have to look for that. this was just a straight put one image below another and erase the middle to let the one shine through.

i also found another item on my wish list in psp 9. i can make custom made selections and manipulate them for size and form. it's not exactly how i envisioned it, but it does work well. what i wanted was a selection that once made i could grab an edge and move that part of the selection around, much like a vector shape. what they actually did was allow you to make a selection by using a mask system. you simply paint on a selection mask like you might with a normal mask, but when you finish the dark area becomes your selection. quite handy and great for those difficult to select images.

i played with a few of the pre-made scripts. very clever. and i notice that psp 9 also allows you to build scripts by what you actually do in the paint program. whereas i havent tried this yet, it would appear that this thing will log whatever action you take and once you end the script build, it will convert those actions into a standard script you can use later. quite nice. i dont know how this compares to PS or others, but seems like a very useful feature for standardizing some things.

one thing i seem to be missing is the point by point selection tool that psp 7 had. that was a nice selection tool for certain things. you could click and drag out a selection line, click again and lay down another point for the selection, drag out another line, click, drag, click, drag, until you had selected what you wanted. i havent found this yet, but maybe the mask-selection thing replaces this. kschulz, you know if this still exists?

oh, and the software package came with a nice BIG FAT paper manual/user guide. i much prefer this to an 'online' manual or electronic manual. i like the in-program helps and so on, but i always want a big paper manual with programs like these as well.

Craig

Gary Richardson · #8 08-05-2005, 08:44 AM

Hi Craig,

Sounds like you're going to have your hands full learning for a while, have fun.

Got to agree with you on the paper manuals, I really miss not having one. Online's OK, but you can't look at your image on screen and look at the manual at the same time (unless you're flash and have a twin screen set up). Yes, give me paper every time.

Kraellin · #9 08-05-2005, 12:07 PM

Quote:

Got to agree with you on the paper manuals, I really miss not having one. Online's OK, but you can't look at your image on screen and look at the manual at the same time (unless you're flash and have a twin screen set up). Yes, give me paper every time.

exactly! plus, there's just something 'beefy' about having a nice, thick paper manual.

Craig

Gary Richardson · #10 08-05-2005, 02:15 PM

Yes mate, something to throw at the wife when she's nagging me about spending too much time on line.

Kraellin · #11 08-05-2005, 02:28 PM

lol. the thought never occurred to me.

Craig

Marthig · #12 08-06-2005, 12:25 AM

Quote:

Craig wrote:
martha,
oh, wasnt even aware that macromedia had a graphic editor. makes sense, i guess, what with flash and dreamweaver. how's it compare with PS? do you use it quite a bit or mostly PS? ...
.... thanks umm, i have a reflection tool? i'll have to look for that. this was just a straight put one image below another and erase the middle to let the one shine through. ...

Hi Craig!

My first attempts to draw with a graphic editor were with PSP, then used PS 5, after that tried Fireworks 4.0 then got MX 2004 (flash, fireworks, dreamweaver and Freehand) and now I also have PS CS2. I would say that Photoshop is great for photomanipulation, retouching and creating marvelous effects. Many great effects can also be obtained with Fireworks, the "experts" say that the best feature of FW is the possibility of creating great vector images and there is also the ease of interchangeability (phew some word !

) with Dreamweaver. You can find good examples of what can be done with FW here.

I tend to use more PS now as realized that there are some limitations in FW as compared with PS.
Regarding your "reflection tool" is that I misunderstood your explanation,

what I wanted to say was that I liked the image you posted

Regards - Martha

P.S. Gary -
erhh hmm, I don't quite think that the idea of having a nice "beefy" manual is to throw at one's wife ?

Kraellin · #13 08-06-2005, 08:38 AM

martha,

thanks

i would guess then that FW was meant as a companion to flash (and dreamweaver), being that flash is based in vector. so, that makes sense.

i also recently found a site offering a pretty good deal on the 'academic' version of the MX 2004 suite. may be too good to pass up. i've been drooling a lot lately.

Quote:

what I wanted to say was that I liked the image you posted

and thank you. that porthole thing is actually a mirror. i found it on a site that sells them

Craig

kschulz · #14 08-10-2005, 02:25 PM

Just when you think you've got the latest greatest...

http://www.corel.com/promotions/psp_...x_1/index.html

Guess this explains the good deals on PSP v9.

- Kurt

Kraellin · #15 08-10-2005, 02:51 PM

d'oh! you might know, just when i buy 9, they come out with 10. lol.

it does look pretty good, though and only $60 for a boxed version with extras (pre-release price good to aug 31). looks like they've added a version of the stamp tool and a high pass filter for sharpening. true 16 bit and raw stuff. and some others that look good. thumbnails now in the layer palette. not so sure how good their auto-photo-fix will be. the current one in 9 is kind of hit and miss, but 10 allows for seeing it and then making adjustments to the auto-fix, so that shld help.

what i dont see is a better auto-selection tool. 'pick tool' might be it, but not enough information yet. that's the one thing i have the most trouble with is picking up items out of an image where the surrounding area is all different sorts of shades, hues, illumination and so on and no one setting in psp 9 will handle that currently. the 'edit selection' works fine, but i'd prefer a better 'lasso/magic wand' tool.

all in all, for $60 boxed, this looks like a pretty good deal.

Craig