Four Years Later ...

Discussion:

(too old to reply)

Daryl Robbins

2010-03-01 15:10:42 UTC

I remember reading about, and myself even posting about, how when Jasc was
bought up by Corel that that'd be the end of any further useful
functionality to PSP. That they'd run it into the ground, while "Unlocking
its value" for themselves of course.

Word has spread to other graphic editor software discussion forums now
about the latest release of X3. I receiving the news about X3 on a forum
for a another editing program that I jumped-ship to four years ago when I
saw what a mess that Corel was making of PSP. Luckily it is not related to
any of that overpriced bloatware sold by that Mud-Hut company either. I'm
so glad I saw the writing on the wall when I did, from watching other
companies in the past run software into the ground the same way Corel
would, and did. I've had no reason to ever run PSP since.

Just out of curiosity I thought I'd see if anything has changed with PSP in
the four years since Corel has been wrecking it--downloading it to see.

I couldn't even get it to run after a one-hour install time. Tried that
three times, an hour install each time, turning things off, then on,
disabling them from services, etc. Not to mention what seemed an equally
long uninstall time for each attempt. Or the time I wasted searching the
net for solutions from all the hundreds if not thousands of others having
similar problems.

Here it is, a whole four years later, and still only a few of you are
starting to wake up.

You've been had, and had good. Now they are selling "customer support" for
a program that requires pay-for customer support in order to even get it to
run. With virtually zero real changes in editing capabilities, and even
less capability, since PSP 9 and X. Other than 400 megs of bloatware
add-ons that serves no real useful purpose. They can't make money from the
software they broke, so make money from those calling in on how to fix what
can't ever be fixed again. That's the only "value" left in Corel "unlocking
its value". Taking your productive time and money away from your life to
make it theirs.

The funniest part? Some of you will still pay for even that too. Corel
learnt well the motto of P.T. Barnum and how he made his riches, "There's a
sucker born every minute."

What a fun reminder of why I jumped ship four years ago.

Some things never change.

The true sign of insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and
expecting a different result. Four years of the same actions and choices
done by the very the same people, to only prove that anyone who has
supported or continues to support PSP and Corel for four years or more
truly are insane. Even four years of it won't be enough for some to prove
to themselves that they have gone insane.

Enjoy another four years of that. Just thought I'd stop in to mention how
many were right four years ago and moved on to better editors which have
grown in leaps and bounds in functionality all this time, quite unlike PSP.
Back to my preferred editors now. One day in four years wasted on PSP again
was more than enough for me. I'm not insane. Leaving Corel and PSP in the
dirt four years ago is proof enough for that.

Trev

2010-03-01 16:08:28 UTC

Permalink

Post by Daryl Robbins
You've been had, and had good. Now they are selling "customer support" for
a program that requires pay-for customer support in order to even get it to
run. With virtually zero real changes in editing capabilities, and even
less capability, since PSP 9 and X. Other than 400 megs of bloatware
add-ons that serves no real useful purpose. They can't make money from the
software they broke, so make money from those calling in on how to fix what
can't ever be fixed again. That's the only "value" left in Corel "unlocking
its value". Taking your productive time and money away from your life to
make it theirs.

Oh you fibber :¬) its not 400 megs of bloat wear. It's 1 .6 gigs of mostly
bloat ware. (The reason it takes so long to unpack before it can start the
install)
Corel have added a different Organizer with each version since taking over
the marketing. Each worse then the one before. But PSP is still as good as
it was in PSP 9 plus a Few bits extra and as my last purchased copies only
Total a outlay of under £30 It cant be bad

Daryl Robbins

2010-03-02 00:34:33 UTC

Permalink

Post by Trev

Let's see ... invest £30 and waste about 40-120+ hours of your life (some
of you have put in uncountable hours for 4 years now) debugging software as
Corel's pay-for (not paid) servant fool stooges, with £0 gain to yourselves
now and in the future. Those of you on dial-up downloading their program
will lose another 100+ hours of your life and your precious bandwidth
downloading the program. Multiple times than that for every download that
fails.

OR .... not give Corel £30 and then make £1500 to £5000 during that 40-120
hours of your time while using more capable software and being productive
on your own career. All the while also growing in your own education by
learning newer and better editing techniques on better software instead of
paying to be ungainfully employed in Corel's con-artists' game.

Decisions decisions ... what to do, what to do .... It's such a difficult
choice. ... Yes it is. ... If i WaS iNsANe <%~}```'

The < is the dunce-cap and the ```' is the drool.

Grant

2010-06-18 17:35:47 UTC

Permalink

Post by Daryl Robbins

Post by Trev

Let's see ... invest £30 and waste about 40-120+ hours of your life (some
of you have put in uncountable hours for 4 years now) debugging software as
Corel's pay-for (not paid) servant fool stooges, with £0 gain to yourselves
now and in the future. Those of you on dial-up downloading their program
will lose another 100+ hours of your life and your precious bandwidth
downloading the program. Multiple times than that for every download that
fails.
OR .... not give Corel £30 and then make £1500 to £5000 during that 40-120
hours of your time while using more capable software and being productive
on your own career. All the while also growing in your own education by
learning newer and better editing techniques on better software instead of
paying to be ungainfully employed in Corel's con-artists' game.
Decisions decisions ... what to do, what to do .... It's such a difficult
choice. ... Yes it is. ... If i WaS iNsANe <%~}```'
The < is the dunce-cap and the ```' is the drool.

Daryl
I'm not disagreeing with anything you've said, but could you pass along what
you moved to 4 years ago, and if you're still using it. I just tried X3, and
it really is crap. I ended up trying to get rid of it as instructed by
Corel. Corel could not even get that right. Their uninstall method, if it
can be called that, left more than half the files on my drive and 1735
registry entries, too.
As with many other here, I'll stick with 9, but I would be interested to
know what you are using. Nine is good, but it lacks some features that more
recent apps have. I'd like to find them in something less expensive than the
outrageously priced Photoshop.

Tks.

j***@ebigman.com

2010-08-03 15:25:31 UTC

Permalink

I hate to be disagreeable but I don't think PSP has gotten all that
bad. I dislike the fact that Corel is trying to market away from a
great graphics program but I guess they have their reasons. The core
functionality that got me hooked on PSP in the first place is still
there, and in some places even better.

I have PSPX3, BTW.

Trev

2010-08-03 16:17:50 UTC

Permalink

Post by j***@ebigman.com
I hate to be disagreeable but I don't think PSP has gotten all that
bad. I dislike the fact that Corel is trying to market away from a
great graphics program but I guess they have their reasons. The core
functionality that got me hooked on PSP in the first place is still
there, and in some places even better.
I have PSPX3, BTW.

Which goes to show it was so good e versions ago .
Now How much better would it be under Jasc ?

treker

2010-08-04 03:23:50 UTC

Permalink

Post by Trev

Which goes to show it was so good e versions ago .
Now How much better would it be under Jasc ?

I believe Jasc has taken their version to its nth degree and had
nothing else to add that could improve it. My understanding is that
Jasc's version was the closest to Adobe's premiere apps that any
program could get and was priced for the average user to add to their
arsenal of graphics editors. It had three apps: PSP for images,
Animation Shop for videos, and an app for creating canvases and frames
for the images. The first two were sufficient to cover most editing
and saving and could even be used to upload final products to the net
for sharing with other users. Corel was the scapegoat in this duo
because their apps could not compete with either one. They thought
that by buying Jasc, they could incorporate its code into their apps
and take over the #2 spot held by Jasc. Instead, they removed Jasc
code and ruined the first attempt (PSP X) and others that followed.
There is still enough there that can pass for the original, but the
thrill is gone. Long live Jasc! I still use vers 9.01.

Trev

2010-08-04 11:16:52 UTC

Permalink

Post by treker

Post by Trev

Which goes to show it was so good e versions ago .
Now How much better would it be under Jasc ?

Now you missed out Art Media The poor mans Painter. PSP 9 was more advanced
photo editing wise then Photoshop 7 with its digital noise reducers and
chromatic remover and it took till CS 2 to get ahead in that department.

Daryl Robbins

2010-08-27 04:17:42 UTC

Permalink

Post by Grant
Daryl
I'm not disagreeing with anything you've said, but could you pass along what
you moved to 4 years ago, and if you're still using it.

PhotoLine. Yes, I still use it almost daily. The interface is a little
rough looking, but it does more than PhotoShop can do. It's definitely NOT
for any beginner. You should have a good foundation of using many types of
editors' tools and functions before you start to tackle all that PhotoLine
can do. With its non-standard tool-naming and tool-usage conventions (i.e.
"Lasso" tool functions as both selection AND mask) it takes some relearning
old-ways for new users. Its excellent built-in raster to vector conversion
alone is worth the price of the program. Better than any dedicated Raster
to Vector program I've ever tried.

Just last week I had need of creating an animated GIF (that's never been
high priority on my lists). I knew Photoline could do it, I just never used
that option before. I loaded the first frame of 12 saved frames from a
video (to set the background animation size). Then used Layer > Management

Post by Grant
Load Layer, and selected all the rest of the frames. Click on the last

frame filename, then hold shift, select the first frame filename (named
with consecutive numbers), so it loads them in proper order. Then clicked
on menu Web > Create Animation. Almost as simple as it can get.

I've used the program off and on for the last 10 years for its excellent
poster-printing functions (posters to any size you will ever need), but
only after Corel trashed PSP did I start to use it all the time. Here it is
4 years later of dedicated use and I'm still learning all it can do.

That being said, I still keep PSP 9.01 and X installed, but have only
booted them twice in the last couple years. Two of its tools can't be
easily duplicated in anything else I've tried. PSP's CA Correction tool
(which is not true optical CA correction, but a color-fringe correction
tool), and the Manual Color Correction tool. Well, one more is a favorite,
PSP's red-eye correction tool, because you can use it on the orange, green,
blue, and yellow eyes that animals can have in flash photography
situations.

Though I have found a plugin that uses PhotoLine's own customizable
color-palette, and you can use that for Manual Color Correction even
better. It just takes some preliminary setup work. I added an extensive
flesh-tones color-pallet to my PhotoLine. (Load any image with a lot of
good flesh-tones from many ethnicities, then save that image's color-pallet
with Tool > Color > Reduce Colors > Palette > click "From Image", click
File > Save. Merge that file into the main color editing/selection panel.
Then I use ThePluginSite's "Color Washer" plugin. From the plugin you
select a flesh-tone on the image (drag a selection on a skin-tone sample
that needs some hue correction), then click on Color Washer's "color"
panel, double-click the "target" color, you can then choose any flesh-tone
from your customized PhotoLine flesh-tones palette to get all flesh-tones
in an image properly balanced. Just like PSP's Manual Color Correction
tool. The same holds true for any other color or hue that needs tweaking.

PSP's "CA Correction" for color-fringing/blooming can also be emulated in
PhotoLine, but it's a little trickier to do so and not quite as effective
as PSP's tool for this. Use the Hue/Saturation tool. Use that tool's
color-picker to click on a color fringe area (zoom in). Then adjust the
range of colors on the rainbow color-selection bars, until only that fringe
hue is being affected. I find it best to shift the main Hue slider all the
way to one end so it easier to see which color-range of the fringe area is
being selected by the sliding hue-range selector (it has 4 adjustment
sliders, 2 inner ones control the complete range of colors being selected,
2 outside ones control how much it fades into the adjoining colors). Then
set the main "Hue" slider back to zero again after you are sure you're only
working on fringe colors. Then desaturate and set brightness (or slight hue
tweak or intensity tweak if needed to blend the fringe colors in better) to
match the background. It's a little more fussy, but it's also far faster
than PSP's CA tool that can take a long time for every preview.

Other than those two favorite tools from PSP (which can be emulated or
duplicated in PhotoLine with some practice, one using an external plugin),
there's nothing else I miss about PSP.

For you fans who like PSP's "Clarify Filter" and can't live without it,
fear not. Just select PhotoLine's menu Filter > Other > Median. Select a
radius of 20 to 70 or so (subject dependent, finer details with no empty
regions and smaller images need a smaller radius, larger images or images
with large empty regions need a larger radius) and use NEGATIVE "Intensity"
values of -5 to maybe -80 or so. Don't overdo it, a little goes a long way.
A "Clarify" filter with much more control over the effect than anything PSP
has provided.

The list of what you can do in PhotoLine, compared to what you can't do in
other programs, is very very long. You just have to rethink old methods in
newer and sometimes more efficient and effective ways. (The above 2
favorite PSP tools being the exception.)

BTW: don't worry too much about being stuck with a lot of your proprietary
*.pspimage files. PhotoLine also loads them as well as PSP tube files (as
"stamps") and more. But it won't load in all the individual working layers
and vector items from pspimage files (I don't think). Lots of people who
jumped-ship from PSP requested some file compatibility be put into
PhotoLine. The authors were happy to oblige. It also can use many
color-palette and brush and shape files from other programs.

Does that help to answer your question?

treker

2010-03-02 02:40:06 UTC

Permalink

I made the mistake of buying PSP X right after it came out and trying
it on my XP system. It worked okay, but the enjoyment was gone. I
hated the interface. The menus were all messed up. Changing the
brushheads was a task in itself. But to me, the worst item in the
whole mess was Corel's idea of an image browser. In a word, it
Sucked.

Needless to say, I deleted the program and returned to PSP 9.01. I
still run it to this day, along with Windows XP. Oh, and the disk
makes a great coaster.

On Mon, 01 Mar 2010 09:10:42 -0600, Daryl Robbins

Post by Daryl Robbins
I remember reading about, and myself even posting about, how when Jasc was
bought up by Corel that that'd be the end of any further useful
functionality to PSP. That they'd run it into the ground, while "Unlocking
its value" for themselves of course.
Word has spread to other graphic editor software discussion forums now
about the latest release of X3. I receiving the news about X3 on a forum
for a another editing program that I jumped-ship to four years ago when I
saw what a mess that Corel was making of PSP. Luckily it is not related to
any of that overpriced bloatware sold by that Mud-Hut company either. I'm
so glad I saw the writing on the wall when I did, from watching other
companies in the past run software into the ground the same way Corel
would, and did. I've had no reason to ever run PSP since.
Just out of curiosity I thought I'd see if anything has changed with PSP in
the four years since Corel has been wrecking it--downloading it to see.
I couldn't even get it to run after a one-hour install time. Tried that
three times, an hour install each time, turning things off, then on,
disabling them from services, etc. Not to mention what seemed an equally
long uninstall time for each attempt. Or the time I wasted searching the
net for solutions from all the hundreds if not thousands of others having
similar problems.
Here it is, a whole four years later, and still only a few of you are
starting to wake up.
You've been had, and had good. Now they are selling "customer support" for
a program that requires pay-for customer support in order to even get it to
run. With virtually zero real changes in editing capabilities, and even
less capability, since PSP 9 and X. Other than 400 megs of bloatware
add-ons that serves no real useful purpose. They can't make money from the
software they broke, so make money from those calling in on how to fix what
can't ever be fixed again. That's the only "value" left in Corel "unlocking
its value". Taking your productive time and money away from your life to
make it theirs.
The funniest part? Some of you will still pay for even that too. Corel
learnt well the motto of P.T. Barnum and how he made his riches, "There's a
sucker born every minute."
What a fun reminder of why I jumped ship four years ago.
Some things never change.
The true sign of insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and
expecting a different result. Four years of the same actions and choices
done by the very the same people, to only prove that anyone who has
supported or continues to support PSP and Corel for four years or more
truly are insane. Even four years of it won't be enough for some to prove
to themselves that they have gone insane.
Enjoy another four years of that. Just thought I'd stop in to mention how
many were right four years ago and moved on to better editors which have
grown in leaps and bounds in functionality all this time, quite unlike PSP.
Back to my preferred editors now. One day in four years wasted on PSP again
was more than enough for me. I'm not insane. Leaving Corel and PSP in the
dirt four years ago is proof enough for that.

Access Developer

2010-08-05 22:46:45 UTC

Permalink

Post by Daryl Robbins
Here it is, a whole four years later, and still
only a few of you are starting to wake up.

Explain to me just how you know how many of "us" are "waking up", please. I
don't see comp.graphics.apps.paint-ship-pro.psychics,
corel.general.software.psychics, nor corel.paintshipprophotox2.psychics in
your list of crossposted newsgroups.

Maybe you ought to watch Bill O'Reilly and follow his advice about not
"bloviating" when you post if you want to be taken seriously. In simple
terms, Daryl, you are full of hot air. Gee, I blocked "uni" to avoid your
type of rant, but, of course, if you wish to continue making a fool of
yourself in public, you are entitled to do so.

PSP 9 runs just as well for me now as it did when it was produced by Jasc.
I looked at later editions, but didn't want to invest the time and energy to
learn new interface features, or deal with changes that I didn't need.

--
Larry Linson, Microsoft Office Access MVP
Co-author: "Microsoft Access Small Business Solutions", published by Wiley
Access newsgroup support is alive and well in USENET
comp.databases.ms-access

ron2vn

2013-07-25 16:47:52 UTC

Permalink

Years ago I obtained from amazon dot com a full retail version, including
disc and user's manual, of the original Jasc PSP 9.01 and have been totally
satisfied ever since because I can do everything I want with it. I have no
interest at all in any of Corel's products and will never use them.
Just my 2 cents for free.