Suggestions for the upcoming v9 of Photo-paint (long)
Valery Kritchallo
Feedback site; I invite everybody to comment on this).
Subject: suggestions for the upcoming v9 of Corel Photopaint.
Hello at Corel,
I know you are busy right now somewhere in the beta stage the new v.9 of
the product, so it's probably too late for requesting of essential new
features, but yet I hope some of my suggestions will be implemented.
Especially because they are all more of an 'enhancing' or 'fixing'
character. I posted some of these suggestions already before (on the
Usenet), but nevertheless, here they go again...
1. Photoshop API/plugins support. This is the most disasterous area in
the program, I believe, and the problems get more and more serious.
While I
understand that it's not possible to follow Photoshop's internal plugins
support technology 100% exactly, there are some obvious drawbacks in
Photopaint preventing to use many new plugins successfuly. Here is the
list (which I compiled during the last months of work) of plugins which
exhibit complete or partial loss of functionality under Photopaint:
- new KPT5 from MetaCreations;
- masking pluigns, like Magic Mask, Arrivo Select, Mask Pro 2;
- Genesis VFX (Positron), Lens Flares (Axion), Phototracer;
- Blade Pro from Flaming Pear;
- Ulead Type;
- Xaos Tools' TypeCaster;
- Extensis' PhotoTools (v3.02 still has some problems);
... and the list is growing.
Even so some of the listed above plugins do function correctly in basic
terms, there still remain incompatibility problems, - mostly due to the
incorrect preview window exposed when they work under Photo-paint. But
the major problems face those plugins which try to work outside the
selection/object area, or trying to affect the transparency of the
object or background. Most notably, the selection plugins can't send
back the result of their work directly to the host as a new mask. Also,
plugins like PhotoCaster or TypeCaster benefit greatly from being able
to create their output in an empty layer (under Photoshop), so that the
rendered (new) object has the proper transparency right after the
plugin's work is done. Not possible in Photo-paint at all.
I strongly wish that Photo-paint would allow to launch such plugins on
an empty object and not display a message like "The selected object is
empty".
Otherwise, I find the plugin's support in Photo-paint (house-keeping- or
setup-wise) outstanding. However, sometimes, after number of subsequent
Plugin Add or Remove operations in the Tools / Options interface (with
adding or removing groups of plugins from the active list), I see that
the plugins menu structure is scrambled: a fictuous plugins sub-group is
added at the bottom, with empty and repetitive sub-menu options, which I
can repair only by manual removing of the pntmenu.cfg file from the
Workspace Photo-paint's file area.
2. Brushes and brushing operations. Though generally very impressive and
sophisticated, the Photo-paint's brushes family has its problems. Many
brushes, for example, are not subtle enough for delicate artistic work.
I found it many times, that even the lowest levels of the Strength or
similar parameter produce too pronounced effects. Also, the mask
brushing work in the large zoom-in state, when the size of the brush is
about 1-2 pixels and the image is large (bigger that 800x600, say), the
brush's motion and pointer becomes really jerky and difficult to control
precisely.
Additionally, I feel a disappointing lack of pixels-moving brushes,
similar to Squizz one or (even better) Super Goo. The only one I see in
Photo-paint, the Smear brush, is not organic or liquid enough, so to
speak.
3. Shadows and masks. I found Perspective and Drop shadows in
Photo-paint, though rich in interface and handy to use, inferior in
quality to those from Alien Skin and PhotoTools: too weak internal
gaussian blur algorithms, I guess, so that the resulting shadowed areas
don't look convincing enough. Related to this, somehow, is my request to
the Feather Mask option: I would really want to have more subtle and
powerful mask feathering operations, so that it would be possible to
have the feathered area smoothly diffused into black on wide pixels
distance, - just like it's possible with gray-scale gradients or Object
Transparency Tools. With the current feathered masks, it's not possible
to achieve completely smooth blends of the selected and affected area
with the background, no matter how big a feathering you do.
4. It would be great to be able to undo the plugin's or effect's result
partially, by using that 'Undo Last Action' brush tool. However, when
trying to use it after a plugin's action, I get a message form
Photo-paint "This tool requires an undo buffer". I do Undo, then Redo,
it still persists. It's not clear to me, why this option is not working:
can't Photo-paint use the previous image's state as the Undo buffer?
This tool, btw, won't brush/Undo a native Photo-paint's effect, either,
- only the painted brush strokes.
I believe, this should be easy to change...
5. The Clone brush: the way how it works, causes a characteristical
striped
pattern to appear very often, since it may use just cloned pixels as the
source for the subsequent cloning, when the distance between the
original spot and the working area is small enough. In the latest
Photoshop version, Adobe addressed this so that the cloning brush will
always take the source pixels only from the original image's contents
(out of the same Undo buffer, I guess), and never from the already
cloned pixels. Can this be implemented in Photo-paint?
6. The great and unique Mesh Warp could greatly benefit from a better,
wider preview window and the ability to view also the background (in a
sort of 'onion skin' manner), when mesh-warping an object, and/or
selection borders, when there is a selection, so that the warping
actions could be aligned along a distinctive shape. Even better would be
to have an ability to overlay a semi-transparent image atop the warped
part within the Mesh Warp's interface, - like it's done in the Squizz
plugin (I know, this plugin happens to be included with Photopaint, but
it's a very old v1.5 of it, and it's still largely a 'stranger' to
Corel's interface).
7. The Artistic / Canvas effect is great, but what is called 'Emboss'
parameter in its interface, is not really Emboss, but more the filter's
intensity. Can't we have a real Emboss option here, - like the old
Aldus/Adobe's Texturizer (of Gallery Effects) ? Without this, I have to
use the Impressionist filter for such effect....
8. Paths. Two major complaints: why can't we export path out of
Photo-paint into, for example, .ai/.eps format files? and why is it not
possible to convert the font/letter shapes to paths directly, avoiding a
mask creation on this way? Fonts seem to me the best candidates for
direct path creation...
9. I work with animation clips a lot and have found that Photo-paint's
facilities in this department (though numerous) are below any standard.
It works pathetically slow with loaded clips, doesn't have any real
automation in frames inserting or manipulatiing, and has many other
weaknesses. The program has got a very wide list of supported formats,
however, - the animation formats conversion possibilities alone could be
worth buying the whole program for some people. Once I fancied
Photo-paint MPEG output a lot, but recently I found it wasn't updated
since v6 (seems to me), and now its quality is no longer any good,
regarding the modern requirements.
10. A big request to CorelDraw people (although I am not a very
frequent user of it): when it will be possible to have a stable
scripting environment? Every time I try to use some batch processing
script (mostly for the vector file formats conversion), it will crash or
hang the system or dry out its resources. I also found, a number of
script-related options found in Photo-paint, notably, Tools / Scripts /
Batch Playback, are not implemented in Draw. Strange...
11. (but it should be higher in the list) Slowly but steadily, Corel
Draw and Photo-paint products had been gaining its 'weight', which
resulted in very slow starting up times and sluggishness of many
internal interface operations in v8. For example, I find the response
time upon clicking on OK after a single change within the Tools /
Options dialog ridiculously long. Even on my office 300 Mhz PII machine
with 96 Mb RAM, I can't say I have a pleasant moment whenever starting
up or making changes in Options. If Corel targets most wide crowds of
users on the planet for Photo-paint, - professional as well as home
ones, they really must do their best to make the program's usage feel
'snappy' and smooth.
I have some more requests left, as you might guess, but need to draw the
line somewhere here....
Valery Kritchallo,
from Deflt,
Holland
Synth Art pages at
http://www2.proteon.nl/synth_art/
Stephen Caudill
add things to that list. as i have recently found, there are more
factors than corel regarding plugins working. unfortunately, i don't
know what all of those are. Had total Xaos on win95... worked
beautifully... changed to windows NT, crash every time. Same software
in my system, just different OS. By the way, Blade Pro worked
flawlessly in 95 and still does in NT. Sometimes there may be system
specific issues. I see that type caster is on your list... would be on
mine too. [my NT list, worked fine in 95] Are you running revision C?
Stephen Caudill
--
'it is impossible to achieve the aim without suffering' -Fripp
Stephen Caudill
Prophecy Productions
770.444.3928 phone/fax
www.prophecyproductions.com
ste...@prophecyproductions.com
...we've seen
your future...
Rob Bird [C_Tech]
Could you e-mail me with specifics regarding those plug ins .. The
terms of my non disclosure agreement preclude me from saying why but i
can say that the purpose is to address your concerns .. Thanks BTW for
your full and informed input.
Rob Bird
Corel C_Tech Volunteer
Chairman Corel Users Association
http://www.coreluser.com
e-mail: chai...@coreluser.com
dlf...@my-dejanews.com
Valery Kritchallo <v.v.kri...@twi.tudelft.nl> wrote:
> (this is a copy of the message I've just sent to the Corel's LiveWare
> Feedback site; I invite everybody to comment on this).
> 1. Photoshop API/plugins support. This is the most disasterous area in
> the program, I believe, and the problems get more and more serious.
> While I
> understand that it's not possible to follow Photoshop's internal plugins
>
> support technology 100% exactly, there are some obvious drawbacks in
> Photopaint preventing to use many new plugins successfuly. Here is the
> list (which I compiled during the last months of work) of plugins which
> exhibit complete or partial loss of functionality under Photopaint:
>
> - new KPT5 from MetaCreations;
> - masking pluigns, like Magic Mask, Arrivo Select, Mask Pro 2;
> - Genesis VFX (Positron), Lens Flares (Axion), Phototracer;
> - Blade Pro from Flaming Pear;
> - Ulead Type;
> - Xaos Tools' TypeCaster;
> - Extensis' PhotoTools (v3.02 still has some problems);
> ... and the list is growing.
The only way these companies will be able to correct the problems is if they
code versions specifically for PhotoPaint. There's just too much divergence
in the program code between PPaint and PShop, and attempts by Corel to unify
it would either cripple PPaint or encourage yet more bugs. What might help
that process along is if Corel were to contact the respective companies and
offer to assist them in the process. (Which means: their programmers can
network with Corel's to get information and suggestions.) Since this filter
stuff is all distributed on CD anyway, there's plenty of room for host
specific versions.
And while I'm here, someone tell me... What parts of KPT5 are incompatible
with PhotoPaint8? I'm thinking of getting KPT5 and could use the info.
Doug Frost
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Rob Bird [C_Tech]
The likes of extensis (as in Intellihance and Mask Pro) are already
doing this - their installation routine asks to specify Photopaint
Photoshop and in the case of the former PSP