Photoshop or PSP

M
Posted By
Mike
Jan 21, 2004
Views
855
Replies
13
Status
Closed
I have been using PSP7 for a while along with
MS Photodraw and have gone for a 30 day trial
of Photoshop.
From my limited experience with PS is it worth
pursuing with the intension of a working version.
I am not a pro but a very keen hobbyist as I spend
a lot of time on my PC ‘playing’ with my digital images. I agree that it seems to have more options but I like the effects with PSP, for instance can I create curling
corners in photo’s in PS as easily as PSP ?
I would like to upgrade for the experience, but
would it be worth it ?

Must-have mockup pack for every graphic designer 🔥🔥🔥

Easy-to-use drag-n-drop Photoshop scene creator with more than 2800 items.

RB
rafe.bustin
Jan 21, 2004
On Wed, 21 Jan 2004 00:24:47 +0000 (UTC), "Mike" wrote:

I have been using PSP7 for a while along with
MS Photodraw and have gone for a 30 day trial
of Photoshop.
From my limited experience with PS is it worth
pursuing with the intension of a working version.
I am not a pro but a very keen hobbyist as I spend
a lot of time on my PC ‘playing’ with my digital images. I agree that it seems to have more options but I like the effects with PSP, for instance can I create curling
corners in photo’s in PS as easily as PSP ?
I would like to upgrade for the experience, but
would it be worth it ?

IMO, the main reason for using Photoshop is that
it’s the industry standard for editing still images.

When pros speak of image editing programs and
the tools within them, they’re generally talking
about Photoshop. You’ll find more books about
Photoshop, and more web tutorials, magazine
articles, etc — than about any other comparable
program.

IOW — strength in numbers. Those other programs
are probably no less capable, but your productivity
may depend on the advice and lessons you get
from others. And that advice will usually be in the
language of Photoshop.

Not to mention that Photoshop pretty much leads
the way in terms of color management.

If you’re worried about the cost, pick up a copy
of one of the older versions on eBay. Preferably
new and unregistered, or legally transferred.
I’d avoid PS Elements, as it’s a bit dumbed
down for really serious work.

rafe b.
http://www.terrapinphoto.com
-xiray-
Jan 22, 2004
On Wed, 21 Jan 2004 14:04:49 GMT, Raphael Bustin
wrote:

On Wed, 21 Jan 2004 00:24:47 +0000 (UTC), "Mike" wrote:

with PSP, for instance can I create curling
corners in photo’s in PS as easily as PSP ?

I’d avoid PS Elements, as it’s a bit dumbed
down for really serious work.

If what you’re after is that peeling corner effect, then the cost of PSP has paid for itself. Photoshop does not have that effect built into it (probably because its cliche and few professionals would actually use that effect).

About 8 years ago I had a copy of PSP and it offered much less than Photoshop. I used it as a quick image previewer. It’s been greatly improved from what I read on the box. And looks to be a good choice for a hobbist — particularly since the full version costs $89.

Consider however that there is a reason that most serious photographers and graphics professionals use Photoshop.

Before you decide, go to a largel bookstore and take a look at all the books on Photoshop and what can be done.
JK
JP Kabala
Jan 22, 2004
I have, use, and teach both. There are strengths and weaknesses to both.

I’m going to leave Elements out of this discussion, as the tendency to compare
Elements to PSP is always there, because of the similar price points. That is a
very bad thing to do. PSP has far more in common with Photoshop than Elements. Elements was an intentionally dumbed down version of PS, and I think someone must have been indulging in controlled substances when they decided what did and didn’t make the cut. It is totally nonsensical.
You have layer styles but no good way to straighten a photo or draw an arc?? Place a photo with a strong diagonal–(like a stair railing) in Elements
and choose the straighten option. You could probably use a laugh.

Photoshop is the industry standard for a lot of reasons, some having more to do with the fact that it runs effortlessly on Mac OS than actual functionality.
(PSP has never run well in anything other than Windows, though there has been a dedicated group who run it in various flavors of Linux) Apple has traditionally been the platform of choice for the design industry. That may be changing a little, but as long as it predominates,the design schools will continue to teach it, which sets up a cause and effect. But PS also has superior color management, offset press output, Pantone support, and curves and channels are more accessible. With the launch of CS,
if you are using your image editor for work in Video, there are some compelling reasons to use PS over PSP. And there is the whole layer styles thing…I’m of 2 minds about layer styles. Intellectually, I like them, but they
tend to force changes in my workflow, so I find myself working around them at times. Dynamite for text effects, a pain in the butt if you just want to bevel a selection without adding a new layer.

However, it costs five or six times as much, has a bitch of a learning curve,
has a workspace less customizable than MS Word’s, and makes doing some things that ought to be simple a vision quest. It loves keyboard shortcuts, but
will not let you add or subtract an icon from a toolbar.

To PSP’s credit, you can probably do 90% of what can be done in PS in PSP– and some things you can’t do in PS at all. Many of the tools (warp tools, histogram
adjustment and manual color correction, vector tools, and perspective correction
come immediately to mind) are superior to Adobe’s, or have no direct correlation
in PS. The kinds of effects that you talk about (page curl, for example) are things
I almost never use, but they are "built in" to PSP– in PS, there are places to find
plugins. In fact, there are three or four free plugins I recommend to PSP users
that go a long way to leveling the playing field with PS. Amphisoft’s Convolution
Shaman, MuRa’s Cloud and Copies (plasma clouds and radial blur) are must haves
that cost you nothing except a few minutes of connection time. (But don’t tell
Photoshop guru Scott Kelby that page curl is hackneyed and passe’- his new book
has a chapter dedicated to the process). With PSP8, the introduction of scripting
(macros), complete user customization of the workspace,
and a few other goodies, it is a very strong package at a very affordable price, particularly
for those who do web work or photography, rather than offset printing.

And, yes, there are many more PS books than PSP books. But the dirty little secret
is that you can, with a little experience, convert the processes for PS to PSP almost
effortlessly.

Does PSP have down sides? Sure. Everything does. Some of the native filters are
just totally useless, so you are storing and loading code I’d rather live without. Do
I like the way PS handles channels and curves better? You betcha. Would I miss
the healing brush if I did more photo work? Probably, but PSP’s scratch remover
(the tool, not the filter) does a pretty good job on a lot of things. Are the filters
and tools organized and named inconsistently? Ummm, yeah. But their background eraser beats PS’s to hell, and the warp tools are so much better than PS’s Liquefy that once you use the Warp brushes, you’ll never open Liquefy again.

Do you need offset, Pantone, video support? PS, hands down. If not,and if you’re
not a graphics professional who needs to work on a Mac…It’s users choice….

"Mike" wrote in message
I have been using PSP7 for a while along with
MS Photodraw and have gone for a 30 day trial
of Photoshop.
From my limited experience with PS is it worth
pursuing with the intension of a working version.
I am not a pro but a very keen hobbyist as I spend
a lot of time on my PC ‘playing’ with my digital images. I agree that it seems to have more options but I like the effects with PSP, for instance can I create curling
corners in photo’s in PS as easily as PSP ?
I would like to upgrade for the experience, but
would it be worth it ?

GC
Graeme Cogger
Jan 22, 2004
An interesting appraisal – thanks.

You didn’t mention the one difference between PSP and Photoshop that prevents me from using PSP. It doesn’t do colour
management – at least not in any usable way.
JK
JP Kabala
Jan 22, 2004
Yes I did…. color management is a biggie.
"Graeme Cogger" wrote in message
An interesting appraisal – thanks.

You didn’t mention the one difference between PSP and Photoshop that prevents me from using PSP. It doesn’t do colour
management – at least not in any usable way.
GC
Graeme Cogger
Jan 22, 2004
Ahh… I missed that. Let’s just say, then, that I’d like to emphasis that point 😉

In article <EFVPb.13890$>,
says…
Yes I did…. color management is a biggie.
"Graeme Cogger" wrote in message
An interesting appraisal – thanks.

You didn’t mention the one difference between PSP and Photoshop that prevents me from using PSP. It doesn’t do colour
management – at least not in any usable way.

U
Uni
Jan 24, 2004
Mike wrote:
I have been using PSP7 for a while along with
MS Photodraw and have gone for a 30 day trial
of Photoshop.
From my limited experience with PS is it worth
pursuing with the intension of a working version.
I am not a pro but a very keen hobbyist as I spend
a lot of time on my PC ‘playing’ with my digital images. I agree that it seems to have more options but I like the effects with PSP, for instance can I create curling
corners in photo’s in PS as easily as PSP ?
I would like to upgrade for the experience, but
would it be worth it ?

PSP-8 comments, unaltered, from a PSP newsgroup:

Updated: 01-21-2004

Eric wrote:
"The biggest problem I had with 7, was the text tool. What’s changed with it other than the interface?
Plus, the output is actually WORSE than 7..
which I didn’t think could be possible.

Change the font… lay down some text..
convert it to curves….

go back to lay down some more text..
and the damn font and size are reverted
to Arial 24..

Played some more, and it crashed.

3 minutes to download, 2 minutes to install, 20 minutes to play.. and I’ve already given up on it.

Ignore about 90% of the useful suggestions that were offered. Add a bunch of silly useless things.
Ruin the GUI.

Good job guys.

If this even remotely resembles the finished product,
it should be packaged as PSP 7.1, not 8."
——-

Greg Farr wrote:
"I can’t find a attributes setting for lines, so I’m assuming they should be correct, but If I draw a line of any size, from right to left, in an upward arc, like a dome, the line with take it on itself to make a straight line in the second half of the stroke, tried this dozens of times.

It also seems to be a memory hog, more than my PS7 or Painter 7, actually had to sit and wait for erase at 53 size to catch up, very slow. Can’t find memory settings, so I guess it doesn’t have any. The brushes seem nice, the steps work better and I can make a chalk like painter has. I haven’t done anything yet but scribble."

Greg Farr also wrote:
"Oh, it’s even worse than I thot. They have stopped posts on the NG, duh, do ya think, they coulda tested it all before going for broke. Same thing they did with PSP 8, not ready for prime time. I’m hot and frustrated, who wants to fight?"
——-

Sandflower wrote:
"Even Save As is gone…. For crap sake, it is a basic window feature…
I will not longer recommend PSP to anyone….
I have been using PSP since version 3 in 1997
This new version is so disappointing… sigh…..
I was so excited when I downloaded the Bata, I was all prepared to play….
sigh…."
——-

Roy Petersen wrote:
"Wow? Not for me. Nice, maybe would be a better word. Not flaming, just
an opinion.

-Remarkable coincidence of appearance to PS7. (I do like it, but it *really* looks the same)
-Remarkable coincidence of tool button ‘flyouts’ to Fireworks. (except in FW, you don’t have to select the tool again after choosing it from the flyout for it to actually work)
-Hate that the keyboard shortcuts have changed.
-Dislike that icons have changed drastically.
-Selection tool enhancement is quite nice, especially edit. -Macro/scripting feature quite nice.
-Brush creation from selection is nice.

Lots of talk about the neat filters and all that, but I already have filters that do much of the same things..
A "must have" upgrade? I probably will upgrade for the few features I discovered I had a real use for (in the short time I used it before I had system issues forcing it’s removal), but it isn’t really a WOW for me. Sorry."
——-

Pai Yili wrote:
"The current version of the psp BETA 8 text tool is less usable than the version 7 incarnation."
——-

Reckless wrote:
"1 – It can open Photoshop 7 file format…. unfortunately it presents a
single layer image so all the ‘juicy’ stuff is lost 🙁
2 – I’d hope this was added but it wasn’t… when I make a selection I
sometimes forget to set the option before selection. So the instinctive
method is to complete the selection area and then check the forgotten option
(feather/anti-alias). Unfortunately, PSP8 (& 7) ignores this for the current
selection and you are force to cancel and redo selection.

PSP8 looks better (only through Office XP menus) and the docking bar is
‘OK’. Speed wise (as people mentioned here) is a tad slower than before (for
no ‘noticeable’ benefits) – and whilst I accept that it’s not optimised
please don’t be fooled into thinking it’ll zoom along when finally released
(I work in product software dev – yes we get improvements but they are
usually percentages not magnitiudes of!)

Obviously the killer Q is price – each successive release has hicked it a
lit higher so no doubt this will be the same. Hope it’s not too much an
increase!"
——-

Jonathan wrote:
"The real minimum screen size is 1024X768, and I do hope that Jasc updates
the system requiements to reflect that in the final release.

Time for you to get a new monitor and/or graphics card. 800X600 is not enough for graphics editing, not even close."
——-

CandyWrapperLady wrote:
"I don’t like the TEXT part of PSP 8.0 or the layers. In 7- you could set font,
kerning, leading etc. and it remembered it when you repeoned. This one only
appears to remember the text but no settings. The layers are driving me nuts!"
——-

Thomas wrote:
"I waited long enough for the 16bit/channel support.

This means

PSP down,
Picture Window up,

maybe even Photoshop. The 8bit per color is probably enough for all the ‘web animation’ stuff, not for serious image processing and photography though."
——-

Jaguwar wrote:
"I’m just chiming in here. I have a 366 megahertz AMD K6-2 w/3DNow!, 224 Megabytes Installed Memory, and 15 Gigs of free hard drive space
where PSP is running. I rebooted, hoping it was my system. No luck. Then I shut down ICQ. Some improvement, but not much. I tried a tube and
got one on the screen, but then it stalled for a full minute before releasing the cursor for further action.
Big bummer. 🙁 "
——-

Toni wrote:
"I am running Beta2 and still crashing like crazy. I am running an Intel Pentium 4 -( 2.2ghz)- (1024 memory).
Can’t understand why I keep crashing. It just totally hangs up and won’t let me do anything except ctrl/alt/delete??????? Pretty frustrating when you can’t complete a project. Can’t say there is one specific place that it hangs up…. drop shadow…cutouts….. just about anywhere!"
——-

Dave wrote:
"I just received the PSP8 download (85MB) earlier today. Looks good so far, but I was a little dissapointed the "One Touch" photo tool doesn’t do as good of a job as even Photoshop’s 5.0 LE. Also the undo/redo tool seems to work awfully slow, even when I increased it’s file size to 1GB, and even on a first rate pc. Time will tell…"
——-

Terry Pinnell wrote:
"I can no longer Undo using Ctrl+z. Have to go to command history. On an earlier session today I did not have this problem. This appears to have arisen since the crash I reported.
I’m close to ditching PSP 8…!"
——-

Evan wrote:
"Kris, Until the rendering engine is fixed I will not consider PSP8 as a valuable addition to my software inventory. I presume you have read the e-mail I sent (I may be wrong, ‘though I suspect it was mentioned in some meeting or other). You (Jasc) have jumped the gun on this release, under severe pressure from marketing, I’m sure. As I have said, and others agree, PSP8 needed at least one more round as a beta before release. If Jasc isn’t strong enough as a company financially to last one more month with the product in development, then we, who love your product, and in many cases rely on it to earn our daily bread, are going to have to find an alternative thats works. For me at this time it is PSP7. This does not help the Jasc revenue stream. I really like the new features in PSP8, but it is broken. Would you please give some indication as to when it will be fixed? Vauge assurances that it will be addressed in a future update are not very inspiring. This (the render engine) is an elementary programming problem. I have dealt with the same issues in my own software before and overcome them. Can you (Jasc) not do the same?"
——-

Charlie wrote:
"Most others complain of severe slowness and cumbersomeness along with some basic PSP features either hidden or missing in PSP 8. Many mention how long the undo takes..etc.

I have the release PSP 8 Trial version installed as well as PSP 7 and on my 2.4G /P4 with 1G RAM and 533 mhz bus with XP Pro I have to say that PSP 8 is a real slow dog in opening -and- in all graphic functions compared to PSP 7."
——-

David J. Taylor wrote:
"Whatever the absolute speed is, it is a lot slower than PSP7. I cedrtainly hope they can tweak this during it’s lifetime, but it would be a significant factor against me recommending PSP8 to anyone over PSP7." ——-

Colin Steadman wrote:
"Hello I’ve been wondering if Animation Shop is included with PSP8. I’ve had an email from a reseller, checked Amazon and looked through this news group, but cannot find a definitive answer!"

Joske replied to Colin Steadman:

"Yes it does, but it hasn’t been upgraded so it won’t know PSP8 exists. No recognition of PSP8 image files, saving as PSP7 is needed. Also no importing and exporting, just copy/pasting and replacing frames." ——-

Don wrote:
"I beg to differ… the fault IS with Paint Shop Pro for not saving EPS, CDR, or PSD files properly. As I said… this is a work-around, not an ideal solution.

IMHO Jasc wasted a lot of time putting all of those cute filters and junk (not to mention their and my time wasted by playing "hide the menu items" with the new user interface) into PSP8 when I still get a hard time any time I try to get print work or publishing done." ——-

AB wrote:
"A lot of us are "outsmarted" by 8.
It’s a buggy program released too quickly by a company seeing only dollar signs."
——-

Mike wrote:
Man…I’m no pro but I’m not an idiot either. PSP has got to be the wrost upgrade yet. Simple tasks like just creating some text have become a chore.
If I’d known it would be this bad I would have kept PSP 7. Guess I’ll have to buy another
——-

Don/luvgeek wrote:
Let me preface this by saying that I have been using Paint Shop Pro for 9 years and have been a long time supporter and fan of the product. I have been trying PSP8 and it doesn’t seem to be quite ready for prime time. There are serious bugs in the UI of the level of when PSP 5 was released.

Most notably, important functions are moved around to the point of almost qualifying as being hidden. It is so bad that it begs one to consider if there was actual malicious intent. To top this off, context help items do not link to the appropriate pages (e.g.. help on "Vector Properties" takes you to "Formatting Text").

For example, I have been trying for the last hour to do a simple edit on a vector layer. There is no "node edit" function. Help says that to edit a vector object you need to be in node edit mode. There is no node edit mode on the context menu, the layers context menu, or any of the menus. There is no mention in the help on how to get into node edit mode.

Speaking of the layers palette, you need to resize the PSP window, drag the palette to the location you want, then resize PSP again or it gets stuck any time you drag it near the right edge of the PSP window. Snapping it to the edge is useless since you loose the layer properties when it is attached.

And the default setting with the preview window displayed, slows PSP down by a factor of 10 after doing some operations on an image with transparent layers. I suspect that this may be the cause of many of the speed complaints seen in the newsgroups.

Finally, there is the annoyance that all of these cute new features have been added, but proper support for PSD, EPS and other professional file formats is still incomplete (or missing).
——-

Jared wrote:
"I cleared the TEMP folder on my hard drive,
but I still end up with this problem.

Does anyone know how I can get PSP8 to stop
locking up on me when I try to save a JPEG?

If I continue saving everything as a TIFF
I’ll run out of hard drive space soon!"
——-

AC wrote:
"I very much need detail advice about a failed re-install of PSP7, and have emailed on 3 occasions in the previous 4 weeks,
but have not heard anything from them, apart from an automated software problem/issue number, and a statement that please would I be patient, they might be busy."
——–

Steve T wrote:
"I have been a PSP user since ver 6 and currently have ver 7.04. I downloaded the "trial" version of PSP8 and have nothing but problems. I have an Athlon 1.4mhz CPU and 512mb ram and running XP. No anti-virus (offline computer), no firewall, no utilities such as Norton’s running in background and my system froze with 4 PSP file format images open. My system was stressed out by this. Unreal! Half the time I try to save a file as a .jpg I get an error has occurred while trying to write to file. The PSP8 saved files are invalid in PSP7 and cannot be opened. I get errors and corruption trying to move files from PSP8 to Jumpdrives or ZIP disks. I installed the 8.01 patch. I love PSP7 but this new version is a pain in the ass and dead slow. I have PSP7 on my online computer. It is only a 500mhz/384mb ram unit with AV,firewall,etc. and it flies through operations that bog down with PSP8. Are others having the same problems with simple things as saving files in
..jpg format? Thanks, Steve T."
——–

JamesBahn wrote:
"I’ve been a PSP user since V3. JASC used to really put out bulletproof software, but I’ve found PSP8 to literally be unusable. I can’t open files I can open with PSP5 and 7. Forget about the new features; I can’t open most jpg files. Does JASC even HAVE a QA dept anymore? I doubt it. The huge patch wouldn’t even install. I have to assume that these guys don’t even care anymore. And I’d have to guess that the old-timers are gone, or they’re rich and aren’t paying attention.

My question is; how can you people even take this stuff seriously? It’s drek."
——-

clintonG wrote:
"Yes, its real slow not to mention all of the other problems with this release. I really want to upgrade but there’s no way I can justify doing so. I’ll be waiting awhile to see if Jasc wises up. If not? At some point I’ll be compelled to consider a competitive product." ——-

Avonz La’Sonte wrote:
"Yeah boyee!!!! Yeah I wish I never bought PSP8" ——-

GTO wrote:
"Thanks to both replies.
I submitted bug #1 to JASC. I was also not able to reproduce bug #2 on an other system.
In the meantime, I crashed PSP 8.01 when trying to undo four consecutive strokes with the warp-brush.
I will wait until 8.04 shows up before I delete 7.04. Did JASC add too many fancy features to version 8 and finally turn a very stable application into a nightmare?"
——-

Static wrote:
"Anyone know if there is a limitation in the eval product of PSP 8.0 (Just downloaded and installed tonight) … I can not open a JPEG file and do a save as – run optimizer. Each time I do, the program stops responding.
I’m running WinXP SP1 … the image is large 600k.
I tried v7.x a while ago on Win2k with no issues.
Thanks for any advice."
——-

Marte Palmer wrote:
"I have seen a number of posts identifying this same issue. When running PSP8.01, if I try to browse a folder with a large image count, the application freezes."

diana replied to Marte:
"It will have to be a new patch I guess. I have the same problem, lost some work several times this past week due to trying to composite images using the browser to fetch them. I forget to save before each time I need to access the browser and it gets me way too often. It was so frequent and frustrating I went back to PSP7 to finish the work." ——–

Psiborg wrote:
"Long load times but things also just feel
sluggish in 8 compared to 7.04. Like many here, I’ve used PSP since it’s earliest days and this is the first version I won’t be upgrading too." ——–

Janus wrote:
"I have a number of usability/crash issues with PSP8, and also a number of selections. Since there are so many, I figured it might be wise to post a thread here on the forums so more experienced PSP8 users can give me tips on some of them, and put in their two cents. I figure once the helpful forum users solve half of these issues, I can file a support request with Jasc about the ones that are left. Or something. :)" ——–

Rick Simon wrote:
"I’m giving 8.1 a pass for now. I don’t have the time or inclination for more beta testing at this point. As far as the NNTP interface, I’ve also given up on that for now. I’ve tried numerous times over the last couple of days and it’s down far more often than it’s up. Even when it’s up, it’s slow at best, the message counts are all messed up and I have yet to be able to open up the General Discussion newsgroup (the largest group). It hangs every time I try to access it. I’ve been waiting 3 months for this? Personally, I’m rather disgusted over the whole thing." ——–

John wrote:
"So they are shipping an old version and leaving you to download a very large update or hang on for this promised replacement!" ——–

Joe Fromm, from Jasc Software wrote:
"I won’t promise that at 350Mhz will always keep up." ——–
D
DjD
Jan 24, 2004
Now see, thats what we really need!! Some straight talk, about the pros and cons of, PSP and PS. Especially sense the kind of money involved would feed a small country. I have both, and use both, because I started with, PSP, but thought that, PS, was better, so I got it. It is, as you said, in some ways better, but I haven’t let go of, PSP, yet. Of course I find myself playing with windows paintbrush from time to time, yes, its sick, I know.

Thanks for a great posting.
DjD
—————————————

"JP Kabala" wrote in message
I have, use, and teach both. There are strengths and weaknesses to both.
I’m going to leave Elements out of this discussion, as the tendency to compare
Elements to PSP is always there, because of the similar price points.
That
is a
very bad thing to do. PSP has far more in common with Photoshop than Elements. Elements was an intentionally dumbed down version of PS, and I think someone must have been indulging in controlled substances when they decided what did and didn’t make the cut. It is totally nonsensical.
You have layer styles but no good way to straighten a photo or draw an arc?? Place a photo with a strong diagonal–(like a stair railing) in Elements
and choose the straighten option. You could probably use a laugh.
Photoshop is the industry standard for a lot of reasons, some having more
to
do with the fact that it runs effortlessly on Mac OS than actual functionality.
(PSP has never run well in anything other than Windows, though there has been a dedicated group who run it in various flavors of Linux) Apple has traditionally been the platform of choice for the design
industry.
That may be changing a little, but as long as it predominates,the design schools will continue to teach it, which sets up a cause and effect. But PS also has superior color management, offset press output, Pantone support, and curves and channels are more accessible. With the launch of CS,
if you are using your image editor for work in Video, there are some compelling reasons to use PS over PSP. And there is the whole layer styles thing…I’m of 2 minds about layer styles. Intellectually, I like them,
but
they
tend to force changes in my workflow, so I find myself working around them at times. Dynamite for text effects, a pain in the butt if you just want to bevel a selection without adding a new layer.

However, it costs five or six times as much, has a bitch of a learning curve,
has a workspace less customizable than MS Word’s, and makes doing some things that ought to be simple a vision quest. It loves keyboard
shortcuts,
but
will not let you add or subtract an icon from a toolbar.
To PSP’s credit, you can probably do 90% of what can be done in PS in
PSP–
and some things you can’t do in PS at all. Many of the tools (warp tools, histogram
adjustment and manual color correction, vector tools, and perspective correction
come immediately to mind) are superior to Adobe’s, or have no direct correlation
in PS. The kinds of effects that you talk about (page curl, for example) are things
I almost never use, but they are "built in" to PSP– in PS, there are
places
to find
plugins. In fact, there are three or four free plugins I recommend to PSP users
that go a long way to leveling the playing field with PS. Amphisoft’s Convolution
Shaman, MuRa’s Cloud and Copies (plasma clouds and radial blur) are must haves
that cost you nothing except a few minutes of connection time. (But don’t tell
Photoshop guru Scott Kelby that page curl is hackneyed and passe’- his new book
has a chapter dedicated to the process). With PSP8, the introduction of scripting
(macros), complete user customization of the workspace,
and a few other goodies, it is a very strong package at a very affordable price, particularly
for those who do web work or photography, rather than offset printing.
And, yes, there are many more PS books than PSP books. But the dirty
little
secret
is that you can, with a little experience, convert the processes for PS to PSP almost
effortlessly.

Does PSP have down sides? Sure. Everything does. Some of the native
filters
are
just totally useless, so you are storing and loading code I’d rather live without. Do
I like the way PS handles channels and curves better? You betcha. Would I miss
the healing brush if I did more photo work? Probably, but PSP’s scratch remover
(the tool, not the filter) does a pretty good job on a lot of things. Are the filters
and tools organized and named inconsistently? Ummm, yeah. But their background eraser beats PS’s to hell, and the warp tools are so much
better
than PS’s Liquefy that once you use the Warp brushes, you’ll never open Liquefy again.

Do you need offset, Pantone, video support? PS, hands down. If not,and if you’re
not a graphics professional who needs to work on a Mac…It’s users choice….

"Mike" wrote in message
I have been using PSP7 for a while along with
MS Photodraw and have gone for a 30 day trial
of Photoshop.
From my limited experience with PS is it worth
pursuing with the intension of a working version.
I am not a pro but a very keen hobbyist as I spend
a lot of time on my PC ‘playing’ with my digital images. I agree that it seems to have more options but I like the effects with PSP, for instance can I create curling
corners in photo’s in PS as easily as PSP ?
I would like to upgrade for the experience, but
would it be worth it ?

M
Mike
Jan 25, 2004
Thanks to all that replied.
I have gained a lot of information from your replies
and have come to a conclusion that while PSP8 is
a great all rounder Photoshop is the ultimate goal
for the serious ‘artist’.
So I have decided to keep my PSP7 for now and
Photodraw (great fun) but also get a full version
of Photoshop 7 which I hope to get cheaper now
since CS has been released and waste the evenings
on my PC’s learning PS 7.
Thanks again for the info.
Mike

"Mike" wrote in message
I have been using PSP7 for a while along with
MS Photodraw and have gone for a 30 day trial
of Photoshop.
From my limited experience with PS is it worth
pursuing with the intension of a working version.
I am not a pro but a very keen hobbyist as I spend
a lot of time on my PC ‘playing’ with my digital images. I agree that it seems to have more options but I like the effects with PSP, for instance can I create curling
corners in photo’s in PS as easily as PSP ?
I would like to upgrade for the experience, but
would it be worth it ?

XT
xalinai_Two
Jan 25, 2004
How about removing all comments referring to the beta versions and to problems before the current version 8.1 wich is already 5 months old?

On Fri, 23 Jan 2004 22:45:49 -0500, Uni
wrote:

Mike wrote:
I have been using PSP7 for a while along with
MS Photodraw and have gone for a 30 day trial
of Photoshop.
From my limited experience with PS is it worth
pursuing with the intension of a working version.
I am not a pro but a very keen hobbyist as I spend
a lot of time on my PC ‘playing’ with my digital images. I agree that it seems to have more options but I like the effects with PSP, for instance can I create curling
corners in photo’s in PS as easily as PSP ?
I would like to upgrade for the experience, but
would it be worth it ?

PSP-8 comments, unaltered, from a PSP newsgroup:

Updated: 01-21-2004

Eric wrote:
"The biggest problem I had with 7, was the text tool. What’s changed with it other than the interface?
Plus, the output is actually WORSE than 7..
which I didn’t think could be possible.

Change the font… lay down some text..
convert it to curves….

go back to lay down some more text..
and the damn font and size are reverted
to Arial 24..

Played some more, and it crashed.

3 minutes to download, 2 minutes to install, 20 minutes to play.. and I’ve already given up on it.

Ignore about 90% of the useful suggestions that were offered. Add a bunch of silly useless things.
Ruin the GUI.

Good job guys.

If this even remotely resembles the finished product,
it should be packaged as PSP 7.1, not 8."
——-

Greg Farr wrote:
"I can’t find a attributes setting for lines, so I’m assuming they should be correct, but If I draw a line of any size, from right to left, in an upward arc, like a dome, the line with take it on itself to make a straight line in the second half of the stroke, tried this dozens of times.

It also seems to be a memory hog, more than my PS7 or Painter 7, actually had to sit and wait for erase at 53 size to catch up, very slow. Can’t find memory settings, so I guess it doesn’t have any. The brushes seem nice, the steps work better and I can make a chalk like painter has. I haven’t done anything yet but scribble."

Greg Farr also wrote:
"Oh, it’s even worse than I thot. They have stopped posts on the NG, duh, do ya think, they coulda tested it all before going for broke. Same thing they did with PSP 8, not ready for prime time. I’m hot and frustrated, who wants to fight?"
——-

Sandflower wrote:
"Even Save As is gone…. For crap sake, it is a basic window feature…
I will not longer recommend PSP to anyone….
I have been using PSP since version 3 in 1997
This new version is so disappointing… sigh…..
I was so excited when I downloaded the Bata, I was all prepared to play….
sigh…."
——-

Roy Petersen wrote:
"Wow? Not for me. Nice, maybe would be a better word. Not flaming, just
an opinion.

-Remarkable coincidence of appearance to PS7. (I do like it, but it *really* looks the same)
-Remarkable coincidence of tool button ‘flyouts’ to Fireworks. (except in FW, you don’t have to select the tool again after choosing it from the flyout for it to actually work)
-Hate that the keyboard shortcuts have changed.
-Dislike that icons have changed drastically.
-Selection tool enhancement is quite nice, especially edit. -Macro/scripting feature quite nice.
-Brush creation from selection is nice.

Lots of talk about the neat filters and all that, but I already have filters that do much of the same things..
A "must have" upgrade? I probably will upgrade for the few features I discovered I had a real use for (in the short time I used it before I had system issues forcing it’s removal), but it isn’t really a WOW for me. Sorry."
——-

Pai Yili wrote:
"The current version of the psp BETA 8 text tool is less usable than the version 7 incarnation."
——-

Reckless wrote:
"1 – It can open Photoshop 7 file format…. unfortunately it presents a
single layer image so all the ‘juicy’ stuff is lost 🙁
2 – I’d hope this was added but it wasn’t… when I make a selection I
sometimes forget to set the option before selection. So the instinctive
method is to complete the selection area and then check the forgotten option
(feather/anti-alias). Unfortunately, PSP8 (& 7) ignores this for the current
selection and you are force to cancel and redo selection.
PSP8 looks better (only through Office XP menus) and the docking bar is
‘OK’. Speed wise (as people mentioned here) is a tad slower than before (for
no ‘noticeable’ benefits) – and whilst I accept that it’s not optimised
please don’t be fooled into thinking it’ll zoom along when finally released
(I work in product software dev – yes we get improvements but they are
usually percentages not magnitiudes of!)

Obviously the killer Q is price – each successive release has hicked it a
lit higher so no doubt this will be the same. Hope it’s not too much an
increase!"
——-

Jonathan wrote:
"The real minimum screen size is 1024X768, and I do hope that Jasc updates
the system requiements to reflect that in the final release.
Time for you to get a new monitor and/or graphics card. 800X600 is not enough for graphics editing, not even close."
——-

CandyWrapperLady wrote:
"I don’t like the TEXT part of PSP 8.0 or the layers. In 7- you could set font,
kerning, leading etc. and it remembered it when you repeoned. This one only
appears to remember the text but no settings. The layers are driving me nuts!"
——-

Thomas wrote:
"I waited long enough for the 16bit/channel support.
This means

PSP down,
Picture Window up,

maybe even Photoshop. The 8bit per color is probably enough for all the ‘web animation’ stuff, not for serious image processing and photography though."
——-

Jaguwar wrote:
"I’m just chiming in here. I have a 366 megahertz AMD K6-2 w/3DNow!, 224 Megabytes Installed Memory, and 15 Gigs of free hard drive space
where PSP is running. I rebooted, hoping it was my system. No luck. Then I shut down ICQ. Some improvement, but not much. I tried a tube and
got one on the screen, but then it stalled for a full minute before releasing the cursor for further action.
Big bummer. 🙁 "
——-

Toni wrote:
"I am running Beta2 and still crashing like crazy. I am running an Intel Pentium 4 -( 2.2ghz)- (1024 memory).
Can’t understand why I keep crashing. It just totally hangs up and won’t let me do anything except ctrl/alt/delete??????? Pretty frustrating when you can’t complete a project. Can’t say there is one specific place that it hangs up…. drop shadow…cutouts….. just about anywhere!"
——-

Dave wrote:
"I just received the PSP8 download (85MB) earlier today. Looks good so far, but I was a little dissapointed the "One Touch" photo tool doesn’t do as good of a job as even Photoshop’s 5.0 LE. Also the undo/redo tool seems to work awfully slow, even when I increased it’s file size to 1GB, and even on a first rate pc. Time will tell…"
——-

Terry Pinnell wrote:
"I can no longer Undo using Ctrl+z. Have to go to command history. On an earlier session today I did not have this problem. This appears to have arisen since the crash I reported.
I’m close to ditching PSP 8…!"
——-

Evan wrote:
"Kris, Until the rendering engine is fixed I will not consider PSP8 as a valuable addition to my software inventory. I presume you have read the e-mail I sent (I may be wrong, ‘though I suspect it was mentioned in some meeting or other). You (Jasc) have jumped the gun on this release, under severe pressure from marketing, I’m sure. As I have said, and others agree, PSP8 needed at least one more round as a beta before release. If Jasc isn’t strong enough as a company financially to last one more month with the product in development, then we, who love your product, and in many cases rely on it to earn our daily bread, are going to have to find an alternative thats works. For me at this time it is PSP7. This does not help the Jasc revenue stream. I really like the new features in PSP8, but it is broken. Would you please give some indication as to when it will be fixed? Vauge assurances that it will be addressed in a future update are not very inspiring. This (the render engine) is an elementary programming problem. I have dealt with the same issues in my own software before and overcome them. Can you (Jasc) not do the same?"
——-

Charlie wrote:
"Most others complain of severe slowness and cumbersomeness along with some basic PSP features either hidden or missing in PSP 8. Many mention how long the undo takes..etc.

I have the release PSP 8 Trial version installed as well as PSP 7 and on my 2.4G /P4 with 1G RAM and 533 mhz bus with XP Pro I have to say that PSP 8 is a real slow dog in opening -and- in all graphic functions compared to PSP 7."
——-

David J. Taylor wrote:
"Whatever the absolute speed is, it is a lot slower than PSP7. I cedrtainly hope they can tweak this during it’s lifetime, but it would be a significant factor against me recommending PSP8 to anyone over PSP7." ——-

Colin Steadman wrote:
"Hello I’ve been wondering if Animation Shop is included with PSP8. I’ve had an email from a reseller, checked Amazon and looked through this news group, but cannot find a definitive answer!"
Joske replied to Colin Steadman:

"Yes it does, but it hasn’t been upgraded so it won’t know PSP8 exists. No recognition of PSP8 image files, saving as PSP7 is needed. Also no importing and exporting, just copy/pasting and replacing frames." ——-

Don wrote:
"I beg to differ… the fault IS with Paint Shop Pro for not saving EPS, CDR, or PSD files properly. As I said… this is a work-around, not an ideal solution.

IMHO Jasc wasted a lot of time putting all of those cute filters and junk (not to mention their and my time wasted by playing "hide the menu items" with the new user interface) into PSP8 when I still get a hard time any time I try to get print work or publishing done." ——-

AB wrote:
"A lot of us are "outsmarted" by 8.
It’s a buggy program released too quickly by a company seeing only dollar signs."
——-

Mike wrote:
Man…I’m no pro but I’m not an idiot either. PSP has got to be the wrost upgrade yet. Simple tasks like just creating some text have become a chore.
If I’d known it would be this bad I would have kept PSP 7. Guess I’ll have to buy another
——-

Don/luvgeek wrote:
Let me preface this by saying that I have been using Paint Shop Pro for 9 years and have been a long time supporter and fan of the product. I have been trying PSP8 and it doesn’t seem to be quite ready for prime time. There are serious bugs in the UI of the level of when PSP 5 was released.

Most notably, important functions are moved around to the point of almost qualifying as being hidden. It is so bad that it begs one to consider if there was actual malicious intent. To top this off, context help items do not link to the appropriate pages (e.g.. help on "Vector Properties" takes you to "Formatting Text").
For example, I have been trying for the last hour to do a simple edit on a vector layer. There is no "node edit" function. Help says that to edit a vector object you need to be in node edit mode. There is no node edit mode on the context menu, the layers context menu, or any of the menus. There is no mention in the help on how to get into node edit mode.
Speaking of the layers palette, you need to resize the PSP window, drag the palette to the location you want, then resize PSP again or it gets stuck any time you drag it near the right edge of the PSP window. Snapping it to the edge is useless since you loose the layer properties when it is attached.

And the default setting with the preview window displayed, slows PSP down by a factor of 10 after doing some operations on an image with transparent layers. I suspect that this may be the cause of many of the speed complaints seen in the newsgroups.

Finally, there is the annoyance that all of these cute new features have been added, but proper support for PSD, EPS and other professional file formats is still incomplete (or missing).
——-

Jared wrote:
"I cleared the TEMP folder on my hard drive,
but I still end up with this problem.

Does anyone know how I can get PSP8 to stop
locking up on me when I try to save a JPEG?

If I continue saving everything as a TIFF
I’ll run out of hard drive space soon!"
——-

AC wrote:
"I very much need detail advice about a failed re-install of PSP7, and have emailed on 3 occasions in the previous 4 weeks,
but have not heard anything from them, apart from an automated software problem/issue number, and a statement that please would I be patient, they might be busy."
——–

Steve T wrote:
"I have been a PSP user since ver 6 and currently have ver 7.04. I downloaded the "trial" version of PSP8 and have nothing but problems. I have an Athlon 1.4mhz CPU and 512mb ram and running XP. No anti-virus (offline computer), no firewall, no utilities such as Norton’s running in background and my system froze with 4 PSP file format images open. My system was stressed out by this. Unreal! Half the time I try to save a file as a .jpg I get an error has occurred while trying to write to file. The PSP8 saved files are invalid in PSP7 and cannot be opened. I get errors and corruption trying to move files from PSP8 to Jumpdrives or ZIP disks. I installed the 8.01 patch. I love PSP7 but this new version is a pain in the ass and dead slow. I have PSP7 on my online computer. It is only a 500mhz/384mb ram unit with AV,firewall,etc. and it flies through operations that bog down with PSP8. Are others having the same problems with simple things as saving files in
.jpg format? Thanks, Steve T."
——–

JamesBahn wrote:
"I’ve been a PSP user since V3. JASC used to really put out bulletproof software, but I’ve found PSP8 to literally be unusable. I can’t open files I can open with PSP5 and 7. Forget about the new features; I can’t open most jpg files. Does JASC even HAVE a QA dept anymore? I doubt it. The huge patch wouldn’t even install. I have to assume that these guys don’t even care anymore. And I’d have to guess that the old-timers are gone, or they’re rich and aren’t paying attention.

My question is; how can you people even take this stuff seriously? It’s drek."
——-

clintonG wrote:
"Yes, its real slow not to mention all of the other problems with this release. I really want to upgrade but there’s no way I can justify doing so. I’ll be waiting awhile to see if Jasc wises up. If not? At some point I’ll be compelled to consider a competitive product." ——-

Avonz La’Sonte wrote:
"Yeah boyee!!!! Yeah I wish I never bought PSP8" ——-

GTO wrote:
"Thanks to both replies.
I submitted bug #1 to JASC. I was also not able to reproduce bug #2 on an other system.
In the meantime, I crashed PSP 8.01 when trying to undo four consecutive strokes with the warp-brush.
I will wait until 8.04 shows up before I delete 7.04. Did JASC add too many fancy features to version 8 and finally turn a very stable application into a nightmare?"
——-

Static wrote:
"Anyone know if there is a limitation in the eval product of PSP 8.0 (Just downloaded and installed tonight) … I can not open a JPEG file and do a save as – run optimizer. Each time I do, the program stops responding.
I’m running WinXP SP1 … the image is large 600k.
I tried v7.x a while ago on Win2k with no issues.
Thanks for any advice."
——-

Marte Palmer wrote:
"I have seen a number of posts identifying this same issue. When running PSP8.01, if I try to browse a folder with a large image count, the application freezes."

diana replied to Marte:
"It will have to be a new patch I guess. I have the same problem, lost some work several times this past week due to trying to composite images using the browser to fetch them. I forget to save before each time I need to access the browser and it gets me way too often. It was so frequent and frustrating I went back to PSP7 to finish the work." ——–

Psiborg wrote:
"Long load times but things also just feel
sluggish in 8 compared to 7.04. Like many here, I’ve used PSP since it’s earliest days and this is the first version I won’t be upgrading too." ——–

Janus wrote:
"I have a number of usability/crash issues with PSP8, and also a number of selections. Since there are so many, I figured it might be wise to post a thread here on the forums so more experienced PSP8 users can give me tips on some of them, and put in their two cents. I figure once the helpful forum users solve half of these issues, I can file a support request with Jasc about the ones that are left. Or something. :)" ——–

Rick Simon wrote:
"I’m giving 8.1 a pass for now. I don’t have the time or inclination for more beta testing at this point. As far as the NNTP interface, I’ve also given up on that for now. I’ve tried numerous times over the last couple of days and it’s down far more often than it’s up. Even when it’s up, it’s slow at best, the message counts are all messed up and I have yet to be able to open up the General Discussion newsgroup (the largest group). It hangs every time I try to access it. I’ve been waiting 3 months for this? Personally, I’m rather disgusted over the whole thing." ——–

John wrote:
"So they are shipping an old version and leaving you to download a very large update or hang on for this promised replacement!" ——–

Joe Fromm, from Jasc Software wrote:
"I won’t promise that at 350Mhz will always keep up." ——–

L
Liz
Jan 25, 2004
In message
(Xalinai) wrote:

How about removing all comments referring to the beta versions and to problems before the current version 8.1 wich is already 5 months old?

Uni is a well-known, longstanding troll over on the psp newsgroup. He had to change his email addy so often (because of complaints about his trolling and alleged other dubious activities), I found it difficult to keep up with KFing him. For years he used to whine about how bad his ancient version of PSP was compared the the 30-day demo of Photoshop7 which he loved so much he didn’t buy. Even when I offered to send him a copy of Elements for the cost of shipping only (in the hope he would go away, play with his new toy and leave the group alone), he declined, despite his alledgedly professed love of Photoshop. Of course, he *may* have somehow managed to get a copy of PS by now…. If you’ve got a day or two, you could search the google groups archives…..

He has doubtless snipped all the answers to the points he’s so cheerfully published here.

(You won’t draw me into a stupid trolling discussion on this, Uni, I just popped into this group to see what was going on, and finding you here, I’m unsubscribing again…)

Liz


Virtual Liz at http://www.v-liz.co.uk
Kenya; Tanzania; India; Seychelles; Namibia
"I speak of Africa and golden joys"
U
Uni
Jan 25, 2004
Xalinai wrote:
How about removing all comments referring to the beta versions and to problems before the current version 8.1 wich is already 5 months old?

5 months old and they’re still issuing patches? I understand many, if not all, registered users of PSP-8 still haven’t received their promised
8.1 CD by postal mail.

Anyway, here’s a updated list of comments:
Updated: 01-25-2004

Eric wrote:
"The biggest problem I had with 7, was the text tool. What’s changed with it other than the interface?
Plus, the output is actually WORSE than 7..
which I didn’t think could be possible.

Change the font… lay down some text..
convert it to curves….

go back to lay down some more text..
and the damn font and size are reverted
to Arial 24..

Played some more, and it crashed.

3 minutes to download, 2 minutes to install, 20 minutes to play.. and I’ve already given up on it.

Ignore about 90% of the useful suggestions that were offered. Add a bunch of silly useless things.
Ruin the GUI.

Good job guys.

If this even remotely resembles the finished product,
it should be packaged as PSP 7.1, not 8."
——-

Greg Farr wrote:
"I can’t find a attributes setting for lines, so I’m assuming they should be correct, but If I draw a line of any size, from right to left, in an upward arc, like a dome, the line with take it on itself to make a straight line in the second half of the stroke, tried this dozens of times.

It also seems to be a memory hog, more than my PS7 or Painter 7, actually had to sit and wait for erase at 53 size to catch up, very slow. Can’t find memory settings, so I guess it doesn’t have any. The brushes seem nice, the steps work better and I can make a chalk like painter has. I haven’t done anything yet but scribble."

Greg Farr also wrote:
"Oh, it’s even worse than I thot. They have stopped posts on the NG, duh, do ya think, they coulda tested it all before going for broke. Same thing they did with PSP 8, not ready for prime time. I’m hot and frustrated, who wants to fight?"
——-

Sandflower wrote:
"Even Save As is gone…. For crap sake, it is a basic window feature…
I will not longer recommend PSP to anyone….
I have been using PSP since version 3 in 1997
This new version is so disappointing… sigh…..
I was so excited when I downloaded the Bata, I was all prepared to play….
sigh…."
——-

Roy Petersen wrote:
"Wow? Not for me. Nice, maybe would be a better word. Not flaming, just
an opinion.

-Remarkable coincidence of appearance to PS7. (I do like it, but it *really* looks the same)
-Remarkable coincidence of tool button ‘flyouts’ to Fireworks. (except in FW, you don’t have to select the tool again after choosing it from the flyout for it to actually work)
-Hate that the keyboard shortcuts have changed.
-Dislike that icons have changed drastically.
-Selection tool enhancement is quite nice, especially edit. -Macro/scripting feature quite nice.
-Brush creation from selection is nice.

Lots of talk about the neat filters and all that, but I already have filters that do much of the same things..
A "must have" upgrade? I probably will upgrade for the few features I discovered I had a real use for (in the short time I used it before I had system issues forcing it’s removal), but it isn’t really a WOW for me. Sorry."
——-

Pai Yili wrote:
"The current version of the psp BETA 8 text tool is less usable than the version 7 incarnation."
——-

Reckless wrote:
"1 – It can open Photoshop 7 file format…. unfortunately it presents a
single layer image so all the ‘juicy’ stuff is lost 🙁
2 – I’d hope this was added but it wasn’t… when I make a selection I
sometimes forget to set the option before selection. So the instinctive
method is to complete the selection area and then check the forgotten option
(feather/anti-alias). Unfortunately, PSP8 (& 7) ignores this for the current
selection and you are force to cancel and redo selection.

PSP8 looks better (only through Office XP menus) and the docking bar is
‘OK’. Speed wise (as people mentioned here) is a tad slower than before (for
no ‘noticeable’ benefits) – and whilst I accept that it’s not optimised
please don’t be fooled into thinking it’ll zoom along when finally released
(I work in product software dev – yes we get improvements but they are
usually percentages not magnitiudes of!)

Obviously the killer Q is price – each successive release has hicked it a
lit higher so no doubt this will be the same. Hope it’s not too much an
increase!"
——-

Jonathan wrote:
"The real minimum screen size is 1024X768, and I do hope that Jasc updates
the system requiements to reflect that in the final release.

Time for you to get a new monitor and/or graphics card. 800X600 is not enough for graphics editing, not even close."
——-

CandyWrapperLady wrote:
"I don’t like the TEXT part of PSP 8.0 or the layers. In 7- you could set font,
kerning, leading etc. and it remembered it when you repeoned. This one only
appears to remember the text but no settings. The layers are driving me nuts!"
——-

Thomas wrote:
"I waited long enough for the 16bit/channel support.

This means

PSP down,
Picture Window up,

maybe even Photoshop. The 8bit per color is probably enough for all the ‘web animation’ stuff, not for serious image processing and photography though."
——-

Jaguwar wrote:
"I’m just chiming in here. I have a 366 megahertz AMD K6-2 w/3DNow!, 224 Megabytes Installed Memory, and 15 Gigs of free hard drive space
where PSP is running. I rebooted, hoping it was my system. No luck. Then I shut down ICQ. Some improvement, but not much. I tried a tube and
got one on the screen, but then it stalled for a full minute before releasing the cursor for further action.
Big bummer. 🙁 "
——-

Toni wrote:
"I am running Beta2 and still crashing like crazy. I am running an Intel Pentium 4 -( 2.2ghz)- (1024 memory).
Can’t understand why I keep crashing. It just totally hangs up and won’t let me do anything except ctrl/alt/delete??????? Pretty frustrating when you can’t complete a project. Can’t say there is one specific place that it hangs up…. drop shadow…cutouts….. just about anywhere!"
——-

Dave wrote:
"I just received the PSP8 download (85MB) earlier today. Looks good so far, but I was a little dissapointed the "One Touch" photo tool doesn’t do as good of a job as even Photoshop’s 5.0 LE. Also the undo/redo tool seems to work awfully slow, even when I increased it’s file size to 1GB, and even on a first rate pc. Time will tell…"
——-

Terry Pinnell wrote:
"I can no longer Undo using Ctrl+z. Have to go to command history. On an earlier session today I did not have this problem. This appears to have arisen since the crash I reported.
I’m close to ditching PSP 8…!"
——-

Evan wrote:
"Kris, Until the rendering engine is fixed I will not consider PSP8 as a valuable addition to my software inventory. I presume you have read the e-mail I sent (I may be wrong, ‘though I suspect it was mentioned in some meeting or other). You (Jasc) have jumped the gun on this release, under severe pressure from marketing, I’m sure. As I have said, and others agree, PSP8 needed at least one more round as a beta before release. If Jasc isn’t strong enough as a company financially to last one more month with the product in development, then we, who love your product, and in many cases rely on it to earn our daily bread, are going to have to find an alternative thats works. For me at this time it is PSP7. This does not help the Jasc revenue stream. I really like the new features in PSP8, but it is broken. Would you please give some indication as to when it will be fixed? Vauge assurances that it will be addressed in a future update are not very inspiring. This (the render engine) is an elementary programming problem. I have dealt with the same issues in my own software before and overcome them. Can you (Jasc) not do the same?"
——-

Charlie wrote:
"Most others complain of severe slowness and cumbersomeness along with some basic PSP features either hidden or missing in PSP 8. Many mention how long the undo takes..etc.

I have the release PSP 8 Trial version installed as well as PSP 7 and on my 2.4G /P4 with 1G RAM and 533 mhz bus with XP Pro I have to say that PSP 8 is a real slow dog in opening -and- in all graphic functions compared to PSP 7."
——-

David J. Taylor wrote:
"Whatever the absolute speed is, it is a lot slower than PSP7. I cedrtainly hope they can tweak this during it’s lifetime, but it would be a significant factor against me recommending PSP8 to anyone over PSP7." ——-

Colin Steadman wrote:
"Hello I’ve been wondering if Animation Shop is included with PSP8. I’ve had an email from a reseller, checked Amazon and looked through this news group, but cannot find a definitive answer!"

Joske replied to Colin Steadman:

"Yes it does, but it hasn’t been upgraded so it won’t know PSP8 exists. No recognition of PSP8 image files, saving as PSP7 is needed. Also no importing and exporting, just copy/pasting and replacing frames." ——-

Don wrote:
"I beg to differ… the fault IS with Paint Shop Pro for not saving EPS, CDR, or PSD files properly. As I said… this is a work-around, not an ideal solution.

IMHO Jasc wasted a lot of time putting all of those cute filters and junk (not to mention their and my time wasted by playing "hide the menu items" with the new user interface) into PSP8 when I still get a hard time any time I try to get print work or publishing done." ——-

AB wrote:
"A lot of us are "outsmarted" by 8.
It’s a buggy program released too quickly by a company seeing only dollar signs."
——-

Mike wrote:
Man…I’m no pro but I’m not an idiot either. PSP has got to be the wrost upgrade yet. Simple tasks like just creating some text have become a chore.
If I’d known it would be this bad I would have kept PSP 7. Guess I’ll have to buy another
——-

Don/luvgeek wrote:
Let me preface this by saying that I have been using Paint Shop Pro for 9 years and have been a long time supporter and fan of the product. I have been trying PSP8 and it doesn’t seem to be quite ready for prime time. There are serious bugs in the UI of the level of when PSP 5 was released.

Most notably, important functions are moved around to the point of almost qualifying as being hidden. It is so bad that it begs one to consider if there was actual malicious intent. To top this off, context help items do not link to the appropriate pages (e.g.. help on "Vector Properties" takes you to "Formatting Text").

For example, I have been trying for the last hour to do a simple edit on a vector layer. There is no "node edit" function. Help says that to edit a vector object you need to be in node edit mode. There is no node edit mode on the context menu, the layers context menu, or any of the menus. There is no mention in the help on how to get into node edit mode.

Speaking of the layers palette, you need to resize the PSP window, drag the palette to the location you want, then resize PSP again or it gets stuck any time you drag it near the right edge of the PSP window. Snapping it to the edge is useless since you loose the layer properties when it is attached.

And the default setting with the preview window displayed, slows PSP down by a factor of 10 after doing some operations on an image with transparent layers. I suspect that this may be the cause of many of the speed complaints seen in the newsgroups.

Finally, there is the annoyance that all of these cute new features have been added, but proper support for PSD, EPS and other professional file formats is still incomplete (or missing).
——-

Jared wrote:
"I cleared the TEMP folder on my hard drive,
but I still end up with this problem.

Does anyone know how I can get PSP8 to stop
locking up on me when I try to save a JPEG?

If I continue saving everything as a TIFF
I’ll run out of hard drive space soon!"
——-

AC wrote:
"I very much need detail advice about a failed re-install of PSP7, and have emailed on 3 occasions in the previous 4 weeks,
but have not heard anything from them, apart from an automated software problem/issue number, and a statement that please would I be patient, they might be busy."
——–

Steve T wrote:
"I have been a PSP user since ver 6 and currently have ver 7.04. I downloaded the "trial" version of PSP8 and have nothing but problems. I have an Athlon 1.4mhz CPU and 512mb ram and running XP. No anti-virus (offline computer), no firewall, no utilities such as Norton’s running in background and my system froze with 4 PSP file format images open. My system was stressed out by this. Unreal! Half the time I try to save a file as a .jpg I get an error has occurred while trying to write to file. The PSP8 saved files are invalid in PSP7 and cannot be opened. I get errors and corruption trying to move files from PSP8 to Jumpdrives or ZIP disks. I installed the 8.01 patch. I love PSP7 but this new version is a pain in the ass and dead slow. I have PSP7 on my online computer. It is only a 500mhz/384mb ram unit with AV,firewall,etc. and it flies through operations that bog down with PSP8. Are others having the same problems with simple things as saving files in
..jpg format? Thanks, Steve T."
——–

JamesBahn wrote:
"I’ve been a PSP user since V3. JASC used to really put out bulletproof software, but I’ve found PSP8 to literally be unusable. I can’t open files I can open with PSP5 and 7. Forget about the new features; I can’t open most jpg files. Does JASC even HAVE a QA dept anymore? I doubt it. The huge patch wouldn’t even install. I have to assume that these guys don’t even care anymore. And I’d have to guess that the old-timers are gone, or they’re rich and aren’t paying attention.

My question is; how can you people even take this stuff seriously? It’s drek."
——-

clintonG wrote:
"Yes, its real slow not to mention all of the other problems with this release. I really want to upgrade but there’s no way I can justify doing so. I’ll be waiting awhile to see if Jasc wises up. If not? At some point I’ll be compelled to consider a competitive product." ——-

Avonz La’Sonte wrote:
"Yeah boyee!!!! Yeah I wish I never bought PSP8" ——-

GTO wrote:
"Thanks to both replies.
I submitted bug #1 to JASC. I was also not able to reproduce bug #2 on an other system.
In the meantime, I crashed PSP 8.01 when trying to undo four consecutive strokes with the warp-brush.
I will wait until 8.04 shows up before I delete 7.04. Did JASC add too many fancy features to version 8 and finally turn a very stable application into a nightmare?"
——-

Static wrote:
"Anyone know if there is a limitation in the eval product of PSP 8.0 (Just downloaded and installed tonight) … I can not open a JPEG file and do a save as – run optimizer. Each time I do, the program stops responding.
I’m running WinXP SP1 … the image is large 600k.
I tried v7.x a while ago on Win2k with no issues.
Thanks for any advice."
——-

Marte Palmer wrote:
"I have seen a number of posts identifying this same issue. When running PSP8.01, if I try to browse a folder with a large image count, the application freezes."

diana replied to Marte:
"It will have to be a new patch I guess. I have the same problem, lost some work several times this past week due to trying to composite images using the browser to fetch them. I forget to save before each time I need to access the browser and it gets me way too often. It was so frequent and frustrating I went back to PSP7 to finish the work." ——–

Psiborg wrote:
"Long load times but things also just feel
sluggish in 8 compared to 7.04. Like many here, I’ve used PSP since it’s earliest days and this is the first version I won’t be upgrading too." ——–

Janus wrote:
"I have a number of usability/crash issues with PSP8, and also a number of selections. Since there are so many, I figured it might be wise to post a thread here on the forums so more experienced PSP8 users can give me tips on some of them, and put in their two cents. I figure once the helpful forum users solve half of these issues, I can file a support request with Jasc about the ones that are left. Or something. :)" ——–

Rick Simon wrote:
"I’m giving 8.1 a pass for now. I don’t have the time or inclination for more beta testing at this point. As far as the NNTP interface, I’ve also given up on that for now. I’ve tried numerous times over the last couple of days and it’s down far more often than it’s up. Even when it’s up, it’s slow at best, the message counts are all messed up and I have yet to be able to open up the General Discussion newsgroup (the largest group). It hangs every time I try to access it. I’ve been waiting 3 months for this? Personally, I’m rather disgusted over the whole thing." ——–

John wrote:
"So they are shipping an old version and leaving you to download a very large update or hang on for this promised replacement!" ——–

ray & carol wade wrote:
Since I upgraded to psp 8.10 my system crashes with no warning if I have several images open. It may be a memory problem, but I don’t remember having it occur before I upgraded. Anyone else with this prob, or thoughts as to why?
——–

Joe Fromm, from Jasc Software wrote:
"I won’t promise that at 350Mhz will always keep up." ——–
U
Uni
Jan 25, 2004
Liz wrote:
In message
(Xalinai) wrote:

How about removing all comments referring to the beta versions and to problems before the current version 8.1 wich is already 5 months old?

Uni is a well-known, longstanding troll over on the psp newsgroup. He had to change his email addy so often (because of complaints about his trolling and alleged other dubious activities), I found it difficult to keep up with KFing him.

Look, Lizard, I changed my e-mail address AFTER it was spammed to death by PSP users. That should not be all hard to believe. Low grade graphics software users have low grade morals.

Uni

For years he used to whine about how bad his ancient
version of PSP was compared the the 30-day demo of Photoshop7 which he loved so much he didn’t buy. Even when I offered to send him a copy of Elements for the cost of shipping only (in the hope he would go away, play with his new toy and leave the group alone), he declined, despite his alledgedly professed love of Photoshop. Of course, he *may* have somehow managed to get a copy of PS by now…. If you’ve got a day or two, you could search the google groups archives…..

He has doubtless snipped all the answers to the points he’s so cheerfully published here.

(You won’t draw me into a stupid trolling discussion on this, Uni, I just popped into this group to see what was going on, and finding you here, I’m unsubscribing again…)

Liz

How to Master Sharpening in Photoshop

Give your photos a professional finish with sharpening in Photoshop. Learn to enhance details, create contrast, and prepare your images for print, web, and social media.

Related Discussion Topics

Nice and short text about related topics in discussion sections