Another Corel Failure

It's that time of the year again. The season of disappointment is upon us. September's the month when Corel always unveils a new version of PSP, which is amazing, since there hasn't been a truly new PSP in six years. PSP 13.2 is out and I decided to go ahead and review it, if not to analyze its new features (there aren't any), at least to remind everyone not to fall for Corel's schtick again and be duped into buying this product. Like I've said many times, the best PSP is version 10, so stick with it, if you don't have it and can't find it, look for it in the appropriate channels. Anyway, as you might have guessed, the differences between PSP 13 and 13.2 aren't many. The installation now takes about 10 minutes and there have been some optimizations: 107 mb ram at startup, 330 mb virtual memory (including the junk services) , 638 mb program folder, 24 278 files in 906 folders (the last one's actually more than PSP 13). There are two startup services that run even if you're not using PSP - Corel Photo Downloader and Corel File Shell Monitor.

So that's about it. The review could just end here, but I wanted to talk a little bit about the incredible laziness over there at Corel. This goes mainly for the developers, because the marketing team, which has been kind enough to contact this blog, has worked hard to make this stagnant puddle of duckweed seem fresh and new. It's the developers that after a year of doing who knows what, have produced a box of nothing that costs 90 euro, or 70 euro for an upgrade. Just for fun, I decided to replicate my PSP10 interface in PSP13 and imposed them on top of one another. This will give you an idea of how little Corel has done in the past 6 years:

Remember when JASC used to make complicated operations very intuitive and easy to use, while Photoshop was far behind in practicality? Well, now Adobe works hard to make things easy, while Corel works easy to make things hard and unpractical. A good example is the new Content Aware resizer/carver algorithm, which I talked about in the previous articles. Both PSP and Photoshop borrow the same algorithm from the developers at MERL (Mitsubishi),

but they went about it it in completely different ways. Adobe chose to implement the resizer as a simple deform tool – you scale the image as you would any object and the content aware resizer does its job. In PSP, Corel chose to add a bulky add-on instead. And while Adobe's content aware object carver is a simple brush (paint over the unwanted object and the algorithm will carve it out and add new seams from the image), Corel settled with a destructive filter that sucks in the image (vertically or horizontally) without adding new seams. See the result below:

So even with a ready-made, freely distributable algorithm, Corel have managed to screw things up. This and the many other useless add-ons Corel have pasted onto the core program (ExpressLab, Organizer, Project creator, Photo downloader, etc.) leads me to believe that Corel are either too afraid or too lazy to touch JASC's core program code. So sticking more and more add-ons onto the main program is a way to simulate progress.

In contrast, JASC's genius and dedication were so great that now 6 years in their absence, PSP is still ahead of Photoshop in some areas. Photoshop still lacks something as practical as a warp brush. Its customizability is still pitiful compared to PSP's approach - “move any button anywhere”, “set any shortcut to anything”. PSP's colors/materials/textures palette is far more intuitive than the one in PS. In other areas: brushes, retouching tools and oddly enough, program simplicity, six years was enough time for Photoshop to pull so far ahead, that PSP's not even a competitor any more. I used to taunt my Photoshop-using friends that I can do anything they can, only much faster, and with greater quality and ease. I also participated in Photoshop contests with good old PSP9 and even made a couple hundred dollars from it. Now, I'm sad to say, I have to resort to Photoshop for some things PSP can't do. As one reader of this blog put it so well, we might have to morph over to the evil Adobe empire sooner or later.

Part 7: A New Hope?

Seeing how there aren't many Star Wars references out there, I thought I'd start off with the very original title "A new hope?" that I'm sure no one's ever used before. Sure, it's a tiny theoretical speck of hope and my realistic prognosis of PSP's chances of survival remains poor. I mean, no one's ever survived the bloatware-spyware stage (if you know of a remission story, please let me know). But anyway, I was contacted by Corel a few days ago and there seems to be a desire for change in the way PSP is managed. It may have something to do with the management overhaul going down at Corel, or PSP's inevitably plunging popularity, who knows. This is part of my conversation with PSP's marketing manager, G.W. (I don't know if he wants me to reveal his name) :

=================

Hi Max, I'm G.W.

I work on the PaintShop product team at Corel. Having discovered your blog, http://improvepsp.blogspot.com/, for the first time a few days back, it is with admiration and concern that I introduce myself.

Admiration, for the impressive depth of knowledge you've demonstrated and analysis you've made over the past few years. Concern, for the deep impression that your analysis has made on me - especially the fact that you've declared it time to wrap things up for a product you've had such a long relationship with.

This is definitely not the experience that we want PSP customers to have, and clearly you think we haven't been getting it right in recent years. We don't want things to be this way, and we're working to change PSPP for the better.While we have learned a lot from your blog already, we'd really like the opportunity to speak with you sometime soon - if you are willing to spend some time with us to hear everything you want to say to us about PaintShop and to ask you a few questions about how you think we can make PSP better. Our product manager for PaintShop is out of the office right now, but if you had some time next week to chat, we'd really appreciate it. Let me know what day/time might be good for you and what time zone you are in.

Sincerely,

G.W.

=======

My reply:

Hello, G.,

I'm pleasantly surprised that my blog has reached Corel and it makes me happy that your company has contacted me personally. That said, as experienced as one single user can be, nothing can replace a direct, open contact with the community, so my main and most important suggestion would be to open a freely accessible official forum on Corel.com, where users can directly contact a representative of the programming team, or an active programmer. You will immediately notice a torrent of fresh ideas much more comprehensive than the ones I can give you.

Using PSP in my profession, I'm noticing three main problems:

- The brush engine - outdated, unsuitable for proper work with a tablet.
- The growing size and heaviness of the product, mainly due to unnecessary bundled software and background services. The core program could easily fit into less than 100 mb.
- The product is being marketed towards photographers only, but what makes a product like Adobe PhotoShop successful is its ability to manipulate (to photoshop) images and create stunning digital paintings. My suggestion would be to hire professional artists to build a gallery with creative photo-manipulations and paintings, and also use their feedback when building new versions.

I'm also assuming that you will ask me to take down the blog, as it may give your product a bad name, however I'm not willing to do so. I promise to take it down, or better yet - start writing positive reviews as soon as I test a new version of PSP that's not worse than the previous one.

Sincerely, ....

=======

Their second reply:

Hi Max,

It’s great to hear from you! Sorry for the delay in replying, I’ve been out of the office. I too am pleased that we’ve been able to connect and I’m also pleased that we share a similar perspective on the need for open and direct contact with the PSP community.

Over the past few months, we’ve been changing the way we manage PSP and I think these changes are for the positive. Specifically, we are getting much better focused on the community as you suggest we should be. It feels good to be doing so.

In terms of some of your suggestions, I can’t speak for specific feature enhancements at this time – that’s my colleague Craig’s department, but in terms of the way we need to engage the community, I think you are right on the money. You’ll see some action from us on some of these items this year – for example, the official forum you’ve suggested is something we’re working on enhancing right now. We have PSPP forums online today at forum.corel.com (we’re working to update these existing forums in the near term ahead of a larger overhaul/upgrade later in the year.) And in addition, we have plans in the works for a new blog and community platform. I’ll email you about those when they go live.

In terms of taking down your blog post, I have no such expectation. We really are keen to have open and honest dialogues about how we can make PSPP truly awesome and we value the feedback (even when it stings). That said, we really want to be your next post! (And hopefully positive!)Let’s keep in touch. Craig and I would be happy to jump on the phone with you at any time.

Yours sincerely, G.W.

==============================

end.

So as you can see, there's nothing concrete about any actual improvements or about getting PSP back to its clear-cut, non-bloated origins. But there ought to be plenty of that on the new forum. As soon as this new forum emerges, I urge all of you to go there and directly give them the advice that you've been keeping to yourself for so long. When and if that will ever happen, and most importantly, whether there will be genuine contact with the developers, is still uncertain, but let's keep our fingers crossed.

Please, leave your comments and opinions

Part 6: Rest in Peace, Paint Shop Pro

Well, it's time to wrap things up here. Yes, Paint Shop Pro 13 came out and after a short and unpleasant encounter with this loud, obnoxious lummox, I can safely say PSP is now beyond repair, beyond hope and is doomed to fade into obscurity. A blog named “How to improve PSP” is therefore no longer relevant. Sooooo, I thought it'd be appropriate for this blog to blow up and go out with a loud, farty bang, accompanied by the pungent stench of failure, just like Paint Shop Pro.

So let's begin.

The name

The first thing I noticed - Corel have made yet another experiment with the name – it's now "Paint Shop Photo Pro", not "Paint Shop Pro Photo" or “Paint Shop Pro”.
- “Hey, Max, what are you using there?”
- “Why, It's PSP – Paint Shop Pro, I mean Paint Shop Pro Photo, er... Express? No, it's Paint Shop Photo Pro... Ultimate? I'm using Photoshop damn it.”
Maybe putting in the word "photo", and then moving it ever closer to the beginning, was meant to snatch some of that "Photoshop" popularity. But let's imagine someone saying: “No! This... generic movie/pop star cannot be this fit! There must be some sort of sham! I think this picture has been Paint Shopped Photo Pro-ed! I heard they have something called... the thinnify”...

The sales pitch

The new slogan is "Professional-looking photos - fast!". Really. Let's just go with “Kind of professional-ish photo fixer-upper for your friend..... the monkey.....'s baby sister....'s pet raccoon”. The “Art gallery” on their site is just a photo album with some filters used, which reaffirms my suspicion that there are no actual artists working in Corel, or even consulting them. Let's make “House M.D. and only consult Web M.D.”

Use of resources

The RAM usage is 188 mb at startup, which is three times what PSP10 takes up, which is odd, considering it's the same core program. The size of a fresh installation is now a whopping 1.24 gb. 23 608 files in 1264 folders. The PSPX that I've used for several years is 2916 files and 119 folders, occupying only 184 of my megabytes. If you go to the "What's new" section on their website, you'll actually see this: "Enhanced! Speed and performance."

PSP now installs more junk services than ever, without even asking you of course. Virtual memory including background processes like MediaCataloger.exe, metadatamgr.exe, psiservice.exe, CorelPhotoDownloader.exe and standby.exe is 618 mb. And of course, PSIservice, Standby and Metadatamgr don't go away when you close PSP. They need to look after you, and check the sodium content of your food I guess. There's also a file called "BWOut.vfx" that my Avira detects as Proxy.Puma.PF trojan. I have a suggestion – instead of a pretty ballerina, the splash screen should have a fat, sweaty guy, sitting in your bed and refusing to leave.

even if you close your eyes, he's still there...

The installation... oh boy...

PSP 13 has the worst installation of any program I've seen. It has three stages: “Recomposing installation”, “Preparing your system” and “Installing”. Now, I have a decent dual-core processor with 4 GB RAM and the damn thing took 40 minutes to "almost" install. That's almost twice as much time as it took to install my Windows OS. Exactly 40 minutes into the installation, an error message pops up and says “Windows Image Acquisition failed to start”. Great, another 10 minutes to “roll back” the installation. I wanted to just end it there so badly, but I somehow brought myself to trying again. After a few more attempts to install, I figured out that I had to tinker with services.msc for the installation to work. I wonder how many potential users will be repulsed by the trial installation alone, let's hope a lot.



By the way, you can't start the program until you register with Big Bro Corel. Of course, I happened to have a Corel account, I registered it way back when I wasn't embarrassed to death of making one. Get this. My password was "paint shop pro rocks" :S Isn't that just as cute as it is ironic, as it is truly sad and pathetic? Picture the weird and mysterious world of the late 1990's, imagine a bright-eyed and excited 14-year-old Maxy coming up with that password: "paint shop pro rocks", and then 24-year-old disgruntled jerk Max zapps in from the future and says in a monotone voice: "Only disappointment and frustration awaits you". OK...

The program itself

...froze within the first 10 seconds of startup. Yes, I still had some residual excitement from my childhood experiences of checking out a new PSP, even though I knew it was going to be another disappointment. Still, I was at least a bit interested in what X3 was going to be like... And then I saw it...

Well, they changed the color scheme again. Made it even darker. You know what else they changed? Nothing. Not even the icons. The UI is the same, they just added buttons for all the useless “add-ons” they stacked on top of the core, I like to call them “growths”. “Express lab”, “Organizer”, and now another rudimentary appendage – Project creator. Do you know what it does? It can do... photo book, card, collage, facebook, backup disk, order online, all of those things. Can you guess I didn't bother to look into it?


The core program, now called “Full editor” is essentially the same as PSP9 and 10. So absolutely no improvement in the brush engine, whatever I wrote in my previous article, applies to PSPX3 as well - the awful rendering and pressure support, the airbrush graininess, everything.
The only positive thing in PSPX3 is the "smart carver" (actually, the Content-Aware Image Resizer), which "sucks in" and masks the picture around an object to make it disappear. This is useful for objects which clearly distinguish themselves from the background and (don't let Corel hear you) quite frankly, is a brilliant new tool in photo manipulation. Is it worth marrying the bloated ogre for the pretty jewel on its finger? I don't think so.

You can only fool yourself for so many years, it's time to admit this thing isn't going anywhere. It's an ever growing mess that will never be fixed by Corel. They will never make a straight-forward PSP without any parasite services and useless features, because the mindless dullards simply don't realize what is good and what isn't. It's time to move on. The only thing I can hope for is for Corel's PSP experiment to die and get picked up as open-source, like Blender. I don't think this will ever happen, though.

So to end on a positive note: