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.
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:
18 comments:
I'm afraid my own experience mirrors yours. I was hopeful that the next version would fix a lot of the issues and show us that Corel was out to be a contender, but instead of fixes and real improvements most of the upgrade appears to be fluffy features that can be used in advertising. I have not tried the carver tool yet, but I will admit they did some serious improvements to the way it handles RAW import. Other than that, all the problems I had with X2 still seem to be there. I might be going back to using X11, which was more stable.
I upgraded because my old PSP8 has issue with Win7-64, and I really see it became an overbloated and dully written application. I am investigating what standby.exe really does - it scans the disks, loads DLLs and generate a file. Why, I still don't know. And why it does at startup and over and over? It seems PSP could "drive" it calling it with -START, -RESTART, -STOP, -SCAN and -SCANWOM parameters. Use SysInternals' Autoruns to clean entries left behind.
As with Yo Spiff, my experience mirrors yours. After battling all morning I finally deleted X3 AND X2 because X2 was acting flakier than usual. I then found Corel's clean-up utility and ran that and it seemed to clean out even more debris left behind by Corel's own uninstall.
I've used PSP in v3x and I've paid for every version. I feel really let down, like an old friend has turned into that fat guy who eats everything, acts rude, and won't leave until he breaks something.
I'm back to a reinstall of X2 for now while I check out the other offerings out there. Gawd how I hate the idea of having to learn a new program but the short term pain will be less than the unending torture PSP odd behaviors and crashes.
Well, let's see... Based on the credits that roll past on the About dialog in VideoStudio X2, Corel seems to do all their development in China. I guess you get what you pay for. I have had pretty good luck with X2, so I will stick with it.
Thanks for the info on X3.
Do you mind to give a small German company a try? They are developing their application since years. Unfortunately without a big budget for marketing. Just try it, it's shareware, you do have the full functionality in the first 30 days. (And afterwards for a small money) I'm curious about your opinion of this software.
http://pl32.com (PhotoLine)
Regards,
Andreas
Last year I bought a copy of X2 because I'd started my masters in Fine Art and was intending to use PSP, which I've used since V7 to do web comics and other graphics. This was partly to make absolutely sure that I had a legal copy. Someone had given me a copy of X which worked fine, but if there was even a hint of illegal software on the free laptop I had, the uni would repossess it!
I was disappointed with the "improvements", none of which seemed to make things easier for me or extend functionality into areas I needed (improved vector objects for example). I think perhaps what's kept me with PSP is the GIMP's horrible interface (and even worse vector capability) and Photoshop's hideous price.
Considering my needs (mostly comic work) I probably won't upgrade to any further versions, and am looking at Open Canvas and/or Manga Studio Ex for a lot of features that I WILL benefit from.
But it's a pity, because I liked PSP despite itself.
I was PSP from the beginning. JASC was doing it right. I now use PSP Photo X2.
Marketing at Corel really screwed things up when they took over. Just the new name "Corel Paint Shop Pro Photo X2 Ultimate" (CPSPPX2U ?) tells the story. Budgets, product directions and feature sets are given & defined by Excel, Project and PowePoint users, not by graphic designers or photographers.
Even stupid buggy stuff is never adressed; the software is never updated or patched; and it crashes way too often.
The problem is there's not much else to go to, certainly not, it appears, X3.
V12.50
XP-SP3
Dual Pentium
4GB RAM
If you pirate software, you must be a huge idiot to think your experence is going to be as good as buying it retail.
"If you pirate software, you must be a huge idiot to think your experence is going to be as good as buying it retail."
Actually, pirating is all that Corel deserves. The pirated versions allow you to get rid of the stupid forced registration requirement, you can get rid of PSIService, etc. The only limitation is that you are not allowed to update the software (otherwise you are locked out), but none of Corel's online updates for PSP ever improved anything, so that's not a huge loss at all.
Look at all the extra shit that PSPX3 installs WITHOUT PERMISSION:
* QuickTime
* Windows Media Encoder
* Protexis Licensing Service V2
* Corel Image Viewer (replaces the standard Windows picture viewer behind your back)
* Corel Media Cataloger (indexes pictures, FREEZES PSP RANDOMLY, and always wants to run in the background)
* Corel Photo Downloader
* Corel Standby Monitor
* Corel File Shell Monitor
* Corel Context Menu Extension
* Corel Preview Extension
* Corel MLV (some shit to burn DVDs)
* Dozens of DirectShow filters that break your media player
I don't want any of this. In total, it took me three hours to get rid of all of it. I had to use special tools to restore the standard Windows picture viewer and to remove the DirectShow filters. Then I spent another 15 minutes disarming PSIService so I could remove it without the program claiming the installation was broken.
To make sure Corel can't reactivate any of its bullshit behind my back, I renamed all EXE files except the main program EXE and moved them out of the program folder. And guess what: even if those additional EXE files aren't there, the main program RUNS FINE. So they are NOT NECESSARY. You can literally delete 90% of the installation and it doesn't break anything. It's just a ton of useless bloat.
After moving out all of the crap, my installation folder was down to 500MB (from original 1.4GB!!).
I made the mistake of buying PSPX3, and I really regret doing so; it's not worth the money. I wish I would have pirated it, because I found that there are special pirated versions that don't contain any of the addon crap.
I hope Corel chokes and dies.
How about the extra 400MB of languages that get installed? How stinkin' hard is it to check Windows' locale or >gasp!< *ask* the user what he wants to install?
I *loved* PSP back in the Jasc days. Corel has FUBARed it.
But there's still hope! Instead of just griping on this blog, take the same few minutes and tell Corel what you think. If loyal users of PSP take the time to complain, Corel will likely listen.
It's too late - I went and bought the Adobe CS5 Suite for my needs. I realised that if I was serious about producing two graphic novels for my Masters in Fine Arts, that PSP alone wouldn't cut it.
Also, it's hard for anyone outside the USA to give ANY feedback to Corel. I will still use PSP, but I can't see why I would upgrade or buy a new version every again.
We still use PSP 6.02 at work even though I have all the latest updates. PSP went seriously downhill as soon as Corel bought it off JASC. I wish the original team would go back working on it, even under another name.
What a bunch of whiny babies. I guess you'd rather spend money. I've used Paint Shop Pro since 1997 and I still love it. I used it all the time and my clients are happy campers, too.
Hated the trial of the X3 monster bloatware version, then ran into all sorts of issues with my licensed and bought copy of X2, which I was never that fond of, but had no luck re-installing it, even though I tried many, many times, with tricks from the Corel forums, Internet discussions and what have you. Nothing worked, just would not get beyond the start-up screen. I'm now back to X, which was decent enough, even though I preferred the Jasc versions. Even though I'm Canadian, I have to admit that Corel totally messed up this program. I'm trying to avoid the 600-pound Photoshop gorilla, but looks like Corel would prefer me going there! All the services that get installed are riduculous - it's MY machine, ask me if I want or need those services, don't just install them! Bye-bye Corel, no more PSP upgrades for me. What a total waste of endless development hours!
With each new version or update I was hoping that they would resolves there bugs or slowness.
I got disapointed, probably, 4 or 5 times, but I jus tkept buying updating.
X3 is such a hell, I instantly bought PSE (Adobe Photoshop Elements). I'm a bit struggling with a learning curve for PSE, but I wasted so much time and had so much corrupt files I better had switched over sooner.
They send me monthly or even weekly, promotions but I'm so sick of Corel mentalatily and agressive sales that I probably never buy anything from Corel ever again.
Just a follow-up. In June last year I bought a student version of Adobe Creative Suite 5. Considering it included copies of Photoshop (which I've switched to now), Fireworks (which I've used an old version of for years), and Flash (as well as othrs), I found it a pretty good deal.
I miss the media brushes, but everything else in Photoshop is actually easier to use, and more consistent.
So it goes.
Was recently asked to support PSP as well as Photoshop in my photography classes. After running into trouble with Corel's ancellerary programs searched the net for a solution. That is when I came up on your site. Thanks for a clear, well written, not overly commercial site.
At this point I am planning to uninstall Paint Shop Pro (x3) and will be recommending GIMP as alternative photo manipulation program to students on a budget.
It seems the users of PSP 9 were right when they commented that Corel will unequivocally ruin the product.
But they are not the only one's ...
Look at Nero,Roxio,Cyberlink....
Thank god I am using pirated software otherwise I would be tempted to break someone's neck...
The latest Corel crap is one big waste of time... Did I mention their Standby.exe prevents Windows 7 from shutting down ?
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