What use is PSP X3 when it randomly deletes pixels?
APRIL, 2011: This bug has been fixed — the patch is part of PSP Service Pack 5.
I bought PaintShop Photo Pro X3 Ultimate a short while ago. I’m getting concerned by the number of words Corel keeps adding to my favorite graphics editor product title, but they haven’t failed me in the 15 years I’ve been a faithful PaintShop Pro user.
Last week I sat down & started rather happily editing a raster layer. I may have even been whistling “Paris / Ooh La La” by Grace Potter & the Nocturnals. I made a selection using the rectangle select tool, no feathering or anti-aliasing or anything special. Dragged it over a bit, then deselected. The bottom ~3 rows of pixels promptly disappeared.
I couldn’t believe it. I quickly scanned the select tool options for the “randomly cut off bottom pixels” feature Corel had no doubt added to PSP X3 Ultimate. No suck luck.
Unfortunately this makes Paint Shop Pro X3 Ultimate …. well, for lack of a better term, TOTALLY FUCKING USELESS!!
I headed over to the Corel forums where I was disheartened to find several other posts about this bug. Someone even took the time in that 2nd link to make a video. The 3rd link has 4 pages of deselect bug complaints, dating back to April 2010 (!!)
Apparently Corel hasn’t fixed this deselect bug with the 4 service packs released so far for Paint Shop Pro X3.
I contacted their support team through email. The advice came back to “reset my workspace”. That makes sense right? Because there’s that awesomely useful workspace option that cuts off pixels on deselection? You guessed it, resetting workspace didn’t change a thing, except now I’m even more annoyed that I have to set up my workspace again! But then again, hey, why bother until after they fix the whole pixel deleting thing?
I fired off a reply with the forum links to Corel Support this morning. Can’t wait to see how they respond. Honestly, I expect more from a Canadian company.
Clearly I should have bought the less-ultimate version.
UPDATE FROM JANUARY 21st, 2011: After not receiving any further response, I called Corel this morning. Their phone system said to expect hold time of under 20 minutes. I was on hold for 46 minutes. They loop one song. When I was finally got through, the support tech immediately acknowledged the issue & although they couldn’t give me even a ballpark idea when a patch might be ready, they did say it was a very high priority for their dev team. Also said they’d contact me when the fix is released. Very nice of them.
Two hours later, an email popped up from a Corel Senior Project Manager — he sent me a beta patch to try. It solved the bug perfectly. Now we’re getting somewhere. It still amazes me how PSP Photo X3 was able to ship with such a basic flaw, but I guess it happens.
UPDATE FROM FEBRUARY 1st, 2011: Just received this from the Corel rep.
I’m working with the support team right now to release an Interim Patch with just this hot fix in it. It should be available by the end of the week and I’ll let everyone know about the KB article at that time. Again, we will roll it into the full Patch later but this will get it out for more people.
I’ll make sure to post the link to the public interim patch when it becomes available. Nice to see Corel is being proactive about this. Better late than never!
UPDATE FROM APRIL 1st, 2011: FIXED!! No April Fools joke. Corel has posted the fix under PSP X3 Knowledge Base article 000005465 – “In some cases, pixels along the bottom edge of a selection are dropped”. For the record, this patch is not part of PSP’s auto-update process – it has to be installed manually. Corel has released Service Pack 5 which is part of the auto-update process, & includes this patch. Spread the word…
LeviFiction
It’s not useless. You just have to change your approach a little. You shouldn’t have to, this is true, but whatever the problem is we don’t know the reason that it’s not fixed yet. It could be a difficult problem to solve, it could be easy and they are worried about more pressing bug fixes and stability problems that have been discovered. No one in the community knows or no one is saying.
So, what can we do about it? Don’t Defloat the selection.
When you drag the selection over it creates a floating selection. When you deselect it has to defloat first. This is where the bug is. It’s in the defloat part. So if you, instead, promote the selection to a layer instead of defloating it you gain a non-destructive edit and if you are sure of your placement you can merge down the layer. More work? Yes if you consider pressing an extra key combination work. But there is a way to deal with this.
Wick
@LeviFiction: Sweet, thanks for the tip! That’s very helpful & you’re right, an extra CTRL-SHIFT-P & Merge Down isn’t all that bad. In fact using layers for stuff that’s being moved around isn’t exactly a terrible idea either…
Too bad PSP doesn’t have a default key combination for Merge Down. For anyone who wants to set that up:
– View menu, click on Customize…
– switch to the Keyboard tab
– in the Category drop-down, change to Layers
– in the Commands list, find Merge Down
– click the “Press new shortcut key” box & assign your key combination
CTRL-SHIFT-D as the key combo works well. At least on my recently reset workspace (thanks again for that, Corel), it wasn’t being used.
Mainly I’m frustrated there’s been no useful communication from Corel so far about this serious bug with such a basic editing function. They should at the very least make their support team aware of the bug. Letting Corel Support continue making useless & futile suggestions to frustrated PSP users is a customer relations nightmare.
LeviFiction
I know what you mean.
If you check back at the forums I made a second post….well a third post….that points to the fact that it’s actually Merge Down that causes the problem we see here.
I contacted Tech Support to see if this had already been logged, the guy acted like it was a well known fact that this was the issue. Which surprised me because I have heard nothing. But I’ve been guaranteed that the developers are aware of the problem, have looked through everything and confirm that Merge Down is part of the problem, and they are working on a fix for it. Obviously it doesn’t mean anything as it doesn’t say if it’ll be fixed in Patch 5 or 6 or what have you. But it is being looked at.
That at least is comforting.
BUHusky
Can you make the beta patch they sent you available for us to download and use? I’ve been waiting for a fix for this since X3 was released.
Wick
@BUHusky: they made me promise not to give it out, but I sent your contact info to the Corel product rep & asked if he’d send you the patch as well. His name is Craig Copley. Hope he gets back to you, good luck.
Wick
@BUHusky: Craig just replied & he sent you the download link to the patch. Hope that does the trick, it worked perfectly for me.
I updated my blog post with some new information — sounds like they are releasing the public “interim patch” for PSP X3 later this week.
Jim
Well, it’s the middle of March and no patch for the merge bug. Any update(s) from your sources at Tech Support at Corel?
Wick
@Jim: thanks for the reminder — I fired off an email to my contact at Corel & will let you know what he says about that patch.
Jim
It’s been a few days, just thought I check in…
Wick
@Jim & everyone else: I heard back from Corel — they posted the fix under PSP X3 KB article 000005465 “In some cases, pixels along the bottom edge of a selection are dropped”.
Paulus
Wow, I’ve been using Paint Shop Pro since the original version 3, WAY back in the day. Ever since Corel bought out Jasc, it just hasn’t been the same. This new PSP X3 is just aweful. X2 wasn’t so bad, so I’m back to using it instead. But the more I use X3, the more it crashes, and the more lame little bugs keep cropping up (this one discussed here being an absolutely unforgiveable bug).
So yeah, stick with X2, I say. I’ve never been so tempted to switch over to PhotoShop…Dirty Corel, you’ve sold out.
Chris
I recently received X3 as a gift and am encountering this issue. It’s extremely annoying and causes a lot of extra steps for the type of work I’m doing. This post has been a great read on the subject.
I guess there’s no fix yet? I just downloaded my 2nd update since installing the program about 2 weeks ago. My current version is 13.2.1.15 and the problem still exists.
Wick
Just got word back today that Corel released a patch to fix this bug, that should be applied over PSP X3 Service Pack 4. See the end of my blog post about this for the link to download the patch. Hope that does the trick!
Chris
Wow! Just downloaded the patch and the problem is fixed! Thank you so much for posting this information. It’s extremely helpful!!
Sharon
Awesome! I’ve been looking for a fix for this since I bought this program in December! I’ve been a faithful PSP user since 2000 and this is the first time I’ve encountered a major bug like this. Thanks for posting this! I am a happy person today!
Matt
I can’t believe PSP shipped with a bug like this….and left it this way for so long. I’ve been using PSP for years and just about pulled my hair out over this one. Luckily, I only upgrade to X3 last week, but already created more new layers and merged down that I could imagine.
Anyway, for those interested, the automatic updates do not include this patch. I kind of expected the auto-install I was presented with today had it, but didn’t. Make sure to upgrade to the lastest and then run the patch on your own.
Craig
THANK! YOU! damn this bug has annoyed me for years!
Alphons
Thanks for this. I just upgraded from 12 and was searching for this fix.
The link didn’t work for me though. It asked for a username and password.
However, after installing all four patches, running PSP13 and then shutting down, patch 5 became available. All is good in the world again.