PaintShop Pro question - anyone else use it?

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Jan
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This seems to be one of life's little mysteries. I'm using PSP x6 (old, yes, I know, but so's my camera). It ran quite happily on my old XP box, apart from taking all day to do anything and occasionally crashing when it just couldn't take any more. Six months ago I got a new Windows 10 box on which PSP runs like lightning. However a while ago when I tried to use the smart selection brush it didn't work correctly and froze the program. Then it started working again and worked until a couple of days ago. I used it to edit one image, started work on another image and suddenly we're back to freezing the program, which it's done ever since. Annoying because it's a tool I use all the time. There are other ways, but all time consuming. The worst problem is remembering I can't use the smart brush. It seems other people have had this problem with just about every operating system from W7 on, so it can't be blamed on Windows 10 or its updates, but no-one has come up with an answer. It's always the same - it works perfectly for ages, then suddenly it doesn't. I'm also not certain if it's just the older versions of PSP. I'm tempted to buy the latest version but I've been holding off as I'm also wavering over getting a new camera and unlike Adobe, the raw interface isn't updatable. I don't want to buy new software then in 6 months time have to buy again because I've just bought an unsupported camera. I'm sure I can get a free trial of the latest, but the tool has gone for several months working just fine so any problem might not show up in a trial period. Anyone else had this? Or conversely is anyone running a later version on a Windows 10 box without any problems at all? I know I'm not the only person in the world using PSP but I do hammer the smart selection tool - a lot.
And before someone suggests I change to Photoshop, please don't. I don't want or need the cataloguing capabilities of Lightroom and the few times I've used Photoshop I've hated it............:(
 
Why not take a look at Affinity photo?

It's very much like photoshop and only £49
https://affinity.serif.com/en-gb/photo/

'Like Photoshop' isn't the best recommendation for me................ ;)
There's a free trial so I've bookmarked it to have a look when I have time - see if it will do what I want to do and if I can get on with the interfaces.
This is what happens when you grow up with a particular bit of software.............
Thanks
 
'Like Photoshop' isn't the best recommendation for me................ ;)
There's a free trial so I've bookmarked it to have a look when I have time - see if it will do what I want to do and if I can get on with the interfaces.
This is what happens when you grow up with a particular bit of software.............
Thanks

Then what about photoshop elements. That's a much more simplified version of photoshop.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Adobe-Phot...1528819452&sr=1-1&keywords=photoshop+elements
 
Then what about photoshop elements. That's a much more simplified version of photoshop.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Adobe-Phot...1528819452&sr=1-1&keywords=photoshop+elements

I've used Elements and hate it. It frustrates me for what it won't do, and the interfaces are hopeless. Photoshop would actually be ideal for me, it's just that I've never really 'clicked' with it. I'm also not keen on the subsciption model where it's packaged with Lightroom, which I would never use.
 
I used to used PSP for years but I gave up when I got more seriously into photo editing - I'd mainly used PSP for web page work and the ancient version I had was limited.
I initially switched to GIMP editing camera produced JPG. Then later converting RAW in the camera's own PC software to Tiff and bringing that in to work on.
https://www.gimp.org/downloads/

I bought the last standalone version of Lightroom and that does most of what I want but I'm still learning!
 
You might like Affinity - the interface is rather different to PS, but it has much of the same power (with a few tricks of its own), and the price is very competitive. Raw processing isn't its strong point, though. There isn't a Lightroom-style multi-image raw browser (though they are apparently working on something like this). Have you tried your camera maker's own application for this? They all output tiff files that can be read by any image editor, and are always kept up to date, but some are clunkier than others!
 
Raw processing isn't its strong point, though. There isn't a Lightroom-style multi-image raw browser (though they are apparently working on something like this).

That could be a big downside. PSP does processing directly with the raw file and has the manage module so you can do a full screen whip through to do the first cull/mark for processing etc. I shoot Canon so I could use DPP to comvert to tiff or another lossless format but it's putting another step in the process. When I have time I'll probably get the trial of the latest PSP, use it intensively and see if I can break it. If I can I'll give some of the others a try, including PS. It'd be a learning curve but it can't be hard.
 
And.................................it's working again (well, it was last night), after a small Windows update and restart. There's no way it could be linked to the update - it must have been the restart that fixed it. I can't remember what brought it back to life the first time round. Weird. If it breaks again I'll do a restart and see it that sorts it again.
 
And.................................it's working again (well, it was last night), after a small Windows update and restart. There's no way it could be linked to the update - it must have been the restart that fixed it. I can't remember what brought it back to life the first time round. Weird. If it breaks again I'll do a restart and see it that sorts it again.

If the problem has persisted for a while but in the interim you have only in W10 'shutdown' but having now 'restarted' it seems to have cured the problem.

Do bare in mind the 'restart' flushes everything but usually compared to previous Windows 'shutdown' is a hybrid state of hibernate & old style shutdown. Therefore just possible that the "restart" you mention could have been a/the cure..........such are the wonders of MS Windows OS !
 
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