Speaking Of Graphics Software

[RonH]

Photoshop Elements 8 ... I'm hooked on it, it is well supported, lots of 'expert advice' available and very powerful. Why not try it out.

[jaystarter]

patience Big Al.......from my experience they will eventually offer you Photoplus as well as most of their other software.

Ahhhh, success! Thanks for your "patience" counsel, Jeff!

Today, after 20+ emails from Serif for various of their products, I FINALLY received an email for a HALF PRICE copy of their PhotoPlus X3 product which I jumped on immediately. Here's hoping I can finally find a way away from PSP...

I was going to post to you last week as I received the same sort of offer and wondered if you had "bitten the bullit" They were throwing in the printed manual as well and post free. Unfortunately I was busy with the Easter holiday visits and what not and I missed the "order by" date so will have to wait again if I decide to go for it, hopefully your experiences using it will give an indication of what it's like . Meanwhile PSPro X2 meets my needs at the moment. The latest PSP is still getting poor reviews from what I read. Incedently Big Al, I've checked the serif forums and seems to be plenty of help there if you get stuck and need some "how do I....?" info.

[IanWilson]

patience Big Al.......from my experience they will eventually offer you Photoplus as well as most of their other software.

Ahhhh, success! Thanks for your "patience" counsel, Jeff!

Today, after 20+ emails from Serif for various of their products, I FINALLY received an email for a HALF PRICE copy of their PhotoPlus X3 product which I jumped on immediately. Here's hoping I can finally find a way away from PSP...

Do let us know how you get on with it.

Ian

[Bigaldoc]

Do let us know how you get on with it.

I will do that but it may be awhile. Kinda funny aside: I got a recorded message inquiry from my credit card company verifying that the "non-USA" purchase was actually made by me. Have no idea how long the shipment time will be. I'm a bit surprised that they don't offer a direct internet download, or at least I didn't see that possibility. Oh well, I'm not in a hurry...

[Bigaldoc]

Another followup. As I mentioned, I was a mite surprised that Serif doesn't have a download for a purchased product and their standard method seems to be via the postal system. Well, that's OK with me since I'm not in a hurry.

I got my confirmation of product "dispatch" (American = Shipment) on April 13 and the package came in the mail today. I had thought that they would ship to a USA customer from their New Hampshire facility but this came from the U.K. via Royal Mail and US Postal Service. The package had a customs declaration notice on it, confirming that route.

Still, not bad, seven days for a shipment from U.K. I have now installed but not yet tried the product. I will (may) write more later as I try to learn about it.

[VegasNath]

Still, not bad, seven days for a shipment from U.K......

& to think it could've been air-mail.

[Bigaldoc]

Still, not bad, seven days for a shipment from U.K......

& to think it could've been air-mail.

It WAS and strangely enough, to their credit, I just received an email from Serif with the following guidance:

• • Sorry for the delay. Why not download your software online while you wait for your order to be delivered?
    
    Dear Albert E Hoffman,
    
    Due to the volcanic eruption in Iceland and the airspace closures in the UK and parts of Europe, you are likely to experience a delay in receiving your recent order from us. Whilst your package has been dispatched from our UK office, the restriction on flights is inevitably having an impact on the transport of mail by air.
    
    Although this is out of our control, I would like to apologise for any inconvenience this delay may cause and offer you the chance to start using your software right now. As your order contains product(s) that are available to download, we have made the download version(s) available to you automatically (for free of course) from your Serif account. Simply go to http://www.serif.com" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; and click 'Sign In' in the top right hand corner and follow the instructions below.
    
    * Sign in using your email address. If you do not know your login password, you can simply click 'Email me my password' and it will be sent to you.
    
    * Once you have successfully logged in, under the header 'Your Orders' you will see the option 'View Your Order History' which will show your current and past orders.
    
    * On the left of any order which includes an Electronic Software Download (ESD) you will see a blue ‘Download’ button. Click on the ‘Download’ button to install the software.
    
    * You will be prompted to enter a product key to complete your installation. Click on ‘View Product Keys' in the right hand corner of your Serif account for this information.
    
    
    If I or any of my team can help you, or you have any questions, please do not hesitate to call us on 800 489 6720.

[Bigaldoc]

Keeping this thread alive, I just want to comment that it's been about a month and I'm SLOWLY but surely getting used to PhotoPlus X3, one task at a time as I need.

Their tutorials are very helpful and today I finally got around to joining the forum because I had a simple task (transparent background) that I kept missing the boat on. Found a thread immediately but the suggestion didn't work, so I made a post. As with Eileen's, I got a very FAST reply and as so often happens with us newbies, I had missed one little checkbox.

Here's their forum in case anyone is interested: Serif Software Forums

PhotoPlus X3 beats the socks off PSP but it's still going to take me more time to get shed of old PSP habits. One example that didn't take me a minute to discover. When you want to save a graphic, say a JPG, in a different format, you don't do that with the usual SAVE AS. Instead you "Export" to whatever format you want.

[IanWilson]

Keeping this thread alive, I just want to comment that it's been about a month and I'm SLOWLY but surely getting used to PhotoPlus X3, one task at a time as I need.

Their tutorials are very helpful and today I finally got around to joining the forum because I had a simple task (transparent background) that I kept missing the boat on. Found a thread immediately but the suggestion didn't work, so I made a post. As with Eileen's, I got a very FAST reply and as so often happens with us newbies, I had missed one little checkbox.

Here's their forum in case anyone is interested: Serif Software Forums

PhotoPlus X3 beats the socks off PSP but it's still going to take me more time to get shed of old PSP habits. One example that didn't take me a minute to discover. When you want to save a graphic, say a JPG, in a different format, you don't do that with the usual SAVE AS. Instead you "Export" to whatever format you want.

I'm glad you're getting on well with it. Just the thing with that nice new camera of yours!

Ian

[Bigaldoc]

I'm glad you're getting on well with it. Just the thing with that nice new camera of yours!

Thanks Ian. I took my new Nikon on a "shakedown cruise" to the nursing home today and did manage to take some pix. I forgot that they were having a party today for the alzheimer unit residents and family members. We're not allowed to take pix of residents for privacy reasons. So that limited my scope and I've now got to get 'em off the camera and onto the computer to see what I've got. It's probably too much for here so I may just post them on Facebook in an album - later this evening.

[Bigaldoc]

Here's just one of the pictures I took but I had to resize it significantly to get it to The Lounge. I didn't yet try using the Nikon's "flowers" mode but that's an exercise for tomorrow or another day.

[Bigaldoc]

Well I decided to buy the latest PhotoPlus X3 (at an upgrade price) and it came today. It looks as though it will do a lot of the standard sorts of things. Remember this picture? It was fairly easy to create a new layer, a layer mask, etc and make the same kinds of adjustments to it as we previously tried with GIMP.

Glory be Ian, I hate to dig this three month old post back up, but I guess you're a photographic genius and I'm a blockhead!

Over the weekend, I've been trying to apply what YOU taught me in Gimp to my newly acquired PhotoPlus X3 and I can't find my way with layers, masking and blending. For you, with your knowledge and talent it looks like it was easy but I'm struggling to find the answer.

So far my use of my new Nikon and X3 are progressing fine, but I just wanted to make the transition as you did in your post. I don't have ANY really bad ones as I did with my previous camera, but here's one (reduced in size) in which the left side is a bit darker than the rest because of the light from the window and the autofocus. I've been using it to try to duplicate what you taught me with Gimp but I've not been able to get there.

I really hate to impose on you, but would you mind giving me an outline of the steps to take and I hope that, if given the major steps, I can figure out the details. That is to say, I'm not asking you for detailed step-by-step, just the primary ones. I can duplicate the layer and create a mask but the "blending" has me stymied.

As with Gimp, I'll be forever grateful!

[IanWilson]

Glory be Ian, I hate to dig this three month old post back up, but I guess you're a photographic genius and I'm a blockhead!

Over the weekend, I've been trying to apply what YOU taught me in Gimp to my newly acquired PhotoPlus X3 and I can't find my way with layers, masking and blending. For you, with your knowledge and talent it looks like it was easy but I'm struggling to find the answer.

So far my use of my new Nikon and X3 are progressing fine, but I just wanted to make the transition as you did in your post. I don't have ANY really bad ones as I did with my previous camera, but here's one (reduced in size) in which the left side is a bit darker than the rest because of the light from the window and the autofocus. I've been using it to try to duplicate what you taught me with Gimp but I've not been able to get there.

I really hate to impose on you, but would you mind giving me an outline of the steps to take and I hope that, if given the major steps, I can figure out the details. That is to say, I'm not asking you for detailed step-by-step, just the primary ones. I can duplicate the layer and create a mask but the "blending" has me stymied.

As with Gimp, I'll be forever grateful!

I'm not the expert you think I am, but here's a very quick and rough attempt.

Having opened your file with PhotoPlus I duplicated the layer, and then set the layer blend mode to Screen. The result of that was to lighten up the left hand side of the picture, but it made the rest of it too bright, of course. So now for a layer mask again. I added a layer mask to the top layer.

Remember that black in a layer mask hides the layer whereas white reveals it. So I selected the paintbrush tool, set the brush size to be really quite large, and fiddled with the brush parameters to give it quite fuzzy edges. (We don't want to see hard edges in the changes of brightness.) I set the foreground colour to black, so I am painting in black, and turned the opacity of the brush down quite a lot. As you'll see below, the opacity of the brush is down to only about 9 per cent, so that really it's like painting in light grey rather than black.

Then (making sure that I am working on the layer mask, not the picture) I started painting over the picture on the right. As I paint the layer mask, I can see the bits of the picture I am painting on get darker. I can also change the size or opacity of the brush as I go along. If you look at the layer mask you'll see that it has various shades of grey except towards the left hand edge.

AH photoplus.jpg

How does that look, do you think? You'll have to click the attachment to see the controls and things clearly.

(We could also try just doing a blend on the layer mask and I might try that in a minute too.)

I don't feel imposed on - I enjoy fiddling with this kind of thing, and I learn from it all the time!

Ian

[IanWilson]

And this is an attempt with the blend tool. I duplicated the layer as before, set the mode to screen and created a layer mask.

I then used the blend tool it's the one that is 5th up from the bottom in the toolbar, just above the text tool, but it does double duty with the bucket fill tool, so you might need to click the little arrow and get the right tool. Then I made sure the foreground colour was black and the background colour white, and in the options for the tool at the top of the screen I selected the reverse tick box. Having made sure I was working on the mask, I then dragged from the left hand edge slightly down and to the right, stopping about half way across the picture.

I wanted to darken down the over exposed window a bit so I painted in black on the layer mask just over the window. You can just about see that in the layer mask thumbnail. The overall result was a bit dark, so I duplicated the layer again, which brightened the whole thing up.

AH photoplus 2.jpg

And now I have another idea, remembering that PhotoPlus has adjustment layers which Gimp doesn't.

Ian

[Bigaldoc]

How does that look, do you think? You'll have to click the attachment to see the controls and things clearly.

As Billy Crystal would say: That's absolutely mah-velous! I can't believe you may not consider yourself a "pro" at this kind of stuff!

YOUR resulting picture is EXACTLY what I was trying to achieve. Now, I'll have to try to follow your steps and see if I can come anywhere close. I'll copy the text from your post, print it out and have a go as soon as I can. With my wife being somewhat "under the weather" I'm spending a fair amount of time at her side and visiting with the doctor and nurses, so I sometimes only have short spurts of time at the computer (for the past couple of weeks).

Thank you Ian, from the bottom of my hillbilly heart! You're a treasure and a good friend!

PS When I pressed "Submit" I see you have already made a second post. Thank you. I'll take both into my "training tent" and work on them when I can.

[IanWilson]

How does that look, do you think? You'll have to click the attachment to see the controls and things clearly.

As Billy Crystal would say: That's absolutely mah-velous! I can't believe you may not consider yourself a "pro" at this kind of stuff!

YOUR resulting picture is EXACTLY what I was trying to achieve. Now, I'll have to try to follow your steps and see if I can come anywhere close. I'll copy the text from your post, print it out and have a go as soon as I can. With my wife being somewhat "under the weather" I'm spending a fair amount of time at her side and visiting with the doctor and nurses, so I sometimes only have short spurts of time at the computer (for the past couple of weeks).

Thank you Ian, from the bottom of my hillbilly heart! You're a treasure and a good friend!

PS When I pressed "Submit" I see you have already made a second post. Thank you. I'll take both into my "training tent" and work on them when I can.

You're welcome. And forget the thing about adjustment layers - I don't think I can use them for this.

Hope to hear that Billie is doing better soon.

Ian