This thread is continued from:
http://community.coreldraw.com/forums/p/19344/100072.aspx#100072
... but is intended to be PP specific. It's a list for Corel bug fixers... one place for them to easily find many bugs... big or small, crash/freezing or just wrong GUI stuff. This is not intended to be a wants list, but obviously sometimes there's overlap... one person's wish is another person's GUI bug. This thread will probably be boring reading for most of us, but hopefully this will efficiently help the bug-finding and bug-fixing process. Hopefully you can be as specific as possible about the circumstances of what you were doing when the problem occured, but I know from personal experience that some of the crash/freeze problems just happen or are around all the time.
I'll start it off with a few itty bitty new ones.
- Make the popup text the same for icons as they're called in the customization/commands dialog
-eg. "Fit in Window" is a zoom command, and it's popup text says "Zoom to fit" - which imho is a good name... fit to window should be changed
-eg. "Initiate cutout tool" is not the cutout tool being started... it's the "cutout lab"
- The zoom 25% command is using the zoom 33 icon.
- when you hold L on a pallete colour to bring up the super cool hue popup colour picker box (which is great), don't force the user to pick a colour with Left-mouse (for foreground in PP) if you accidentally drag the mouse (with L button still down) into the popup... if the user goes out of the popup with L held down, let them release without a choice being registered, and keep the popup open so the user can use L or R to pick.
- this colour picker kinda-bug (sorta) is also a wish/bug for Draw (for fill and outline instead), but I've been told that it's better to separate the threads for better communication.
Here's to a better PP and Graphics Suite X5.
- at different zoom levels, the outside area (overscroll area) changes form light to dark... this is bad because (at least on my reasonably quick computer), when you zoom using the mouse wheel, you get a dark grey and then light grey flicker effect. It's very brief, but adds to the feeling that the software isn't solid. Make the outside area one colour... and make it a changeable option... so the user can choose to work light on dark or vise versa.
- when you crop to colour when you're zoomed in, the refresh doesn't work correctly for the background area (it goes the dark shade)
- *maybe* (as an option) make the brush use XOR on the brush's outline so you can see it over chaotic textures. When I'm drawing on some textures, I can't see the brush.
- the drawing utensils need to be able to have shortcuts set for them. Everything else can... even obscure icons/actions. The basics should definitley be able to link up to a shortcut key... eg. brush, airbrush, pencil, pen, marker, etc. I'm not even talking customized brushes (which also need to be shortcutable)... I'm talking the basic drawing tools. This also includes smear, smudge, and all the other specific "effect" tools. This is a no-brainer. You don't primarily use the program to do "pen and ink"... you're smudging, smearing, cloning, and using the different brush tools... Clone is shortcutable... the others should be too. It's common sense.
- have a way to disable the "masks will not be saved in this format" message when you're working with jpgs and other basic raster formats. It's annoying and completely unnecessary the thousandth time... make it a dialog that can be disabled?
Davoid said: The basics should definitley be able to link up to a shortcut key... eg. brush, airbrush, pencil, pen, marker, etc. I'm not even talking customized brushes (which also need to be shortcutable)... I'm talking the basic drawing tools.
One problem is that I bet 9 out of 10 PP users don't know the effect tools exist. They are missing tons of power.
I totally agree that access to the powerful tools with user-definable shortcuts is critical.
Sometimes I think Corel looks at their software from a new user's perspective, instead of a experienced user's POV who looks at the Corel suite 8-12 hours a day. They should track down the top PP users who are somehow able to create fine art in PP in it's current state, and ask them what drives them crazy.
Pro software will inherently seem complex to newbs due to extensive features. Newbs have no loyalty. Pro users do. Newbs showed up at the PP focus group for the 100.00 and free sandwiches. LOL
Corel's job is to convert newbs into pros, and the only way that's possible is if newbs can make a living by using fast and reliable software. Dumbing down software to appeal to newbs, and irrititating pros by hiding the power they need (and understand) is the wrong path (for pro software) IMO.
One dialog I want to DIE forever is the prompt to retain clipboard contents. I see that 60-100 times, every freaking day....
This has happened to me a few times.... when you use the dodge/burn tool... and you change the "Amount" ... sometimes it goes to 0 for amount AND transparency... even if you try again and again to change the value to + or - some amount (using the arrows or just by using the part in between that lets you move the mouse/stylus up/down to dial the value.
If you go over to the "Custom Dodge/Burn" and pick another type of dodge/burn, it seems to work, but the Amount dial should still work.
the brush icons don't all match the images used in the Artistic Media docker
when you pick a brush from the toolbar, it doesn't update the Artistic Media's last used list.
when using the dodge/burn amount... if you dial it to -100, it looks like -10... maybe a bit wider?... 100 works fine because there's no - in front.
Paul McGee said:all the fields can be manually enlarged, one at a time :-( by grabbing the edge and holding alt.
Thanks!
It's also weird... I tried the alt trick and it worked the first time (yay), but it doesn't seem to work all the time... about 50% (?) of the time it will resize. Weird.
When cloning and using the Shift+Alt trick to maintain the starting point each time... the refresh around the starting point isn't done and you end up with a messy image.
eg.
Frustrating... it's like these features aren't tested.
Davoid said:Frustrating... it's like these features aren't tested.
Things like this are tested and logged, but Corel isn't always able to fix every problem as we hope...
Hi Davoid,
the Shift+Alt cloning feature works flawlessly on my computers. Having read about so many things that don't work on your computer, I seriously think your computer system has issues.
Best regards,Brian.
Brian said:the Shift+Alt cloning feature works flawlessly on my computers.
Hi B,
I've seen his problem across all systems I've had, even my current hi-end rig:
Hi Jeff,
I guess I owe Davoid an apology then for my comment about his computer: sorry Davoid. This must be very difficult for Corel when it comes to fixing bugs, they occur on some computers and not on others. How on earth would you deal with that situation? They probably find the features work fine on their test computers and so don't know what to fix. I don't use the Shift+Alt cloning feature a lot, but when I do it always works fine. I have had issues a few years back with the clone cursor generally behaving the way it shows in your video and that always went away when I "reset all brushes". It has not happened in a long time though.