[fotograffiti]

Have been trying the demo version of PP version 8...it is excellent.

About to buy PP...but now it is version 9. Havnt bought it as dont like the new interface. IMO the old interface was a much better design and less "fussy". Anyone have any views on the new interface?

[admin]

If it is just the basic look you don't like, you can go back to the old version by going into settings and then clicking on "Use V8 Black style". Does that improve it?

Tony

[Roscoe]

I've just downloaded v9.0 Trial and installed it.  When first run I see this



Problem is ............. there isn't a panel on the right !!

And when I get to this stage in the enhancement



The sliders are on the LEFT !! If they're undocked they can be put on the right, but when first run they're docked on the left.

At least the touchup brush is at the top of the screen.

The only reference I can find anywhere about pricing is $99.95 for a first time user or an upgrade user.  Is this correct ?

If the "show label by cursor when locating feature points" is checked in the Settings, the first point is labelled "Left corner, Left eye" when it's actually indicating the RIGHT corner of the RIGHT eye on the portrait.
We're looking into a mirror guys !
I know what it means but the terminology is all incorrect.

[admin]

Hi,

We decided to put the sliders on the right by default in this version so they were next to the after image which they affect. However PP remembers where you put the sliders last time so anyone who had used it before gets what they are used to. This does mean that the initial text is wrong if you are a regular user, but we hoped if you were already using it, you wouldn't get too confused!

As for the left/right eye confusion, this hasn't changed. There is always an ambiguity between camera left and the subject's left and in tests we found that most people took it to mean camera left so that's what we put in the picture. However the software works with no difference if you take left and right to mean subject left and right.

As for upgrade pricing, you will be getting an email later this week telling you how to upgrade. But no, you won't have to pay the full price as an existing customer!

Tony

[Roscoe]

I would like to see more control points for the eyebrow adjustment/s.
Also, eyebrow and eye adjustment/s are locked together.  I would like to see them operate independently of each other.
With the likes of Adobe (Photoshop, Photoshop Elements & Lightroom) all going the "dark" GUI route, along with ACDSee, Lightbox and lots of others, the new slightly beige colour of the GUI is very nice.

On one of the portraits I was working on, the original picture was not too big.  Working on the eye adjustment wasn't a problem but when I progressed to the the tip of the nose placement, the auto-zoom in caused the zoomed picture to become very pixelated like this



I can't find any way to turn off the auto-zoom function.

BTW.  I get the red underlining (incorrect spelling) no matter which way I spell pixelated or pixellated !!

[admin]

Hi Roscoe,

Re adjustments: I'm not sure exactly which adjustments you are talking about, but if you are talking about sliders, more specific adjustments can be found by clicking on the button with the triangle on it to get lower down sliders.

When the picture zooms in like that it means you have probably put the left and right eye markers on the same eye, making the software think that you have selected a very small person. If you are sure you have got it right, could you post the picture up and I'll take a look at it.

Tony

[Roscoe]

The adjustments I'm talking about are the first four done when commencing the portrait "modifications", left eye corner, right eye corner, left eye inner corner, right eye inner corner, left corner of mouth, right corner of mouth, then the tip of the nose.
This is the original picture.  It's a jpeg and is only 24371 bytes in size

If I had a better picture, larger in resolution/dpi etc. zooming in wouldn't have caused the pixelation you see above.



I'd already done the woman's left eye as that's all I could see.  When it came to putting a selection point on her nose tip, that's when PP auto-zoomed in causing the extreme pixelation you see in the first picture.

[admin]

PP Will still ask you for the hidden eye (it can't tell if the eye is hidden), so you will need to place the point where the eye would be if the bottle wasn't in the way.  If you put it somewhere else nearer to the visible eye you are effectively telling the software that there is a very small person in the picture, which is why it zooms in too much.  

Here is how the first three points should be roughly placed:     

Tony

P.S.  I guess you already know this, but you're not going to get a very impressive result from such a low resolution input.

[Roscoe]

As I couldn't see the woman's right eye, when it came to placing the control points I chose a couple of random places in the picture.
By placing the points where the right eye should be (i.e. a couple of places on the bottle) the zoom-in wasn't as drastic when it came to placing the control point on the nose tip.

[Skids]

Roscoe I think the reason the panel was on the left is because of Portrait Professional 8 still being installed. I had the same thing and when I uninstalled PP8 the panels moved across to the right.

It would be good if the PP9 install gave the option to upgrade PP8 rather than installing alongside