1. Associating File Formats:

   The standard installation associates five common file formats with PSP XI: JPEG, BMP, GIF, PNG, and TIFF. Clear the check marks for all of these unless you are sure that you want PSP XI to replace whatever program now launches when you double click one of these files in My Computer. You can always associate PSP XI with these file types later using File...Preferences...File Format Associations.

2. Avoiding Conflicts with PSP 9 and X:

   If you have PSP 9 and PSP X, and you did not set up customized folders for user files for those versions, the standard installation for PSP XI will commingle resource files (tubes, scripts, brushes, etc.) with the PSP 9 and X resources in "C:\Documents and Settings\user_name\My Documents\My PSP Files\." Though intended to make it easy to migrate from previous versions, this choice entails two risks for previous version users:

   • First, should any of the PSP XI resources supplied by Corel happen to have the same name as one that you created in PSP 9 or PSP X, PSP XI will recognize only one of them.

   • Second, some resources created in PSP XI will not run in PSP 9 or PSP X, but will appear in those versions' lists of scripts, brushes, etc. Likewise, modifying some PSP 9 and/or PSP X resources in PSP XI may render them unusable in the earlier versions.

3. How to prevent these conflicts:

   When the installation asks about placing shortcuts on your desktop and your Quick Launch bar, look for a button near the bottom of the window labeled "Advanced Options." Click that to get a dialog in which you can change the location where Corel Paint Shop Pro XI will save your personally created files. Change it from "My PSP Files" to something like "My PSP XI Files". After your PSP XI installation is complete and running well, copy any previous version resources that you want into the folders under "My PSP XI Files", or use the File...Preferences...File Locations dialog to make the previous version files available to PSP XI. PSP XI does not interfere with PSP 8, which keeps your personally created files under "My PSP 8 Files."

4. Yahoo! Toolbar with Pop-Up Blocker:

   The PSP XI installation invites you to install the Yahoo! Toolbar with Pop-Up Blocker. If you do so, you may find it difficult to remove. Microsoft has published an article titled "How to Uninstall or Turn off the Yahoo! Companion Browser Toolbar" at http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=303047. It says "... you may be unable to remove it or hide it. You may be unable to hide the toolbar when you click Toolbars on the View menu. There may be no entry for Yahoo in Add/Remove Programs." The article goes on to give directions for removing the toolbar. If the toolbar is appealing, you can always get it directly from Yahoo! after installing PSP XI.

Although they are separate, the programs can interact by using the same folders to store resources and through the Windows association of file types. See #001 PSP XI Installation Notes above for how to avoid these interactions.

Another reason you may want to keep at least PSP 9 installed is that due to the redesign of the Learning Center in PSP X, which is unchanged in PSP XI, users can no longer install tutorials as Quick Guides. Many users have come to rely on this facility introduced in PSP 8 and continued in PSP 9. Having the tutorial visible right in the PSP workspace has made it so much easier to follow and complete tutorials. If you've come to rely on this feature, you'll need to retain either PSP 8 or PSP 9.

Use the Color Changer tool to realistically recolor an object or a region in an image. What sets the Color Changer tool apart from other tools and commands (such as the Flood Fill tool, the Color Replacer tool, some of the retouching brushes, or the Colorize, Hue/Saturation/Lightness, or Hue Map commands) is that it takes into account the shading of the specified color. The Color Changer tool detects and analyzes variations in image brightness and applies the recoloring based on that illumination. This is a really cool tool!

here are a few other tool-related changes you should be aware of:

1. A major change is visible on the Tool Options palette for all tools that have drop-lists of items, such as the Shape drop-list for the Preset Shapes tool or the Brushes drop-list, or the Tube drop-list for the Picture Tube tool, or the Line Style drop-list for any of the vector tools. The items in the drop-lists are no longer labelled. You can still see the name by mousing over an item, but the labels are gone. Not a good move, I think. If you agree, please let Corel know by clicking on "E-Mail Corel" in the Support section on the Corel site.*

2. Some of the icons have been "modernized" for several of the tools. For example, check out the Fit Window to Image, Fit Image to Window, and Fit Image and Window to Screen icons of the Pan, Zoom, and Move tools, the 'Create selection from' and the Custom Selection icons of the Selection tool, the 'Snap crop rectangle to' icons of the Crop tool, and the 'Direction' or Textflow icons of the Text tool.

3. There are two new Modes available with the Magic Wand tool:

   • Traditional - selects pixels that match red, green, and blue values, with a bias toward lightness variations. This match mode is therefore more discriminating than the RGB Value match mode. Traditional mode is the one-and-only match mode offered by Photoshop. It grabs a hexagonal prism of color space.

   • Perceptual - selects pixels that match the perceptual shading variation and lightness of the pixel you click. Perceptual grabs all colors that are visually close to the marked color. It uses a human color vision model and results in grabbing a smooth "blob" of color space.

4. The Crop tool now has it's own floating toolbar which appears below the selected crop area, allowing you to choose a predefined crop size or to rotate the selected crop area 90 degrees. This floating toolbar appears by default, but can be disabled in Preferences. The Rotate Crop Rectangle icon ( ) is also located on the Crop tool Tool Options palette.

5. In PSP XI, it's now necessary to click somewhere in the image after making Tool Options changes before using shortcut keys to make changes to the image. For example, if you use the Magic Wand tool to select areas of your image and then decide to use a different 'Mode', once you change the 'Mode' in the Tool Options palette, you need to click somewhere within the image, or on the image Title Bar, before you can use CTRL+D to remove the selection.

6. There's a new icon for the Makeover Tool's Blemish Fixer mode:

Finally, all tools are now listed in the online Help documentation, with complete descriptions of all their parameters - this is GOOD!

*This change applies to other drop-lists as well, such as the Pattern and Gradient drop-lists in the Materials palette.

Several menu items have been moved or changed in PSP XI. The following list of menu changes will contain only those items which are new, or items that were moved to new menus, renamed or replaced by other menu entries, or dropped:

Menu	Changed Items
File	Send - replace by E-mail Preferences...Auto Update Options - dropped Launch Corel Photo Album - replaced by Launch Corel Snapfire
View	Toolbars - Yahoo! toolbar added, even if not chosen during install Palettes - Browser palette renamed as Organizer palette Organizer Mode - new
Adjust	Depth of Field - new Skin Smoothing - new
Effects	Photo Effects...Time Machine - new Photo Effects...Film and Filters - new
Help	PhotoSharing Web Site - dropped Message Settings - new About Paint Shop Pro - renamed as About

Note: Many menu items "dropped" in PSP X remain "dropped" in PSP XI. Most of these menu items/commands are still available, and you can add them to your menus as needed, using Customize. The retained commands can be found in the Unused Commands list of Customize.

Palette	PSP XI Shortcut
Hide/Restore All Floating Palettes	F2
History Palette	F3
Script Output Palette	SHIFT+F3
Tool Options Palette	F4
Materials Palette	F6
Mixer Palette	SHIFT + F6
Histogram Palette	F7
Layers Palette	F8
Overview Palette	F9
Learning Center Palette	F10
Brush Variance Palette	F11
Organizer	CTRL + B

Notice several things:

1. The Show/Hide button has been replaced by a Preview control button, at the top left of the dialog box (#1 in the above screen shot). Click this control to hide the Preview windows:

   	Preview Windows enabled
   	Preview Windows hidden

2. The Proof, and Auto Proof buttons have been replaced by the Preview on Image check box, at the top right of the dialog box (#2 in the above screen shot). Mark this check box to see the current dialog box settings effects on the image.
3. The Zoom control now allows you to set the precise Zoom percentage (#3 in above screen shot), which replaces the Zoom Out and Zoom In controls of previous versions,
4. The rest of the common controls are located in a white band (boxed in red in above screen shot) under the Preview windows (or the band containing the Show/Hide and Preview on image controls if the Preview windows are not present) labelled Settings (#4 in the above screen shot) . This band of settings collects or consolidates the other common dialog settings in one area. Note that the Presets drop-list (#5 in the above screen shot) is no longer labelled as "Presets". However, it still contails saved settings you can use to make quick changes to images, just as before.

I won't list the names of the individual resources - the list would be endless. However, these are just as generic as the folder names. For example, the Ellipse preset shape is now called Corel_11_069, and the former Pointy Flower paintbrush is now called Corel_01_037, and the Autumn leaves.PspTube picture tube is now called Corel_10_043.PspTube.

Connected to this effort to "generic-ize" everything, the labels have also been removed from the drop-lists of resources, such as the shapes and picture tube and brushes lists. While those labels might mean little for the Corel resources, with their new meaningless names, they would still be immensely useful for user resources. Now all searches will have to be visual, screen by screen, and much more labor-intensive.

In my opinion, the new naming conventions are definitely a step backwards, and render PSP XI relatively unusable for me. I have always used the ability to type in the first letter of a resource, such as "E" when searching the list of shapes for the Ellipse shape, or "A" when looking for the Autumn leaves tube. That capability is no longer even useful as everything is now under "C" for Corel. As far as I'm concerned, this change, while it might make things easier for Corel, hurts thousands and thousands of customers. It would seem to me that there was far more work expended in renaming all these resources than could have been expended in translating the names of any new resources into 7 other languages. For the past several releases, there have been few if any new resources added to the product, so for the most part, the translations are already done.

Because the Organizer catalogs all files under its control, it uses database files (it no longer produces any .jbf files), which can be found (on my system) in the C:\Documents and Settings\Suz\Application Data\Corel folder. There are two of these database files:

ImageDB.db - this file stores all the meta data and file location info
thumbnails.db - this file stores the thumbnails

On initial install, PSP catalogs all images in the My Pictures and Shared Pictures folders, as well as all their subfolders. This might create a rather hefty database, including lots of images you don't really want cataloged. If this happens to you, and PSP takes longer and longer to restart each time, close PSP XI and move all those images to a new location. Then delete the two database files listed above - when you restart PSP, these files will be re-allocated and rebuilt.

Another symptom that might indicate a database problem is a long pause during program initiation, often when the "Updating Cache Settings" message displays. If this occurs and does not improve on PSP XI restarts, you might consider deleting these database files.

If you do not want to use the organizer at all and want to prevent it from hijacking lots of CPU cycles on your PC, shut down PSP, delete the database files, and reallocate "dummy" files to take their place. A couple of empty text files renamed as ImageDB.db and thumbnails.db will do. Use the Properties dialog (right-click on the file name and choose Properties from the pop-up menu) to mark these files Read-only. This will prevent PSP XI from cataloging all your image files - note, however, that this will make the Organizer unusable, so only take this step if you do not plan to use the Organizer. If you subsequently decide you want to work with the Organizer, shut down PSP and delete the dummy files you created. When PSP restarts, the files will be reallocated and images in the My Pictures and Shared Pictures folders will be cataloged.

One last item in this area - there are actually a couple of new cache files associated with the Organizer called LastDBFilter.PspCache and LastDBTreeSel.PspCache. These cache files can be found in the same location as the Organizer database files rather than within the PSP XI Cache folder.

PSP XI masks can be used as is in PSP 8, 9 or X. PSP XI masks that have been saved in OS/2 or Windows bitmap format can also be used in PSP 7 if renamed from *.PspMask to *.msk. However, images that are created and saved as masks in PSP XI are formatted as PSP 8 files, and as such can be used in PSP 8, 9, or X, but not in PSP 7. To check the format of a mask file:

This is all made possible through the Resource Manager dialog, which can be activated by clicking on the Resource Manager button:

This button can be found wherever you find a Presets drop-list (such as in the Tool Options palette, or in dialogs), or the visual resource drop-list or "picker" for resources such as Paint Brushes, Gradients, etc.

Note: There are several important things to note about working with the Resource Manager:

1. Resource categories are folders that have been defined using the File Locations dialog. That is the ONLY way to populate the Categories list.
2. Use caution when copying items from one category or folder to another. PSP does not allow duplicate file names, so if you copy an item from one resource category to another, it will still only be visible from one category. If you want it visible in both categories, you must rename one resource.
3. The Resource Manager only allows you to have one category active at a time. This might not meet your needs.
4. If you need to add another category to the resource list, close the Resource Manager dialog and click the File locations button, available wherever the Resource manager button is found:

This method works with other images as well, but is particularly suited to images such as Sinedots images with their filmy, subtle nuances of color.

Note: When transparency is locked, the Lock Transparency button displays a locked padlock . When transparency is not locked, the Lock Transparency button shows an unlocked padlock

This method works with other images as well, but is particularly suited to images such as Sinedots images with their filmy, subtle nuances of color.

Color	Hue	Saturation
Lilac	189	194
Rose	233	153
Tan	18	89
Green	95	80
Orange	17	178
Blue	155	217
Gold	35	200

Remember, the original color of the image influences the resulting shades when colorizing.

This method works with other images as well, but is particularly suited to images such as Sinedots images with their filmy, subtle nuances of color.

As with all the other colorizing methods, this method also works with other images.

Note: When the right pane of the Layers palette is suppressed and a layer's link button has been activated, an icon is added to the layer name button () reminding you that this layer's link button is active. Also, when a layer that is linked is active, the same layer link icon will appear on all other layers it is linked to.

• Organize the Layers palette.
• Select layer properties such as opacity and blend mode for the whole group.
• Apply masks to whole sets of layers rather than just one.
• Limit effect of adjustment layers to those below them in a group rather than in the entire image.
• Move all grouped layers in stacking order together.
• Copy and paste (or drag and drop) entire groups of layers to new images.

By default, grouped layers are also linked (see previous item). The group link toggle button on the Layers palette () shows when the layers are linked. This icon only appears when the layer group's layer name button is active. When the group is not linked, the group link toggle button displays a red "x" ().

To prevent PSP from centering the image, you can force a layer to paste in a way that appears to you as aligned the way it was in the original image. To accomplish this, do the following before copying the layer: using the Paint Brush tool at Opacity 1 and Size 1, left-click each corner pixel of the image/layer. Now copy and paste the image/layer.

This trick makes the bounding box of the layer data equal in size to the image and you can't see pixels of such low opacity as the ones created in the corners of the image.

• To move the layer one pixel at a time, press the arrow keys.
• To move the layer 10 pixels at a time, hold down CTRL and press the arrow keys.
• To move the layer 50 pixels at a time, hold down SHIFT and press the arrow keys.
• To move the layer 100 pixels at a time, hold down CTRL + SHIFT and press the arrow keys.