Vis Mask in Painter: no you're not going crazy.

[Erik Heyninck]

I have CorelDRAW9, dutch edition. Trying to install the SP2 patch, I got a message half way that a certain file wasn't original, and the install simply broke off. I mailed, but got no answer. I called, and they simply said that this was normal behaviour.
When I read what Corel did with Xara, I simply couldn't believe it.
And now this.
Sorry for Painter, but I have no trust whatsoever in Corel, and I won't ever buy anything from them anymore.

Thanks Thelonious for taking the trouble to explain this. You also gave me a deeper understanding of Photoshop. [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_cool.gif[/img]

[eky]

about the layers and masks, Thelonious. I printed it out for future reference so I won't get myself into the troubles you've experienced.

[Thelonious]

Right on Erik,
I don't know anything about Corel draw or Xara but one thing I do know is that an attitude that a company has will diffuse down through all their products.

I am angry and anyone who cares about about the way Corel is ruining their software should show their anger in the best way. Ie don't pay them any more money. I like Painter a lot if I didn't like it I wouldn't even bother. However I don't like being taken for a fool by Corel.

When I was growing up in the sixties I was led to believe we'd all be going to work with jet packs by now. Where are they, I want my f***ing jet pack. Now.

OK I'm not going to get my jet pack. But when I buy a software package there is an implicit agreement and obligation on the part of the supplier that their product will work. They have a duty and I have a right to expect faulty software to be fixed.

I don't want vector tools with disappearing handles, I don't want faulty scripts, I don't want half baked Vis Masks etc etc.

Show Corel you are angry, Don't upgrade any Corel products. Make them take notice. How? I don't know really after all they just ignore individual users who have genuine questions.

All I can say is if you don't need to then don't upgrade.

BTW Eky you should be OK now the only problems I had was when I thought that I was doing something wrong and I wasted so much time and energy.

Thelonious

[freebird]

Well, I get email from Corel about every 2 weeks and recently email about ugrading to Painter 7. I will respond to it by saying that I am not upgrading and will tell them why. I do not go into Painter to just paint on the canvas. The layer and masking functions are too buggy and until I know for sure they have fixed them, then I am not upgrading.

Not too crazy over Corel anyway. Had the first version of Xara--nice features but buggy and couldn't print from it. Had 3 earlier versions of Draw but all were released buggy and they never inform registered users of patches. Among not giving you Ventura publisher as they said when you very pricely upgraded (they actually put a coupon in the box for you to send when Ventura became ready and they didn't know when that would be) they also messed up the printing from version 4 to 5 and you couldn't place things properly anymore for printing.

[athena]

ok Xara ltd. of Gaddsden Place somewhere in England. [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_smile.gif[/img] (provincial texan that I am. . i believe it is outside of London . . .too lazy to look it up at the moment).

Had a product called Xara Studio. Somehow they made a deal with Corel that Corel could market Xara, the program at least in the US and apparently in the UK. When TigerDirect (a US Computer junkies catalog) helped advertise a Corel Roadshow going through Houston, I got to admire, for the first time, the concept of graduated transparency in a vector application (this was back in '95 . . when CorelDRAW 6 was coming out in conjunction with Win95). I read the TigerDirect Hype and it looked awesome. I went to the roadshow and Xara was great. Admittedly, as Freebird says, version 1.1 had printing problems but Xara (not Corel) fixed them in either version 1.2 or 1.5 AND they did those as free upgrades. (they did not make you pay for a bug patch)They added great functionality in those versions also.

(you know what, Freebird, my recollection is fuzzy I don't recall if us diehard Xara fans just exported to .tif and printed from those -- we so adored the Xara tools)

But the shoddy treatment from Corel that Erik is referring to, I believe, (not being the best of mind readers [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_wink.gif[/img] ) is this:

Corel never bought Xara the program or Xara ltd. lock,stock, and barrel. They took great ideas from Xara's product, incorporated them into Corel Draw and then locked Xara 2 the next version of the program in the dustbin in the basement. Barely letting Xara have food, water, or letting Xara see the light of day. Sadly Xara 1.1, 1.5, and 2 were the stepchildren of Corel and Corel really only seemed to show interest in sustaining CorelDRAW!. that is how the xara Community saw it. . ok .. that is how I saw it. (Corel did a horrible job of marketing XARA2). When the contract finally ended between Xara Ltd., and Corel. All rights of ownership and marketing reverted back to Xara Ltd. They were free to market their program as they saw fit. All that time, Xara maintained complete control over the program code of Xara. So I think their parting was amicable. . . as amicable as such a parting can be.

Corel never wrote or owned the code for Xara.

Corel's purchase of Painter and other former MetaCreations software WAS more along the lines of Lock, Stock, and Barrel. To my understanding, they DO own the code for Painter and everything that that implies. (metacreations,if they are still alive --- as if we care--- do not want the program back. they just wanted the money)

And yes, Thelonious, I agree. If you didn't care about Painter you'd let this issue drop. Customer Service people have to realize that when a customer is complaining, they are giving the company a 2nd chance. . . a chance to redeem themselves. I remember a similar instance where I had bought a program called HoTMeTaL Pro and they had a bug that they fixed in a new version. . . they did not fix it in a free patch. A bug I considered a functionality bug. and I never bought the next version. I took my money elsewhere. I switched to Dreamweaver and have never looked back. I quit caring what HoTMeTaL did.

Since Corel now owns Painter. .. the code. .. .I would expect that Corel will sustain Painter. I think that because of the unique nature of Painter, they will never try to make it compete with Adobe Photoshop or Corel PhotoPaint. I'm not sure that Painter could sustain a head to head battle with Adobe Photoshop. Painter used to be marketed kind of as natural media tool (or that's how I viewed it) and not as a competitor to Photoshop. But all that aside, I agree, it is not unreasonable to ask a company to produce a product that works. I think you've been doing a fantastic job presenting the problem here. It makes perfect sense to me. Although, [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_smile.gif[/img] I still haven't tried to duplicate the error on my machine.

But where I'm guessing the Corel people are coming from is this: You can work and work and work and still not get a 100% perfect program. so at what point do you say you can let a program out of the gate? Allow the users to enjoy new functionality? (admittedly, from watching the thread on print quality, one does wonder what new functionality is in this program). Corel has been notorious for letting version A out with bugs (forcing the user to get out the cans of RAID, the big Boots, and the rolled newspapers) but they are normally pretty good at getting alot of stuff fixed in version B. They (Corel) drive perfectionists crazy but they do move the program forward (you may never see the forward motion because of the distraction from the other problems, but the movement is there [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_wink.gif[/img] ).

I really hope that they move this feature up on their list of bug fixes. It would make Painter so much cooler to have this feature work the way you describe that it could work. [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_smile.gif[/img]

Thank you all for this fascinating discussion,

Athena
[img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_smile.gif[/img]

(ps I once had professor tell me that as a perfectionist, I might lose out to the person who regularly delivers shoddier material because they do more in the same amount of time and have a greater likelihood of getting decent stuff out ... decent not perfect . .. something seems insane about that. . . but I understood his point.)

[DLFrost]

A couple of points directed to Mr. Hink...

(1) Painter's method of editing layer/floater visibility masks predates v6. Painter has never featured Photoshop-style layer mask editing, nor did anyone ever pretend otherwise. I do agree with you that the proxy mask system used in Photoshop is desirable for Painter. But keep in mind that implementing this would shoot up Painter's memory requirements tremendously for users who need more than just a few layers. And it would probably slow down screen redraw. The Clip Masking used by PhotoPaint would probably be better because you could manually control which layers use it.

(2) Your problem with artifacts described in the opening message is probably due to your using a captured-dab brush to do the editing. Try using the Digital Airbush, or one of the simple chalk brushes if you want to apply texturing. I don't have the problems you are describing.

(3) You were not thrown off the Painter List bcause it is a cabal filled with Painter yes-men, but rather it's because you violated the clearly stated posting policy.

Doug Frost

[s.winders]

Stick to your guns T [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_smile.gif[/img]


I wont be buying Painter 7 now,and you have probably saved me a lot of money and grief.


When someone takes my money for a service I expect the service as stated,if the service cant be supplied for technical reasons then I expect this problem to be remedied so that the original service can be then reinstated.Ok no one is perfect and everyone is just human and prone to mistakes sometimes and I believe in giving people a chance to get themselves sorted,but telling you there is no problem when you can see quite clearly that there is,is just pouring gasoline on a fire and is pure denial on their part especially if you have logically and patiently pointed out the problem over and over again.What it probably comes down too is the viz mask is too expensive to fix and not enough people even know it is broken [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_frown.gif[/img]


Thanks for saving me some cash T,I will probably look for a copy of Painter 6 at sometime in the future [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_smile.gif[/img]


I also understand that it is because you like Painter so much that you are complaining,otherwise you wouldnt care.


Cheers.

Stu.

[Thelonious]

(1) Proxy Mask? that's a new one on me. Why don't you stick to the correct terminology. Layer mask. If you mean Layer mask, then I do not say that Photoshop's layer mask is desireable for Painter. You are welcome to cut and paste if you disagree.

What I do suggest is that the Vis Mask is clearly meant to act like a layer mask. The evidence for this is that most people refer to it as a layer mask. But check this out. There is an on line training company called VTC (virtual training company) they have dozens and dozens of online quicktime training videos. For about $25 you can subscribe for a month, which I did. On the section about Vis Masking in Painter I was curious to see what they did. They had some image and then they showed how the mask was used to edit the image. Then they show how you can paint on the mask in black to restore the image.

There it was on screen for the whole world to see. It was very small and you had to know what to look for but while restoring the image they had wrecked the layer. You wouldn't notice if you weren't watching for it. This clearly shows that professionals do expect the Vis Mask to act like a layer mask. And as I have said earlier in the thread, if the layer in question is filled with image then it *does* act exactly like a correctly working layer mask.

I've only suggested that the Vis Mask should work as it was intended. After all could you please tell me what is the point of it? I mean how would you use the Vis Mask if not as a layer mask?

Clip masking? I don't know anything about photopaint and I don't want to.

(2) You use the word probably a lot and you are incorrect this time as well. Probably. First of all it is not "my" problem with artifacts. Also it is worth noting that these are not artifacts in the normal way we use the word. The black is the very same black that is painted on to the layer when you paint on the Vis Mask and you move outside the image area. The black artifacts is the very same black. I was just showing how Jinny Brown's workaround would not work. Jinny suggested to make a selection for the stroke you want to edit first so that you won't paint black outside it. But I wanted to show that the Vis Mask contains other data. The black dots are holes in the stroke because it is a chalk stroke so that when you erase and resore you paint black into the holes.

It doesn't matter what brush you use. I can believe that you indeed don't have the problems I've been having. I also havn't been having any problems that others have been having with P7. That's because I don't use P7, geddit?

(3) In fact I threw myself off the Painter List because the administrators are peabrains, who would/could not engage in a logical discussion and stick to points and answer straightforward questions or even stick to their own rules. The Painter List has a set of rules much longer that your arm and I joined this list specifically because I thought it would be a heavy duty place for hard core painter questions. However it is more like a friendly little tea party. The Rules are very specific about off topic threads.

However it soon became apparent that these extensive rules are not adhered to at all.

It all started when Skydancer posted what would have been one of the most offensive missuses of the list I could imagine. Someone had written to her privately to thank her for her images. She posted to the forum threatening this poor sucker with dire consequenses and asked other forum members with a conspiratorial nudge in the ribs, what they thought about it. That's how it all started...

Then we went on to the Vis Mask thread after it got a bit heated. However instead of just dispassionately going through the points one by one and answering questions the Cabalistic members of the List covern would just throw insults.

Eventually it was promised that anyone throwing any more insults would be thrown off the list. I continued to get insults and noone was thrown off. Basically the Painter List is a sad joke.

Now if you want to send me a rif file showing me how there is no problem you can do so.

Regards

thelonious

[This message was edited by Thelonious Hink on August 30, 2001 at 00:21.]

[Thelonious]

Doug,

There's no such thing as simple chalk. But I've got some samples of a variety of media including your suggested digital airbrush. It seems that you are not entirely clear what I'm talking about or you wouldn't suggest that it could have anything to do with what brush you're using. We are painting on the vis mask remember? It is of no consequence how the pixels are altered on the Vis Mask in relation to the black on the layer business.

Please insert illustrations into the thread to back up anything you say. Or at least a description that we can follow on our screens.

T

[This message was edited by Thelonious Hink on August 30, 2001 at 00:24.]

[Thelonious]

Quote from P 157 of the excellent Painter 6 WOW book which I'm sure Corel would endorse.

"Using the Eraser variant of the Erasers to remove unneeded paint from a layer permanently removes the information. If there's a chance that you may want to restore the information on the layer, consider editing the layer's visibility mask instead of erasing the layer's pixels. Begin by clicking on the layer's name in the Layers section, then click on its visibility mask in the Masks section.

Choose the Eraser (Erasers), choose a brush (such as the Scratchboard Tool variant of Pens, choose black paint in the Colors section of the Art Materials palette and paint on the mask to reveal the layer again."


This is the entire unedited quote from WOW. Looks like they are using it as a layer mask to me. There doesn't seem to be any warning about not going off the edge or you'll ruin your layer. Do you think they are just playing a nasty trick on us. Well Doug are you going to explain this little anomoly. Somehow I think not.

Of course in the other threads I could never get this far without someone telling me that I just don't understand but they will be happy to explain it. But more likely it would be buried by the moderator telling me not to be rude to people like you who offer useless suggestions without understanding the problem.

T

[This message was edited by Thelonious Hink on August 30, 2001 at 09:44.]