PW 8 newbie question

[mhkatz2]

Hi All,

I'm a longtime PW user transitioning from version 7 to 8, which I have recently installed on a Windows 11 computer. I'm feeling a bit disoriented with the way the image windows work and haven't been able to figure it out from the documentation. For example, I would like to have two images on my screen so that I can clone from one to the other and I can't figure out how to get two images showing at once. Grateful for any advice on how to do that and also any source of info how managing image windows in PW 8. Thanks!

[jsachs]

To clone from one image to another within the Clone tool, you add a Clone transformation just below the image you want to clone to. Within the Clone dialog box, use the Source Image control to select the image you want to clone from. This displays the two images side by side so you can clone from the source image to the output image.

[mhkatz2]

Thanks for the tip, but I just can't seem to get it to work or to understand how to work with image windows in version 8, since it is so different from previous versions. Is it still possible to download version 7? I tried downloading from the DL&C site but I get a Not Found error page when I try.

[jsachs]

OK, here's one more attempt to get you started with PWP 8 -- if you don't want to give it another try I will also supply you with a link to download PWP 7.

1) First open two images -- the one you want to clone to and the one you want to clone from. I am assuming you don't need to make any changes to the images before cloning, but the same general procedure works even if you do. For simplicity, I will call the two images TO and FROM. Opening the two images will show thumbnails of the two images next to each other in the Image Browser. To view either one of them in the main image area, click on its thumbnail in the browser.

2) Click on the thumbnail for TO to display it and make it the current image. The current image is highlighted with a white caption bar background in the Image Browser.

3) Select Transformation/Tool/Clone from the main menu. This displays the Clone dialog box.

4) As with PWP 7, to clone within TO, shift-click to set the source point and then click and drag to copy to some other point in the image.

5) To clone from FROM to TO, go down the the Source Image control (roughly in the middle of the dialog box) in the Clone dialog box and click on the small white square. This displays a dropdown menu of the available images. Select FROM from the list. At this point the main image area should display two images side by side with FROM on the left and TO on the right. The images can be scrolled and zoomed separately. Shift click on FROM to set the point you want to start cloning from. Click and drag on TO where you want to clone to. If you want, you can reset the Source Image to the output image or set it to some other image you want to clone from. Click OK when you are done.

6) At this point, all the cloning operations you perform have been saved and you can recover them and pick up where you left off by double-clicking on the thumbnail of the Clone transformation in the image browser.

7) When you save the image and choose the default option to save a script file (with image names) along with the image file, two files are saved: the image and the script file. Opening the image file will just give you the image. Opening the script file will reload the original images and re-apply any transformations along with all the saved operations so you can go back and make changes to any of the operations you used to create the image. This is the big advantage of PWP 8 over PWP 7 which just saves the final image but does not record and save what you did to create it.

Anyway if this is too overwhelming, the instructions to download PWP 7 are at the top of the message board:

viewtopic.php?t=3701

[tomczak]

Thanks for the tip, but I just can't seem to get it to work or to understand how to work with image windows in version 8, since it is so different from previous versions.

I can relate to the hesitation - before Jonathan even materialized the PWP8, I just wanted to stick to PWP7 'forever' as I knew it well enough and it did almost all that I ever wanted to do with images.

But try the current PWP8, especially if you understand and like how the PWP7 techniques work, and you won't be disappointed.

My biggest issue was understanding the new workflow paradigm, and one way to think about it is that it's not really new - just way better organised and usable.

In PWP7, you can open an image file - that gives you a window. If you apply a transformation to it, you get another window - the output of this particular transformation. Then you can keep choosing any such window that already exists, apply some transformation to it, and get yet another output window. At one point the last window, after a cascade of transformations, is what you want and you save it as the processed image.

You can translate this idea to PWP8 too, the difference being that the output windows of transformations are now organised, and you can see them in the Browser panel on the left.

In their simplest form, the windows are organised in vertical streams/branches: each original image (e.g. opened from a file) sitting on top of a stream, with outputs of a cascade of transformations applied to it below it. Clicking on any of those thumbnail displays it in the big preview window on the right; double clicking lets you make changes to the transformation that produced it.

With Cloning, you need to first choose one image/window to clone things TO, then 'open' Clone Transformation and in it choose the second image FROM which you want to clone. Once you're done and click OK in the Clone Transformation, a new output image thumbnail is placed just below the TO image (in the Browser panel), which you can then save or process further.

[Marpel]

And if I might add, one of the components in PWP7 that caused me both grief and value, was the part that tomczak just touched on - that you could complete multiple transformations and have multiple windows that reflected each newer version.

The downside to that was - you have multiple windows in the workspace (wasn't uncommon for me to have a dozen or more) which was a bear to keep track of everything. The upside to that was, I could choose any of the windows and complete another transform, regardless of where that image was in the process. I used this to make multiple variations of an image to compare.

I found this aspect the most "different" in PWP8, but once I worked with it for awhile, I found the vertical stream hierarchy more friendly. If I now wish to go back and do a different transform of a version mid-stream, I just make a copy of it, where that copy ends up at the top, and starts it's own stream, and carry on.

Having said all that, I should mention that I use a dual monitor set-up, where the Browser panel is on it's own monitor, so things can be spread out. I found having the Browser Panel sharing the same monitor with everything else was too cluttered, so picked up a cheap monitor solely for that purpose. And as it turned out, I also found the dual monitor set-up of great value with other programs (like Photoshop).

As has been encouraged by others, commit to learning PWP8 and you won't (eventually) regret it.

Marv

[tomczak]

If I now wish to go back and do a different transform of a version mid-stream, I just make a copy of it, where that copy ends up at the top, and starts it's own stream, and carry on.

Or, as I do, you could add a side branch (or several of them) to the original branch mid-stream to try versions.