17 Where is my Recent Files list on the FILE menu?
This can happen if TweakUI is installed and running on the machine. The following adjustment to the TweakUI configuration will allow Paint Shop Pro's Recent File list to work.
1. Launch TweakUI from the Windows Control Panels
2. Click on the IE tab.
3. There should be an option for "add >new documents to documents on startup menu".
Make sure that this option is checked.
4. Close TweakUI and launch Paint Shop Pro again
5. Try opening and closing some image files
6. Check the File menu, the Recent opened files should be listed.

But I haven't got Tweak UI installed? Most people with this problem have used "TWEAKUI" to turn off the Start Menu "Recent Documents" option. Even though TweakUI implies that this only affects the start menu, Microsoft W2K compliant applications use this setting to also control their internal recent files listing. You can find TweakUI in the control panel, and access "Add new documents to Documents on Start menu" under the IE tab.

But if you don't have TweakUI, there are a couple of other fixes that have worked for others
Change the number of recent files to something like "10" under:  File> Preferences> General Program Preferences> Miscellaneous  (Sometimes that kick-starts things)

If that doesn't work, you can manually edit the registry.
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\
Policies\Explorer\NoRecentDocsHistory

If the key value of NoRecentDocsHistory = 1, the program will not
display recent files in the File menu. This value can be changed to 0
in the registry to circumvent this behavior.
I.E., change the value from '01' to '00'.    -Jackie

18 Is there any way to maintain the correct aspect ratio when using the deformation tool to resize an item? Use the right button, instead of the left button, to drag the handles of the deformation tool. -Helge

19 I found my program had opened "restored" & off screen?
If you know which way it has to be moved, you can try this:
1.  Start PSP. Make sure it's button on the task bar is depressed.
2. Tap the Alt key once.
3. Tap the down arrow key once.
4. Tap the left arrow key once.
5. Tap the M key once.
6. The arrow keys should now move the entire PSP window around on the screen. You can use them to move it to where you can get at the title bar again. -Rick

22 I want to start in a different directory?
Right-click the shortcut icon you use to launch PSP and choose Properties. You'll find a field in that dialog box where you can change the path to your designated "Start in" folder. Sometimes we can get bad shortcut icons that don't want to cooperate. If this happens just deleting that original shortcut icon and making a fresh new one generally solves the problem.

Several people report problems with some of installation generated desktop shortcut icons not being fully functional.  Open Window's Explorer & browse to PSP7's folder & right click on the PSP exe. file to create a brand new shortcut icon you can drag over onto your desktop.  Now change the "start in" folder on this new guy to whichever folder you want as your default.

23 PSP cannot capture from its own workspace? Open a second instance of PSP and use one to click the capture button and the other to select the PSP workspace item to be captured. -Bill

Does the Registry terrify you ?   Resetting those Registry Settings hot tip     Never lose your toolbar settings again

24 If you pick up some minor indigestion in your PSP registry settings an easy way to burp that fellow without going into your registry: Hold down your Control+Alt keys at the same time you launch PSP. Timing's critical so you may have to do it a few times before it catches. When it catches, a little box pops up asking sweetly if you want to dump all your PSP registry settings.  Saying YES often rights little indigestion mishaps. You do lose all your customized settings in preferences & toolbars.   With PSP7's new workspace files, Registry cleanups & program reinstallation no longer have that heartbreak of kissing those toolbars good-by. SAVE A WORKSPACE FILE & it does double duty as your toolbars backup Workspace files SAVE & OPEN just like images Think of .wsp files as Polaroids of your PSP workspace. When you load your Polaroid .wsp file what was in that picture of the PSP workspace once again becomes a reality Hello Toolbars, it's nice to see you back where you belong

25 When I try to do a find in the help file I get the following error message
"Unable to display the find tab (177)?"

Look for the files Psp.GID and Psp.FTS in the directory that contains Psp.EXE and Psp.HLP. Rename these files to something else by changing the extensions to e.g. OLD_GID and OLD_FTS. Repeat the Find Setup Wizard stuff in Help. If the problem goes away, delete these renamed files. It worked for me when I had this problem. -Kris

26 The program runs slow on my older computer? If you only use standard text and you turn autoproof off, (We must compare apples to apples.) PSP 7 text tested to be the same as PSP 6 text in rendering time. To turn off autoproof: Click on the Arrow in the text dialog box so it is no longer depressed.

Now if you use some outlines, and/or gradients and patterns in text, this will add a bit of time, but not so much as creating the text, converting it to raster and then applying a stroke or gradient.  The largest time hog in the text tool is the autoproof button. Deselecting that makes it more usable on the lower end machines. -Nancy

28 Pressing Reset restores the default values in the PSP filters, but Shift-Reset restores the values to what the filter used last. This helps you process a series of images the same way.

29 I noticed that adjusting the midtones setting in the new Histogram Adjustment dialog box also effects the color saturation. Entering a positive number increases the saturation and negative numbers decrease the saturation. A setting of Midtones -15 seems to give a pretty noticeable saturation decrease in the image I was using.  At first I thought this might just be a natural result of the change in contrast, but then I tried a further test: instead of applying a Midtones -15 adjustment to the luminosity channel, I applied the same -15 adjustment separately to each of the RGB channels. In this case there was no apparent change in saturation. So I concluded that this must be a bug. -Jon

First, Luminosity is made up of different proportions of red, green and blue.  In math terms: Luminosity = a x R + b x G + c x B

The important thing is that the factors a, b and c are not the same. In fact (no pun) the biggest one of the three is b. In other words, the green channel is most important for our sense of contrast. This is because the human eye is most sensitive to green. What does this mean? If you change R and G and B all by the same amount - lets call it X percent - then this is not the same as changing Luminosity by X percent. (Why? Because changing luminosity by X percent means changing R by aX percent, G by bX percent and B by cX percent, and aX does not equal bX does not equal cX.)

Second, there is the possibility of a mistake on your part. The Histogram Adjustment filter can change Luminosity, R, G or B one at a time. It cannot change two or more of these simultaneously. For example, if you first adjust the Green channel and, without exiting from the filter, you select say the Red channel, the changes to the Green channel are discarded and the filter applies changes only to the R channel. If you ran the filter three times with a setting of Midtones -15, first for the Red channel (clicking OK), then (reinvoking again) for the Green, and finally for the Blue, you did what you described in your message. If you did not run the filter 3 times, you did not perform the comparison discussed in the previous paragraph, even though you believe you did.

The automatic photo correction tools do, in fact, use principles from human color vision to do their job. You could say that in some way they are "smarter" than the Histogram Adjustment filter.

If you use the HSL color space in PSP to estimate hue, saturation & lightness you will find these are grossly at variance with human perception. HSL is there because it is a traditional color space in which color hues are easy to define, not because it mimics how humans see.

If you correct an image in the sequence: color balance, then contrast, then saturation you will normally get the best results. Only when the image is improperly almost black or almost white does it pay to do contrast first, & even then the best sequence is probably: contrast,then color balance, then contrast again & then saturation. I hope this helps. -Kris

30 I want a transparent paint brush?

 On a normal layer the eraser is equivalent to painting with transparency

31 Speaking of cats and red-eye, I wish there were a built-in cat-pupil-shaped pupil for red-eye removal. To get a cat's eye looking like a cat's eye, you have to do the pupil selection by hand. Not a horrible problem, but I have lots of pictures of cats, and so would find something automated to be handy. -Lori

When you use the Auto Animal Eye method you initially get a circular selection. (You do this either by clicking on the eye or dragging from the center.) Now you can pull and push on the side of the frame around the selection and deform the selection to an oval. In the center there is a little lever that you can use to rotate the oval to match the orientation of your cat's pupil. Then dragging on the corners of the frame uniformly resizes about the center. (Alt-PgUp and Alt-PgDn work too for resizing, and Alt-arrow keys for moving.)   -Kris