Paint Shop Pro support - Making Animation Shop See ANY Version of PSP

Author

Making Animation Shop See ANY Version of PSP

DJJohnson

2006-11-06, 12:13 am

Since some of you refuse to even try to move over to better software
that allows you to edit and save animations all from within the same
program -- namely PhotoLine 32, from www.pl32.com . Which even allows
you to save your animations, not just as GIF files, but SWF animations
too. I thought I'd do a little registry and program-code sleuthing for
you. I was curious why Corel couldn't get their head out of their XXX
in trying to get the various versions of software to talk to each
other (as once was originally intended).

It seems that Animation Shop is hard-coded to use a shell\open
registry command from PSP6 through PSP9, this makes it difficult for
Animation Shop to find PSPX. To cure this, just import/hand-edit this
registry info (you can clip this and save it as a filename.reg file
and just use Win XP's Explorer right-click context menu "merge"
option):

---------------begin
AS_finds_any_psp_reg_fix.reg---------------------------
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\PaintShopPro9.Image\Shell\Open]

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\PaintShopPro9.Image\Shell\Open\command]
@="\"C:\\Program Files\\PSPX\\Paint Shop Pro X.exe\" /dde"

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\PaintShopPro9.Image\Shell\Open\ddeexec]
@="[open(\"%1\")]"

---------------end
AS_finds_any_psp_reg_fix.reg---------------------------

You will have to change the path in the second line of this reg.file
to reflect where you installed your version of PSPX.

Once you have done this then Animation Shop will now not only see PSPX
with its "Export Frames > To Paint Shop Pro", but you can export back
to AS from PSPX (using PSPX's "Update back to Animation Shop" tool
that they hid away in the unused commands).

And yes, you can even make Animation Shop open up PSPXI by changing
that path for PSP9's Shell\Open command to point to where you
installed "Corel Paint Shop Pro Photo.exe". However, it won't
automatically export the animation frames to PSPXI, for reasons only
known to Corel and their making a mess of things, as usual. It will
open PSPXI from AS (if you change this reg entry to reflect PSPXI),
but it won't move the files-as-frames there. This will at least afford
you the ability to easily call up PSPXI from within Animation Shop if
that's any consolation. From there you can always do a select-all,
copy, paste in your outmoded and clunky fashion as you've been doing
all along.

I suppose, if you have PSP9 (or other versions) installed and you
don't want its file-type shell/open command to be usurped by PSPX, you
could probably get away with changing this registry entry for one of
several uninstalled or unused PSPs, by changing the above
PaintShopPro9.Image string to one of the various strings listed below.
(i.e. PSP6.Image, PSP7.Image, or PaintShopPro8.Image) But I haven't
experimented to see if their is a priority to which version it looks
for and executes.

Here is that section of code from Animation Shop that shows you what
kinds of shell\open commands that Animation Shop is hard-coded to look
for and accepts as valid pointers to open PSP:

PSP6.Image\shell\open\command
PSP7.Image\shell\open\command
PaintShopPro8.Image\shell\open\command
PaintShopPro9.Image\shell\open\command

Once you're done playing with this, try some better software that
allows you to edit and save animations much more efficiently right
from within the same program -- PhotoLine 32 ( www.pl32.com ).

All the weeks, months, years of people's time wasted, just because
Corel's programmers and support department couldn't take even 5
minutes out of their time to find this amazingly simple fix for you. I
found it that fast on just my first time looking for it. (I had a few
moments during a weakness of curiosity on what was causing so many
people to whine about it.) Corel is making complete fools of all of
you, and they know it. If I cared more I'd just quickly edit the
shell\open commands in Animation Shop's exe file to directly point to
the newer shell\open reg entries of PSPX or PSPXI. That's a simple 1
minute fix to ensure that Animation Shop would work with any versions
of PSP, now and into the future. But it's not worth it. Apparently
Corel feels the same about it or they would have done it 2 years ago
and kept bundling AS with PSP. (Get it yet? They don't care what you
want. This again is concrete proof.)

DJJohnson

2006-11-06, 12:13 am

"DJJohnson" <myemail@myserver.com> wrote in message
news:12jpgns2o8ui49@corp.supernews.com...

> However, it won't automatically export the animation frames to
> PSPXI, for reasons only known to Corel and their making a mess of
> things, as usual. It will open PSPXI from AS (if you change this reg
> entry to reflect PSPXI), but it won't move the >> files-as-frames <<
> there.

Correction: I meant to type frames-as-layers, not files-as-frames.

DJJohnson

2006-11-06, 12:13 am

For those of you that are comfortable hex-editing EXE files:

Make a backup copy of Animation Shop's "Anim.exe" file. Then load
"Anim.exe" file into any editor capable of hex-edits. Search for the
string "PaintShopPro9.Image" near location #001dcac0 and change that
to "PaintShopProX.Image". Save "Anim.exe". This way you don't even
have to change PSP9's shell\open commands in the registry which might
screw up your favored file associations. (You will find similar
aforementioned strings for PSP6, PSP7, and PaintShopPro8 in the same
region of code, to make sure you are in the right location of code.)

After that one-byte edit your Animation Shop is now 100% PSPX
compatible.

How about that, Corel could have edited ONE BYTE of code 2 YEARS ago
to make everyone happy and increase the functions and usefullness of
PSP. But even that was beyond them.

The same can be done for PSPXI, but you would have to edit/nullify
some of the other bytes to allow for PSPXI's much longer
"PaintShopProPhotoXI.Image" registry string. With all the problems in
PSPXI it's simply not worth bundling functional software with trashed
PSPXI.

DJJohnson

2006-11-06, 12:13 am

"DJJohnson" <myemail@myserver.com> wrote in message
news:12jplb4786564c6@corp.supernews.com...
> For those of you that are comfortable hex-editing EXE files:
>
> Make a backup copy of Animation Shop's "Anim.exe" file. Then load
> "Anim.exe" file into any editor capable of hex-edits. Search for
> the string "PaintShopPro9.Image" near location #001dcac0 and change
> that to "PaintShopProX.Image". Save "Anim.exe". This way you don't
> even have to change PSP9's shell\open commands in the registry which
> might screw up your favored file associations. (You will find
> similar aforementioned strings for PSP6, PSP7, and PaintShopPro8 in
> the same region of code, to make sure you are in the right location
> of code.)
>
> After that one-byte edit your Animation Shop is now 100% PSPX
> compatible.
>
> How about that, Corel could have edited ONE BYTE of code 2 YEARS ago
> to make everyone happy and increase the functions and usefullness of
> PSP. But even that was beyond them.
>
> The same can be done for PSPXI, but you would have to edit/nullify
> some of the other bytes to allow for PSPXI's much longer
> "PaintShopProPhotoXI.Image" registry string. With all the problems
> in PSPXI it's simply not worth bundling functional software with
> trashed PSPXI.
>

One further note about all of this, if you'd like to keep the
integration of Animation Shop intact with earlier versions of PSP as
well as PSPX, then you should sacrifice one of the strings in Anim.exe
of the version of PSP that you don't have installed or don't plan to
use as often. Say for example, if you have PSP9 and would like to also
use PSPX, then edit the PaintShopPro8.Image string to the
PaintShopProX.Image string.

If you have PSP8 and PSPX installed, then sacrifice the
PaintshopPro9.Image string for PSPX as stated in the previously quoted
section.

If you really insist on wanting to try to make Animation Shop
compatible with crippled PSPXI by trying to edit Anim.exe directly,
then you'll have to do some further editing. You will need enough room
to have the full string-length of "PaintShopProPhotoXI.Image". (You
can't just insert needed spaces in already compiled programming, code
is called-up by exact byte-locations throughout, inserting even just
one extra byte location would shift everything after it in the
program, corrupting everything.) The only way to get the needed space
for this longer string will be to sacrifice either both of the PSP6
and PSP7 regions, or the PSP8 and PSP9 regions. Start out by editing
the first of the two regions (psp6 or psp8), to have that string of
"PaintShopProPhotoXI.Image" starting in the same location. Then when
you have finished also adding in the rest of the
"image\shell\open\command" and *.exe string, you will have to pad out
the rest of the space left with the value 00 (null) up to but not
destroying the next region with valid code.

You are going to have to be very careful to keep the rest of the
"\shell\open\command" string intact as well as the associated psp.exe
or Paint Shop Pro.exe filename that's also embedded in these areas. No
doubt you should have the full PSPXI exe's filename in there too,
instead of the ones in place now. I haven't tried it, and it may not
even work. (I uninstalled PSPXI after I tested the alternate
registry-hack to see if that would work, which it does, but
incompletely.) Most/many strings are called up by not only a hex
location but by an expected number of bytes, so it may or may not
work. If however the code is only looking for the beginning memory
location for an intact string (or a sequence of variable-values), then
you might get away with editing it this way. As I said, it's probably
not worth the bother. For the more curious and adventurous among you
it might be an interesting winter-project for shits and grins -- just
to see why PSPXI and AS refuse to talk to each other properly.
Patching Anim.exe might over-ride the incomplete-association problem
that happens when using the PSP9 registry hack with the shell\open
command to find PSPXI. (As stated in the first post in this thread.)
Another plus, if your Anim.exe to PSPXI editing does work .. consider
yourself smarter than the incompetent programmers that Corel always
hires. But that's not saying much, every last one of them should be
fired for destroying what used to be a decent program -- the CEO's and
department heads that hired them can also crawl off to their
well-deserved gutters right along with them. They've shown that
they're all headed there anyway, it's just a matter of time.

Uni

2006-11-06, 12:13 am

DJJohnson wrote:
> Since some of you refuse to even try to move over to better software
> that allows you to edit and save animations all from within the same
> program -- namely PhotoLine 32, from www.pl32.com .

I bet you program in BASIC!

:-)

Uni

Which even allows
> you to save your animations, not just as GIF files, but SWF animations
> too. I thought I'd do a little registry and program-code sleuthing for
> you. I was curious why Corel couldn't get their head out of their XXX
> in trying to get the various versions of software to talk to each
> other (as once was originally intended).
>
> It seems that Animation Shop is hard-coded to use a shell\open
> registry command from PSP6 through PSP9, this makes it difficult for
> Animation Shop to find PSPX. To cure this, just import/hand-edit this
> registry info (you can clip this and save it as a filename.reg file
> and just use Win XP's Explorer right-click context menu "merge"
> option):
>
> ---------------begin
> AS_finds_any_psp_reg_fix.reg---------------------------
> Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
>
> [HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\PaintShopPro9.Image\Shell\Open]
>
> [HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\PaintShopPro9.Image\Shell\Open\command]
> @="\"C:\\Program Files\\PSPX\\Paint Shop Pro X.exe\" /dde"
>
> [HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\PaintShopPro9.Image\Shell\Open\ddeexec]
> @="[open(\"%1\")]"
>
>
> ---------------end
> AS_finds_any_psp_reg_fix.reg---------------------------
>
> You will have to change the path in the second line of this reg.file
> to reflect where you installed your version of PSPX.
>
> Once you have done this then Animation Shop will now not only see PSPX
> with its "Export Frames > To Paint Shop Pro", but you can export back
> to AS from PSPX (using PSPX's "Update back to Animation Shop" tool
> that they hid away in the unused commands).
>
> And yes, you can even make Animation Shop open up PSPXI by changing
> that path for PSP9's Shell\Open command to point to where you
> installed "Corel Paint Shop Pro Photo.exe". However, it won't
> automatically export the animation frames to PSPXI, for reasons only
> known to Corel and their making a mess of things, as usual. It will
> open PSPXI from AS (if you change this reg entry to reflect PSPXI),
> but it won't move the files-as-frames there. This will at least afford
> you the ability to easily call up PSPXI from within Animation Shop if
> that's any consolation. From there you can always do a select-all,
> copy, paste in your outmoded and clunky fashion as you've been doing
> all along.
>
> I suppose, if you have PSP9 (or other versions) installed and you
> don't want its file-type shell/open command to be usurped by PSPX, you
> could probably get away with changing this registry entry for one of
> several uninstalled or unused PSPs, by changing the above
> PaintShopPro9.Image string to one of the various strings listed below.
> (i.e. PSP6.Image, PSP7.Image, or PaintShopPro8.Image) But I haven't
> experimented to see if their is a priority to which version it looks
> for and executes.
>
> Here is that section of code from Animation Shop that shows you what
> kinds of shell\open commands that Animation Shop is hard-coded to look
> for and accepts as valid pointers to open PSP:
>
> PSP6.Image\shell\open\command
> PSP7.Image\shell\open\command
> PaintShopPro8.Image\shell\open\command
> PaintShopPro9.Image\shell\open\command
>
> Once you're done playing with this, try some better software that
> allows you to edit and save animations much more efficiently right
> from within the same program -- PhotoLine 32 ( www.pl32.com ).
>
> All the weeks, months, years of people's time wasted, just because
> Corel's programmers and support department couldn't take even 5
> minutes out of their time to find this amazingly simple fix for you. I
> found it that fast on just my first time looking for it. (I had a few
> moments during a weakness of curiosity on what was causing so many
> people to whine about it.) Corel is making complete fools of all of
> you, and they know it. If I cared more I'd just quickly edit the
> shell\open commands in Animation Shop's exe file to directly point to
> the newer shell\open reg entries of PSPX or PSPXI. That's a simple 1
> minute fix to ensure that Animation Shop would work with any versions
> of PSP, now and into the future. But it's not worth it. Apparently
> Corel feels the same about it or they would have done it 2 years ago
> and kept bundling AS with PSP. (Get it yet? They don't care what you
> want. This again is concrete proof.)
>
>
>
>
>

2006-11-06, 12:13 am

Uni wrote:

> DJJohnson wrote:
>
> I bet you program in BASIC!
>
> :-)
>
> Uni
>

Is that good or bad???

--

DJJohnson

2006-11-06, 12:13 am

"CJ" <cje20@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:12jr5mfcibheqd2@corp.supernews.com...
> Uni wrote:
>
>
> Is that good or bad???
>

I have a strong suspicion that that's the only program language name
that he even knew how to spell.

©®

2006-11-06, 12:13 am

Excuse the ignorance but where do I find Animation Shop? I have PSPX as
an electronic download from Corel.
Thanks very much.
(By the way, have an old PSP 6 CD as well(.

Fred Hiltz

2006-11-06, 12:13 am

©® wrote:
> Excuse the ignorance but where do I find Animation Shop? I
> have PSPX as an electronic download from Corel.
> Thanks very much.
> (By the way, have an old PSP 6 CD as well(.

Download it here:
http://www.jasc.com/support/custome...9components.asp
and read Answer ID = 758630 at http://support.corel.com about using
it with PSP 10. Corel no longer supports it; some have reported
that it works and some that it does not.
--
Fred Hiltz, fhiltz at yahoo dot com

Uni

2006-11-06, 12:13 am

DJJohnson wrote:
> "CJ" <cje20@hotmail.com> wrote in message
> news:12jr5mfcibheqd2@corp.supernews.com...
>
>
>
> I have a strong suspicion that that's the only program language name
> that he even knew how to spell.

Oh, I'm sorry, I forgot, you still use Fortran!

:-)

Uni - who could program circles around Photoline's programmers

>
>
>

2006-11-06, 12:13 am

Uni wrote:

> DJJohnson wrote:
> news:12jr5mfcibheqd2@corp.supernews.com...
>
> Oh, I'm sorry, I forgot, you still use Fortran!
>
> :-)
>
> Uni - who could program circles around Photoline's programmers

Ahh Uni... Anybody can do circles. To be really good you have to do
polygons and bezier curves.

--
Cliff - who firmly believes Photoline32 is a real dog of a program.

Uni

2006-11-06, 12:14 am

CJ wrote:
> Uni wrote:
>
>
>
>
> Ahh Uni... Anybody can do circles. To be really good you have to do
> polygons and bezier curves.

Prefer female curves, myself!

:-)

Uni

>

Rene'e

2006-11-06, 12:14 am

Paint me stupid but could someone help?

I am trying to figure out how to do this but am completely lost at how to
edit a registry. Can anyone tell me how to do step by step or point me in
the right direction somewhere that can? Thanks and thanks so much for the
info to update animation shop!!!

DJJohnson

2006-11-06, 12:14 am

"Rene'e" <renelma2003@aol.com> wrote in message
news:bd988d7c16659d402c2ad1ea647c70d3$1@www10.dcccafe.com...
> Paint me stupid but could someone help?
>
> I am trying to figure out how to do this but am completely lost at
> how to edit a registry. Can anyone tell me how to do step by step or
> point me in the right direction somewhere that can? Thanks and
> thanks so much for the info to update animation shop!!!
>

Since you've never used regedit.exe before (if you are curious, you
just go to your "Start" menu, click on "Run", and type in "regedit"
without the quotes, press "OK"), but it's probably best to not try to
explain how to edit this manually. If you edit something in the wrong
place with regedit you could break Windows and only a reinstall of
Windows would correct it. And explaining how to edit all 3 required
lines with the proper entries could take forever trying to explain to
you what is what. I've no idea what your skill level is at this time,
from what you state it sounds pretty lean.

SO ... it would probably be best to create a "REG" file for you that
you could just merge into your registry, by right-clicking on it from
Windows Explorer (or even from your desktop if you save the file
there). You could copy those lines of text from a post (like in the
first post in this thread), to any blank text file. Then just save it
to your hard-drive as any "filename.reg" file. But to do this for you,
I'd need to know:

What version or versions of PSP are you using?

Which version of PSP do you want to have Animation Shop open and
export frames to?

What is the FULL path to your Paint Shop Pro's EXE file that you want
Animation Shop to see? (including the name of the exe file).
(example: C:\Program Files\Jasc\Paint Shop Pro\Paint Shop Pro 9.exe)

Are you running Windows 98 or Windows XP?

If you are trying to get Animation Shop to see PSP-X, then I highly
recommend doing the one-byte edit to Animation Shop's EXE file
instead. You only need any editor that will allow you to load and edit
a binary file. For quick jobs like this I just use my every-day text
editor called "UltraEdit" from http://www.ultraedit.com/ If this is
your situation (trying to get Animation Shop to export frames to
PSP-X), then you might want to download a demo of UltraEdit to use for
this and perform that one-byte edit. It will save you a lot of other
awkward problems with the registry change, and save me a $#|T-load of
time.

Uni

2006-11-06, 12:14 am

DJJohnson wrote:
> "Rene'e" <renelma2003@aol.com> wrote in message
> news:bd988d7c16659d402c2ad1ea647c70d3$1@www10.dcccafe.com...
>
>
>
> Since you've never used regedit.exe before (if you are curious, you
> just go to your "Start" menu, click on "Run", and type in "regedit"
> without the quotes, press "OK"), but it's probably best to not try to
> explain how to edit this manually. If you edit something in the wrong
> place with regedit you could break Windows and only a reinstall of
> Windows would correct it. And explaining how to edit all 3 required
> lines with the proper entries could take forever trying to explain to
> you what is what. I've no idea what your skill level is at this time,
> from what you state it sounds pretty lean.
>
> SO ... it would probably be best to create a "REG" file for you that
> you could just merge into your registry, by right-clicking on it from
> Windows Explorer (or even from your desktop if you save the file
> there). You could copy those lines of text from a post (like in the
> first post in this thread), to any blank text file. Then just save it
> to your hard-drive as any "filename.reg" file. But to do this for you,
> I'd need to know:
>
> What version or versions of PSP are you using?
>
> Which version of PSP do you want to have Animation Shop open and
> export frames to?
>
> What is the FULL path to your Paint Shop Pro's EXE file that you want
> Animation Shop to see? (including the name of the exe file).
> (example: C:\Program Files\Jasc\Paint Shop Pro\Paint Shop Pro 9.exe)
>
> Are you running Windows 98 or Windows XP?
>
>
> If you are trying to get Animation Shop to see PSP-X, then I highly
> recommend doing the one-byte edit to Animation Shop's EXE file
> instead.

Oh, yeah, everyone know how to hex edit!

:-)

Uni

You only need any editor that will allow you to load and edit
> a binary file. For quick jobs like this I just use my every-day text
> editor called "UltraEdit" from http://www.ultraedit.com/ If this is
> your situation (trying to get Animation Shop to export frames to
> PSP-X), then you might want to download a demo of UltraEdit to use for
> this and perform that one-byte edit. It will save you a lot of other
> awkward problems with the registry change, and save me a $#|T-load of
> time.
>
>

Rene'e

2006-11-19, 8:34 pm

Okay well it sounds like this would be too huge of a headache for you so
I'll just skip it. I did find a script to allow me to open Animation Shop
from PSP X so I'll just keep jumping back and forth with copy until
someone figures out something easier. lol I have a lot of computer
knowledge and can do pretty much anything except messing with registry,
never had a need to before. Thanks anyway.

Rene'e

DJJohnson

2006-11-19, 8:35 pm

"Rene'e" <renelma2003@aol.com> wrote in message
news:f6a1961f64db177dfa26413016cca6bb$1@www10.dcccafe.com...
> Okay well it sounds like this would be too huge of a headache for
> you so I'll just skip it. I did find a script to allow me to open
> Animation Shop from PSP X so I'll just keep jumping back and forth
> with copy until someone figures out something easier. lol I have a
> lot of computer knowledge and can do pretty much anything except
> messing with registry, never had a need to before. Thanks anyway.
>
> Rene'e
>

I'd urge you then to download a demo copy of UltraEdit
(www.ultraedit.com) to use just to edit that one byte (character) in
Animation Shop's exe file. There's also many freeware editors that can
do this, but I don't use them so I can't tell you what one to get.
It's really not that hard to fix Animation Shop. No more than changing
one letter in a word in a post to a newsgroup. Like correcting a
spelling mistake. You're only changing a 9 to an X. Here's the info
again in case you missed it before:

>
> Make a backup copy of Animation Shop's "Anim.exe" file. Then load
> "Anim.exe" file into any editor capable of hex-edits. Search for
> the string "PaintShopPro9.Image" near location #001dcac0 and change
> that to "PaintShopProX.Image". Save "Anim.exe". This way you don't
> even have to change PSP9's shell\open commands in the registry which
> might screw up your favored file associations. (You will find
> similar aforementioned strings for PSP6, PSP7, and PaintShopPro8 in
> the same region of code, to make sure you are in the right location
> of code.)
>
> After that one-byte edit your Animation Shop is now 100% PSPX
> compatible.
>

Just put your editing cursor where the 9 is in that line and type X
(uppercase X), how hard is that? Then save the file.

If you goof up (which you really won't, it's almost impossible to
screw this up) you can always undo this by deleting the Anim.exe file
you were trying to edit, and renaming your backup copy to Anim.exe
again. If you ever decide to use Animation Shop with PSP9, you can
always just rename your edited version to AnimX.exe and name your
backup one to Anim.exe too. Heck, you can run both if you want just by
making shortcuts to both of them. Use one for PSP9 and one for PSPX. I
was running both of them out of the same folder while testing this to
make sure it was working.

DJJohnson

2006-11-19, 8:35 pm

Trev

2006-11-19, 8:35 pm

Uni

2006-11-19, 8:35 pm

Trev wrote:
> "Rene'e" <renelma2003@aol.com> wrote in message
> news:f6a1961f64db177dfa26413016cca6bb$1@www10.dcccafe.com...
>
>
> But there is a script to open ani shop from psp X. Or any exe. its by Gary
> Barton called executive an exe.

It was so fun to pick out the Jasc crew in this group.

:-)

Uni

> but I can not find it on www.pixcelnook.com
> so I have zipped my open animation shop and it will be available for
> download for seven days. Just bind it to a bound script and place it where
> you want , me I placed it in file menu like it was on other psp's
> http://download.yousendit.com/55F80D7C2A7E3843
>
>

Rene'e

2006-12-06, 7:59 pm

Awesome, thank you so much! The ultraedit worked. =)

DJJohnson

2006-12-06, 7:59 pm

"Rene'e" <renelma2003@sbcglobal.net> wrote in message
news:5be614882f1d1f7e2965c76000c1d5f4$1@www10.dcccafe.com...
> Awesome, thank you so much! The ultraedit worked. =)
>

NICE!!!

See? You could do it!

:-)