Pages: 1 ... 8 9 [10] 11 12 ... 22   Go Down

Author Topic: If Thomas designed a new Photoshop for photographers now...  (Read 186700 times)

daws

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 282
Re: If Thomas designed a new Photoshop for photographers now...
« Reply #180 on: May 13, 2013, 12:50:29 am »

...A lot of what I'm seeing is well... Photoshop. Seems if you compiled everything someone has mentioned you would essentially have the same piece of software that exists now...maybe it would be cleaner, perhaps work in a different way, but would still essentially be Photoshop for all practical purposes.  If that's the case, I ask again.. why not use what's there now?

I very much want to. I have used Photoshop for 18 years, from v3.0 to CS6. Beyond that, sadly, Adobe's new business model makes it impossible for me to use future versions.

My hope is that by the time CS6 becomes impractical for me, the marketplace will have evolved non-Adobe applications which, individually or in combination with other non-Adobe applications, will accomplish sufficient of the functions suggested in this thread for me to purchase them.




« Last Edit: May 13, 2013, 12:56:51 am by daws »
Logged

John Cothron

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 349
    • Cothron Photography
Re: If Thomas designed a new Photoshop for photographers now...
« Reply #181 on: May 13, 2013, 12:55:20 am »

LR or ACR is just a child's toy compared to those industry tools that are available in Photoshop.


I just saw this statement, and have to say I totally disagree with it.  It MIGHT be true if you want to manipulate an image heavily, in fact I would say it is true in that instance.  If you are a PHOTOGRAPHER however, that generally wants what the camera sees as your image...then it doesn't apply.

I know how to use both, and have used both. I use Lightroom because it does the things I want to do...more efficiently.
Logged
John
Flickr

John Cothron

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 349
    • Cothron Photography
Re: If Thomas designed a new Photoshop for photographers now...
« Reply #182 on: May 13, 2013, 12:57:04 am »

I very much want to. I have for 18 years, from v3.0 to CS6. Beyond that, sadly, Adobe's new business model makes  it impossible for me to use future versions of their products.

My hope is that by the time CS6 becomes impractical for me, the marketplace will have evolved applications which, individually or in combination with other applications, will accomplish sufficient of the functions suggested in this thread for me to purchase them.






I hear you on this issue, I'm not a fan of the new direction either.  I probably should have qualified what I said as being from a performance standpoint and not taking into account recent events.
Logged
John
Flickr

Kirk Gittings

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 1561
    • http://www.KirkGittings.com
Re: If Thomas designed a new Photoshop for photographers now...
« Reply #183 on: May 13, 2013, 01:39:26 am »

I just saw this statement, and have to say I totally disagree with it.  It MIGHT be true if you want to manipulate an image heavily, in fact I would say it is true in that instance.  If you are a PHOTOGRAPHER however, that generally wants what the camera sees as your image...then it doesn't apply.

I know how to use both, and have used both. I use Lightroom because it does the things I want to do...more efficiently.

This is a joke right? You are going to define what a PHOTOGRAPHER is for the rest of us? Who appointed you guru? Ever seen a straight print of Ansel Adams "Moonrise"? One of the most famous photographs in history-by your definition he's not a photographer because he manipulated the crap out of it. Ever heard of Jerry Uelsmann, a very important figure in the history of PHOTOGRAPHY?
Logged
Thanks,
Kirk Gittings

JRSmit

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 922
    • Jan R. Smit Fine Art Printing Specialist
Re: If Thomas designed a new Photoshop for photographers now...
« Reply #184 on: May 13, 2013, 02:21:04 am »

This is a joke right? You are going to define what a PHOTOGRAPHER is for the rest of us? Who appointed you guru? Ever seen a straight print of Ansel Adams "Moonrise"? One of the most famous photographs in history-by your definition he's not a photographer because he manipulated the crap out of it. Ever heard of Jerry Uelsmann, a very important figure in the history of PHOTOGRAPHY?
John may have worded it not to your liking. he however tried to differentiate between people that make illustrations and people that work on their photo to finalise it to something they aim for. As such he has a point. And yes ansel adams heavily manipulated the famous moonrise, and onthers, while printing from the negative. So does litterally  that is taking or making photos. by default because his camera does it, or on purpose because he develops it in his application of choice.
Logged
Fine art photography: janrsmit.com
Fine Art Printing Specialist: www.fineartprintingspecialist.nl


Jan R. Smit

hjulenissen

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 2051
Re: If Thomas designed a new Photoshop for photographers now...
« Reply #185 on: May 13, 2013, 02:39:35 am »

Well, that bring up an interesting point...if this new fangled Photoshop were designed to be a companion to Lightroom (to be used pretty much only in conjunction with Lightroom) it would be like a plug-in for Lightroom to edit pixels for when the task at hand can't be done parametrically.

So, if this wasn't a stand long but a bundle, something like Lightroom Pro, then you wouldn't need to duplicate anything in LR...and things like soft proofing, and printing wouldn't be needed because, well, the presumption would be you would round trip into the pixel editing sister app with the intention of bring that back to Lightroom for the rest of what Lightroom can do (which is pretty much what I use Photoshop for now).
I am not sure that I see the distinction between "pixel processing" and "parametric processing". Sure, I understand that Photoshop and Lightroom are different, and I understand that using integer pixel coordinates is somewhat differentl from using a normalized floatingpoint coordinate system. But what is the fundamental limit stopping Lightroom from doing whatever Photoshop does?

I would think that the biggest obstacle is UI clutter. If Lightroom is to do everything that Photoshop does, its GUI would probably become more complex. That would make it less appealing to me. The art seems to be to offer just the right features, in a sufficiently manageable package that it fits its target audience. By limiting itself to raw still photographers, Lightroom does not have to support 3-d animation or advanced fonts or whatever.

If that means moving more complex image editing into a plugin (or a "plugin"), then I am all for it.

-h
Logged

Schewe

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 6229
    • http:www.schewephoto.com
Re: If Thomas designed a new Photoshop for photographers now...
« Reply #186 on: May 13, 2013, 03:11:33 am »

I am not sure that I see the distinction between "pixel processing" and "parametric processing".

I think this is a crucial distinction and if you don't understand, then that's an issue. To be clear, everything ACR/LR does is only an adjustment of the parameters for a particular control–you can go back into that control and alter it at any time. And, also important to understand, the order the user works in is irrelevant to the order that the parameters are processed.

Compare that to pixel edits where editing the pixels result in a different result after the correction. It implies edits are destructive (and they are unless you use Adjustment Layers). The more you edit pixels the more they fall apart because, well rounding errors and reductions in precision tend to accumulate...

So, bottom line: you want to stay parametric right up to the point where parametric breaks down because of too much parametric data and move into a pixel based edit–where more edits will generally result in less optimal results.

You must grok this...right? A raw file's scene refereed data .xmp settings can be changed ad infinitum (meaning forever) but an output scene referred file degenerates with edits & iterations...

Look at this way...for raw files, as time goes bye, raw processing seems to get better. From the standpoint of rendered image files, the more you edit, the less precise you images become. Will it obliterate you images making them useless? Nope, but is asked, I would say it steps on your image quality potential.
Logged

Jim Pascoe

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 1131
    • http://www.jimpascoe.co.uk
Re: If Thomas designed a new Photoshop for photographers now...
« Reply #187 on: May 13, 2013, 04:27:46 am »

This is a joke right? You are going to define what a PHOTOGRAPHER is for the rest of us? Who appointed you guru? Ever seen a straight print of Ansel Adams "Moonrise"? One of the most famous photographs in history-by your definition he's not a photographer because he manipulated the crap out of it. Ever heard of Jerry Uelsmann, a very important figure in the history of PHOTOGRAPHY?

Kirk, I think you have to read the post as a response to another post, and not just in isolation.  John quite clearly states that he uses PS and LR, and that of course some photographs need Photoshop.  However the point is that PS was not designed for Photographers, and the vast majority of Photographs do not need a heavyweight like PS.  Of course SOME photographers use PS heavily, and I think John appreciates this.
One more thing, do we need to bring Ansel Adams into this?  I know of Godwins Law regarding how long it takes before the name Hitler appears in a thread.  Ansel seems to be in the same boat.  Don't get me wrong, he was actually my inspiration to start taking my photography seriously 30 years ago.  But without wanting to derail this thread, I think Ansel would could quite happily have done Moonrise in LR or perhaps PS Elements, and would not have needed CS6.

Jim
Logged

hjulenissen

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 2051
Re: If Thomas designed a new Photoshop for photographers now...
« Reply #188 on: May 13, 2013, 04:41:26 am »

I think this is a crucial distinction and if you don't understand, then that's an issue. To be clear, everything ACR/LR does is only an adjustment of the parameters for a particular control–you can go back into that control and alter it at any time. And, also important to understand, the order the user works in is irrelevant to the order that the parameters are processed.

Compare that to pixel edits where editing the pixels result in a different result after the correction. It implies edits are destructive (and they are unless you use Adjustment Layers). The more you edit pixels the more they fall apart because, well rounding errors and reductions in precision tend to accumulate...

So, bottom line: you want to stay parametric right up to the point where parametric breaks down because of too much parametric data and move into a pixel based edit–where more edits will generally result in less optimal results.

You must grok this...right? A raw file's scene refereed data .xmp settings can be changed ad infinitum (meaning forever) but an output scene referred file degenerates with edits & iterations...

Look at this way...for raw files, as time goes bye, raw processing seems to get better. From the standpoint of rendered image files, the more you edit, the less precise you images become. Will it obliterate you images making them useless? Nope, but is asked, I would say it steps on your image quality potential.
While I am aware of the benefits of parametric Lightroom-style editing, the benefits of pixel-based editing is not as apparent to me. A pixel is just a coordinate in a buffer. A parametric editor ought to be able to manipulate that pixel (by using the right coordinate) just as well as a pixel-based editor.

Of course there are practical implications (rendering speed, ease of which to insert 3rd party plugins) but that is what software developers are paid to do fix for us.

Are you certain that Knoll & friends would have chosen a pixel-based pipeline had they started out with "Photoshop" today?

-h
Logged

Ronny Nilsen

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 361
    • The Quiet Landscape
Re: If Thomas designed a new Photoshop for photographers now...
« Reply #189 on: May 13, 2013, 07:08:58 am »

What I would like in addition to the parametric editing i LR (that I think at this point is very good!) is the ability to have "layers" on top of the current LR/ACR engine where I can put additional editing commands. These could also be parametric, but I would like to be able to decide the sequence and to build upon the previous "layer". The edits that is available in these "layers" could be the same as those in the parametric LR engine in addition to all the stuff we love in PS, eg. Selective Color (that I use a lot).

Combined with the ability to do stitching an HDR merge I think this would be a very powerful tool

Let me try to give an example of how I think this workflow could work:
  • Merge RAW files to panorama or HDR or both in a "merge" modul.
  • Do parametric editing as today in develop module
  • Go to "advanced" develop module to add "layers" or "editing steps"

Adding a new "layer" or "step" could give you the option to:
  • Add a mask for this "layer". This mask could be defined like the brush tool i LR or as masks like we know them i PS.
  • Add on or more filters to apply to this "layer". These would be all the filters we like from PS and all the parametric tools in LR.
  • Or add pixel layer for use in cloning etc.

No need to duplicate a mask if you want the same mask for several layer PS style. And all filters except pixel layers would still be parametric.

Basically I want the ability to build up the image layer by layer in my own sequence after I have done basic parametric editing in LR develop module.

Ronny
Logged
Ronny A. Nilsen
www.ronnynilsen.com

thierrylegros396

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 1947
Re: If Thomas designed a new Photoshop for photographers now...
« Reply #190 on: May 13, 2013, 07:16:05 am »

Motion blur reduction
Noise reduction "Multi frame stacking"
HDR with good alignment tool and easy to obtain "realistic results"
Lens correction
Stiching
Cloning
Multiple WB possibility
Easy to use color picker
Perfect integration with LR, DXO Labs, and C1
Quick save preferences
Simple and quick layer menu

3D not necessary
Video as an option to keep main program fast !!!
Logged

John Cothron

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 349
    • Cothron Photography
Re: If Thomas designed a new Photoshop for photographers now...
« Reply #191 on: May 13, 2013, 07:57:30 am »

This is a joke right? You are going to define what a PHOTOGRAPHER is for the rest of us? Who appointed you guru? Ever seen a straight print of Ansel Adams "Moonrise"? One of the most famous photographs in history-by your definition he's not a photographer because he manipulated the crap out of it. Ever heard of Jerry Uelsmann, a very important figure in the history of PHOTOGRAPHY?

With all due respect Kirk, you are taking my comment somewhat out of context.  As others have stated (thanks) I was trying to illustrate the difference between a piece of software such as Lightroom, and another such as Photoshop,  as well as respond to a statement calling Lightroom a "child's toy" which I strongly disagree with.  Look, I fully realize that people use these pieces of software for a very wide variety of things.  This thread however, is about "new Photoshop for photographers".  The point I've been trying to make is that if this "new" one is all things to everyone, you end up with Photoshop..AGAIN. 

IF we want a new product, and we realistically hope/expect a group of developers to pick up the idea and run with it.. then by definition it needs to be marketable or there would be no incentive for them to do so, right?  As such it needs a place in the market that fits between the two major programs we have now... Lightroom, and Photoshop (for the sake of argument).

If you want to take the Brooklyn Bridge and position it between two mountain tops in another image, I'd say photoshop is the tool for it.  If you want to take an image from the camera, do basic development work, perhaps some dodging/burning, maybe clone out a highway sign..  that could be something this "new" software could do quite well.... and still fit in the open area between Lightroom and Photoshop, and be marketable.  Oversimplified, but I hope this more clearly illustrates what I'm trying to convey.

Logged
John
Flickr

HSakols

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 1239
    • Hugh Sakols Photography
Re: If Thomas designed a new Photoshop for photographers now...
« Reply #192 on: May 13, 2013, 08:54:49 am »

Jeff
Thank you. 

I just want to work in layers and have all the usual curve options. I want to make selections as separate layers.  I want solid selection tools.  I do like having the option of using Bridge - just to have as a reader.   
Logged

NikoJorj

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 1082
    • http://nikojorj.free.fr/
Re: If Thomas designed a new Photoshop for photographers now...
« Reply #193 on: May 13, 2013, 09:01:02 am »

While I am aware of the benefits of parametric Lightroom-style editing, the benefits of pixel-based editing is not as apparent to me. A pixel is just a coordinate in a buffer. A parametric editor ought to be able to manipulate that pixel (by using the right coordinate) just as well as a pixel-based editor.

Of course there are practical implications (rendering speed, ease of which to insert 3rd party plugins)  [...]
I just can't agree more, conceptually : with Moore's law boosting the computation power further and further, the long-term future of image processing seems clearly more parametric than pixel-based.

However, if one considers tomorrow from a more pragmatic point of view, I understand from Jeff that there may be still some place for pixel editing.
Having a tool more tailored for photographers, and more affordable than Photoshop CC, would certainly be nice ; but I'd rather see more features added to LR first (compositing), especially as long as one can keep PS CS6 in sync with LR5 with forthcoming ACR 7 updates.
« Last Edit: May 13, 2013, 09:09:43 am by NikoJorj »
Logged
Nicolas from Grenoble
A small gallery

Mark D Segal

  • Contributor
  • Sr. Member
  • *
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 12512
    • http://www.markdsegal.com
Re: If Thomas designed a new Photoshop for photographers now...
« Reply #194 on: May 13, 2013, 09:16:31 am »

I may have mentioned this further above, but few wish lists have included it, so I'll say it again. One of the main things for which I revert to PS in an otherwise predominantly LR workflow is transforms - in particular skew correction, because I make many in city photos when traveling. I can't put "Upright" in LR5-beta through its paces myself because Adobe has decided in its wisdom not to support OSX 10.6.8. for this release, notwithstanding the very large numbers of Mac users (I understand) who remain on 10.6.8. for one or more good reasons. That said, an ability to perform manual skew corrections of each image dimension independently is important (at least to me). Warp sometimes helps too, though not sure how easy that would be to do parametrically, so for this perhaps the pixel-based editing would remain the solution.
Logged
Mark D Segal (formerly MarkDS)
Author: "Scanning Workflows with SilverFast 8....."

jjj

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 4728
    • http://www.futtfuttfuttphotography.com
Re: If Thomas designed a new Photoshop for photographers now...
« Reply #195 on: May 13, 2013, 09:17:42 am »

Interesting idea for a topic Jeff and Scott Kelby did a similar thing on his Grid Show this week after his talk on CC.
The issue here with the idea of Photoshop for Photographers is that each user of PS will have their own individual way of using the programme. For a specific example, Scott Kelby dismissed as completely pointless many tools I personally find very useful as a photographer and was as guilty of the me, me, me way of approaching how software should be designed as many people in forums seem to be. i.e. anything that the complainer does not use is bloatware, without considering that to many other people this 'bloatware' is an essential tool.
Quite a few commentators watching the show mentioned that Scott + Matt obviously knew very little about software design as some of their glib suggestions to tweak PS would in reality be very hard to engineer and not in fact make things simpler.

Having looked at this thread and the variety of features requested, I do not see not see much point in anything other than something like the traditional split of PS and PS Extended, as the extended version had features that generally speaking were fairly specific to skillsets outside of photography such as 3D, medical, video, etc.
Logged
Tradition is the Backbone of the Spinele

Jim Kasson

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 2370
    • The Last Word
Re: If Thomas designed a new Photoshop for photographers now...
« Reply #196 on: May 13, 2013, 10:03:21 am »

Compare that to pixel edits where editing the pixels result in a different result after the correction. It implies edits are destructive (and they are unless you use Adjustment Layers). The more you edit pixels the more they fall apart because, well rounding errors and reductions in precision tend to accumulate...

So, bottom line: you want to stay parametric right up to the point where parametric breaks down because of too much parametric data and move into a pixel based edit–where more edits will generally result in less optimal results.

Jeff, I don't see the pixel processing paradigm as limited to using a particular precision for intermediate calculations, a point I alluded to in Reply #167. Therefore, I don't believe the pixel paradigm has to produce less optimal results.

Am I missing something? Is there a reason Ps can't ever use 32 or 64 bit floating point for intermediate calculations with 16 bit unsigned integer base images?

Jim

thierrylegros396

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 1947
Re: If Thomas designed a new Photoshop for photographers now...
« Reply #197 on: May 13, 2013, 10:26:54 am »

Having a tool more tailored for photographers, and more affordable than Photoshop CC, would certainly be nice ; but I'd rather see more features added to LR first (compositing), especially as long as one can keep PS CS6 in sync with LR5 with forthcoming ACR 7 updates.

But it has never been Adobe's way.

They always wanted to keep Photoshop esential for some tasks.

That's why LR doesn't have some interesting tools.

But perhaps the initiative of Jeff (and the reaction of a lot of people to the "cloud only version") will push Adobe to propose a special Photoshop for Photographs.

That's what I hope !

Thierry
Logged

Mark D Segal

  • Contributor
  • Sr. Member
  • *
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 12512
    • http://www.markdsegal.com
Re: If Thomas designed a new Photoshop for photographers now...
« Reply #198 on: May 13, 2013, 10:30:43 am »

But it has never been Adobe's way.

They always wanted to keep Photoshop esential for some tasks.

That's why LR doesn't have some interesting tools.

But perhaps the initiative of Jeff (and the reaction of a lot of people to the "cloud only version") will push Adobe to propose a special Photoshop for Photographs.

That's what I hope !

Thierry

I don't believe that conspiracy theories constitute an accurate guide to explaining any of this. There are numerous other more convincing reasons related to design intent, technical and practical factors that differentiate one application for the other. For the purposes of this thread it will be more prospective to focus on the latter.
Logged
Mark D Segal (formerly MarkDS)
Author: "Scanning Workflows with SilverFast 8....."

Jim Kasson

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 2370
    • The Last Word
Re: If Thomas designed a new Photoshop for photographers now...
« Reply #199 on: May 13, 2013, 10:32:35 am »

Jeff, I don't see the pixel processing paradigm as limited to using a particular precision for intermediate calculations, a point I alluded to in Reply #167. Therefore, I don't believe the pixel paradigm has to produce less optimal results.

Jeff, let me work through an example to make sure that what I'm saying is clear. More than occasionally, but not often, I find that it's not practical to do what I want to do in Ps. For that image processing, I write Matlab code. I start out with images in 16-bit TIFF files, so when they come into Matlab, they are 16-bit gamma-compressed unsigned integers. Because I'm lazy and I want to get the most out of my time spent programming, I immediately convert them to 64-bit linear floating point representation. That way I don't have to worry about overflow or underflow, or the loss in precision that can occur when, for, example, subtracting one large number from another to yield a small number.

I use objects, some times one with several methods, sometimes many. I think of the objects as analogous to layers: they take an image, group of images, or part of am image in, do something to it, and leave something for the next object. The methods are parameterized, so I don't have to start all over to tweak the algorithms, but, that can't be dispositive, because with smart objects I can tweak layer settings in Ps. The order of operations is rigidly defined by the flow of the programming.

I think of what I'm doing as pixel processing.

Am I wrong?

Jim
« Last Edit: May 13, 2013, 10:37:33 am by Jim Kasson »
Logged
Pages: 1 ... 8 9 [10] 11 12 ... 22   Go Up