Luminous Landscape Forum
Site & Board Matters => About This Site => Topic started by: alexramsay on September 27, 2011, 11:08:03 am
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I notice that the last time this subject came up, during 2009, comments here and on DPreview were almost entirely negative. Does anyone have any recent experience and opinions regarding more recent versions of this plugin?
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I have worked with George and was a beta tester for the latest version of PercepTool. I find it indispensable in my work.
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I have worked with George and was a beta tester for the latest version of PercepTool. I find it indispensable in my work.
Does it have Secret Sauce 2.0, or is Pixie Dust already in beta?
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No, and it probably wouldn't work for you even if it did.
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Good to know that it's still Snake Oil.
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While I agree the naive advertorial tone of the article was a bit unfortunate and seems to have backfired in a big way, the author makes a 30 days trial version available. That's fair, don't you think? It's not as if he promised to cure all our photographic failings and asked for advanced payment.
Anyway, skipping the plugs, the article gave me food for thought about our visual perception process.
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Well, I downloaded the demo. I have only played with it for about an hour - just to see what it can or can't do.
I have a lot of tricky scanned B&W negs which I can't quite get right in either LR or CS5. On some of them there was a definite improvement on others it simply appeared to increase contrast in the image without any particular advantage.
3 pictures taken with a GH2 were very definitely improved (in colour) by it and to the extent that I was unable to quite understand what had happened or come close to the effect with levels, curves, gradient masks. There appears to be some quite sophisticated edge masking at the root of it.
Speed is not an issue - I tried a couple of 200+ MB H3D-39 images and it processed them on my iMac pretty quickly.
There is clearly something there but whether it is going to fit into (or rather change) my workflow remains to be seen.
For those with nothing more lucrative to do, playing around with the demo might be worth the effort.
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In the picture of the egg, does the author have the captions reversed? The bar picture above is labelled in sequence Luminance --> Luminosity with attendant increase in contrast. The egg is labelled in reverse with Luminosity first, on the duller lower contrast image.
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...the author makes a 30 days trial version available. That's fair, don't you think?
Absolutely! I don’t understand the negative ‘snake oil’ comments when anyone can make an informed decision on their own. Now if there were no demo... but since there is, if you like it, be happy that you like it. Don’t like it, don’t buy it.
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Absolutely! I don’t understand the negative ‘snake oil’ comments when anyone can make an informed decision on their own. Now if there were no demo... but since there is, if you like it, be happy that you like it.
Did you read the original article? I read it when it came out, and remember it reading like a 101 of bad advertorials, with outrageous claims even a snake oil salesman would blush at. I wasn't the only one: judging from the responses at that time here and elsewhere hinted at by the OP, the product quickly became the laughing stock of the plugin world - which is quite an accomplishment in itself.
I know that the photography blogosphere is an incestuous circle where everyone shares google-fu without consideration to merits of the content, so I have a pretty high tolerance, but that article was so bad reading it made me embarrassed, and I had nothing to do with it.
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Did you read the original article?
Nope, does that affect the ability of the product to do something people who test it and like (or dislike)?
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Did you read the original article? I read it when it came out, and remember it reading like a 101 of bad advertorials, with outrageous claims even a snake oil salesman would blush at. I wasn't the only one: judging from the responses at that time here and elsewhere hinted at by the OP, the product quickly became the laughing stock of the plugin world - which is quite an accomplishment in itself.
I know that the photography blogosphere is an incestuous circle where everyone shares google-fu without consideration to merits of the content, so I have a pretty high tolerance, but that article was so bad reading it made me embarrassed, and I had nothing to do with it.
Hmmm you may not agree with George, you may think he is a bad writer, you may think he doesn't know what he is talking about.........blah blah etc. etc............but George is without question a very accomplished and popular workshop teacher, a widely published and exhibited photographer, and successful writer. So by and large I take what he says with all seriousness even when I ultimately discard his methods. He has earned that IMO. Have you?
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Hmmm you may not agree with George, you may think he is a bad writer, you may think he doesn't know what he is talking about.........blah blah etc. etc............but George is without question a very accomplished and popular workshop teacher, a widely published and exhibited photographer, and successful writer. So by and large I take what he says with all seriousness even when I ultimately discard his methods. He has earned that IMO. Have you?
I don't see how his or my credentials are relevant, since the original "article" is widely considered hogwash.
I'm done here, before the thread gets locked.
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Hogwash by who? Yahoos on forums? This guy makes most of his living with workshops and they have been packed years after year after year. Look at his workshop schedule http://www.georgedewolfe.com/workshopsched.html (http://www.georgedewolfe.com/workshopsched.html). I know lots of photographers (not beginners by far) who have taken his workshops and gotten a ton out of them. The actual fact is that George is highly respected.
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I took George's Master Print workshop in 2005 or 2006 (can't really remember!). I had just purchased my first CS version of PS to work digital files and didn't know squat. While much of what George had to offer was way over my head, I did benefit from his efforts and we had a lot of fun. OTOH, George is still primarily teaching now what he was teaching then and I've pretty much moved on, finding different ways which suit my workflow better with what I'm trying to accomplish.
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I'm not commenting on PercepTool. I'm commenting on the majority of his article, a long, detailed technical discussion regarding the history brush and it's use in image adjustment. I think it contained a good deal more detailed, "how to" info than a good number of the articles posted here on LuLa over the last couple years. I enjoyed the article. Thanks to George and the LuLa gatekeepers for posting it.
Brad
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Yes, Brad. Without regard to other issues, it was the first exposition that gave me a reasonable understanding of the history brush and how it might be useful. It is mostly my issue, as I have studied and used many other techniques ahead of it, but for whatever reason, the article was very useful for the purpose of learning about the history brush.
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I agree with Brad and Monito. This was an excellent article (regardless whether or not one chooses to try Perceptool).
Eric
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...but for whatever reason, the article was very useful for the purpose of learning about the history brush.
I did as well and found the ideas something I’d consider looking further into. I can’t say I’m 100% happy with the language/terminology (Luminance & Luminosity, Lstar is Lightness) but that is nit picking.
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I tried it and it improved almost all of my images-thanks George!
Mike
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With regards to the overall article the idea of the visual system being able to tell the difference between edges that are from the light source (shadows) and the reflectivity of objects (shapes) and then enhancing them differently in the print is a good idea. He covers this in his book as well which is a good read. I never gathered how the PercepTool did any such thing, it can't in fact. That said, some find it gives them a good starting point. It just doesn't do anything at all like what he writes is the important difference in "presence" as it has no way to distinguish lighting and reflection edges. I think this may be why a lot of people thought the tool was BS - it doesn't do what George goes on and on about. That doesn't necessarily make it useless though!
I've never understood what he's on about with the history brush. His contrived and inept demonstration of the difference between it and layers/masks here just demonstrates such a stunning lack of understanding at the basics of layers and masks in Photoshop that I have to think something got lost in the writing and the example. It doesn't seem possible George could be as clueless about layer editing as the article make him out to be, must just be poor writing or something.
The history brush is destructive editing, and that's fine if you like to edit that way. But you can trivially use masks and layers (and adjustment layers) to do exactly the same things he is doing just as easily with a non-destructive work flow that allows for later fine tuning and iteration. His comments about the History brush vs. layer editing make no sense. That said, it is a nice tutorial on the history brush - though I've always thought it to be a defunct tool compared to the non-destructive tools that are more functional and easier to use these days. What matters really is what the artist is comfortable with and there is nothing wrong with choices, so it is nice to see a history brush tutorial.
Ken
EDIT: I should also add, with regards to the History Brush section it certainly could be ineptitude on the part of the reader as well, maybe I'm just missing something :)
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he history brush is destructive editing, and that's fine if you like to edit that way. But you can trivially use masks and layers (and adjustment layers) to do exactly the same things he is doing just as easily with a non-destructive work flow that allows for later fine tuning and iteration. His comments about the History brush vs. layer editing make no sense. That said, it is a nice tutorial on the history brush - though I've always thought it to be a defunct tool compared to the non-destructive tools that are more functional and easier to use these days. What matters really is what the artist is comfortable with and there is nothing wrong with choices, so it is nice to see a history brush tutorial.
IME this has always been the main complaint about George's workflow. It goes against the current party line. I appreciate that about George. I do use it sometimes even though it is destructive-I save a version before using it-usually to fine tune tones as the final final step before resizing for printing. I simply like the way it feels. As George says, I think in the book, it is more a painterly act-you are committed.
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DeWolfe’s approach certainly contradicts the approach used by many other photographers and workshop teachers. I have taken his workshops and those of Dan Burkholder, a photographer who is famous for creating copious numbers of layers .
Each approach has value. One may argue that Burkholder plays it safe by always providing a way to correct/revise or delete a considered change. Burkholder admits this, often saying that he is afraid of commitment. Hence the use of layers
One can argue that DeWolfe’s approach is very traditional to the art of printing.. Like master black and white printers he starts with the negative and “performs” to create an interpretation of the image. If he errs, he is happy to delete it, just as many traditional printers trashed prints that fell short of their goals or that were failures due to user error.
DeWolfe states clearly in his workshops and texts that he thinks an artist should act decisively. It seems that decisive for him means operating apparently with no safety net (layers). But one must recall that like the traditional darkroom printers he always has the negative. Part of his protocol is to copy and save the original.
As far as the PercepTool is concerned, well a free trial is a good deal. One may find the percepTool valuable all the time, or one may find that it has limited value. I have never got the impression that the PercepTool is a magic wand; instead it is a piece of software, like Lightroom or Photoshop or the Nik system that s photographer may find valuable, or may use occasionally or never..
That is the key, isn’t it? What you or I find valuable is good; what we don’t find valuable is bad? Maybe not. Maybe we need to be a bit more tolerant of software and approaches we have yet to try.