Adobe PS CC and the alternatives

[M.Chapman]

On 5/2/2018 at 14:34, MDM said:

 

Yes I understand. I went from Mac to Windows around 1997 or so and then back to Mac early 2009 when Macs went Intel. I installed a full version of Windows XP on a separate partition and used it while I transitioned. The only program I really missed was Access as I had a number of databases but it was too much of a hassle going between the two and I bought Filemaker Pro which was good enough for most of what I needed and very easy to learn. I stopped using Windows completely after a while. 

 

PSCC should run a lot faster than an old version of Elements as it is 64bit. Also it can take advantage of your RAM beyond 2GB which can be very significant. I noticed this going from PSCS4 to PSCS5, most especially when creating panoramas in Photoshop because fo the file sizes (I now use Lightroom for pano creation). I would definitely advocate using LRCC as it has had some major advances over the standalone version - speed and numerous features. The standalone version is now significantly inferior in fact and it is unlikely that you would even want to use it anyway once you try out the new one. If you ever did decide to stop the subscription, then you can reinstall the standalone if needs be. Preview building has moved on a long way in recent versions as well so much faster than it used to be. I can't remember at what point this happened anymore but do try it.

 

Following your comments I took the plunge and installed LR CC as well. I note that my catalogue had to be updated, so presume the catalogue is not backwards compatible. No real worries as I don't currently use the catalogue, but worth remembering. I did some speed tests to compare the old LR6 with the latest LRCC and, in terms of generating 1:1 previews, there was only a slight improvement. It took about 300 secs to generate 56 previews in LR6 and 285 secs in LR CC. I'll try using LR CC for copying images from SD card into my folder structure and sorting/rejecting my next shoot, to see how I get on without using BreezeBrowser.

 

PS. Thought LR CC had lost all my presets (they weren't showing). I checked they had been converted to xmp format successfully, but weren't showing up in LR. So I restarted LR (second time), and they appeared.

 

Mark

[MDM]

3 hours ago, M.Chapman said:

 

Following your comments I took the plunge and installed LR CC as well. I note that my catalogue had to be updated, so presume the catalogue is not backwards compatible. No real worries as I don't currently use the catalogue, but worth remembering. I did some speed tests to compare the old LR6 with the latest LRCC and, in terms of generating 1:1 previews, there was only a slight improvement. It took about 300 secs to generate 56 previews in LR6 and 285 secs in LR CC. I'll try using LR CC for copying images from SD card into my folder structure and sorting/rejecting my next shoot, to see how I get on without using BreezeBrowser.

 

PS. Thought LR CC had lost all my presets (they weren't showing). I checked they had been converted to xmp format successfully, but weren't showing up in LR. So I restarted LR (second time), and they appeared.

 

Mark

 

First of all the speed of generating previews in the Develop module is way faster now than it used to be and for me that is probably the most important thing. I can't remember exactly when this happened but I think it was in LRCC and not in the standalone version. So when you click on an image in the Develop module and check it at 1:1, it generates the preview within a few seconds and also responds very quickly to any subsequent changes (and I'm talking about 36-46MP files). This used to be a very slow process in earlier versions. 

 

Secondly, for the purpose of quickly checking and culling a batch of newly imported images,  Lightroom 7 introduced the Embedded and Sidecar previews option which is way faster than it used to be. This needs to be checked in the Import dialog before the import.

 

Something I wasn't aware of but read a while back on the Victoria Bampton (Lightroom Queen) website is that generating 1:1 previews does not affect the Develop module. See the following excellent article Lightroom Performance - Debunking Myths

 

 

[MDM]

3 hours ago, M.Chapman said:

I'll try using LR CC for copying images from SD card into my folder structure and sorting/rejecting my next shoot, to see how I get on without using BreezeBrowser.

 

 

 

I have a very simple folder structure. For my landscape and pictorial work, I just go by the country and the year. So everything I have done in England this year goes into an England18 folder. I use the metadata to keep track of the images. The Lightroom databases is lightening fast.

[M.Chapman]

1 hour ago, MDM said:

 

I have a very simple folder structure. For my landscape and pictorial work, I just go by the country and the year. So everything I have done in England this year goes into an England18 folder. I use the metadata to keep track of the images. The Lightroom databases is lightening fast.

 

Yes, mine's even simpler with  folders for each year and subfolders for each month, Pictures/YYYY/MM Mmm, for example, Pictures/2018/01 Jan which LR populates automatically.

 

Mark

 

[M.Chapman]

1 hour ago, MDM said:

 

First of all the speed of generating previews in the Develop module is way faster now than it used to be and for me that is probably the most important thing. I can't remember exactly when this happened but I think it was in LRCC and not in the standalone version. So when you click on an image in the Develop module and check it at 1:1, it generates the preview within a few seconds and also responds very quickly to any subsequent changes (and I'm talking about 36-46MP files). This used to be a very slow process in earlier versions. 

 

Secondly, for the purpose of quickly checking and culling a batch of newly imported images,  Lightroom 7 introduced the Embedded and Sidecar previews option which is way faster than it used to be. This needs to be checked in the Import dialog before the import.

 

Something I wasn't aware of but read a while back on the Victoria Bampton (Lightroom Queen) website is that generating 1:1 previews does not affect the Develop module. See the following excellent article Lightroom Performance - Debunking Myths

 

 

 

Interesting. I'm trying generating 1:1 previews to speed up reviewing/culling in LR Library module, especially useful when I want to quickly do side by side comparisons at 100% size or quickly switching between 2 images at 100% size to check fine focus etc. I notice that even though LR may not have finished generating previews for all shots in a shoot, I can start reviewing those at the start of the shoot without any slow down (i.e. the reviewing takes priority whilst building 1:1 the remaining previews continues in the back ground). BreezeBrowser is still faster but it "cheats". I shoot RAW + 100% size jpg. Under these conditions Breezebrowser treats the RAW and JPG as a linked pair displays the jpgs. If the jpgs aren't present it uses the smaller embedded jpg from within the raw. LR renders the RAW data which is why it takes longer.

 

Mark

 

 

[MDM]

32 minutes ago, M.Chapman said:

 

Interesting. I'm trying generating 1:1 previews to speed up reviewing/culling in LR Library module, especially useful when I want to quickly do side by side comparisons at 100% size or quickly switching between 2 images at 100% size to check fine focus etc. I notice that even though LR may not have finished generating previews for all shots in a shoot, I can start reviewing those at the start of the shoot without any slow down (i.e. the reviewing takes priority whilst building 1:1 the remaining previews continues in the back ground). BreezeBrowser is still faster but it "cheats". I shoot RAW + 100% size jpg. Under these conditions Breezebrowser treats the RAW and JPG as a linked pair displays the jpgs. If the jpgs aren't present it uses the smaller embedded jpg from within the raw. LR renders the RAW data which is why it takes longer.

 

Mark

 

49 minutes ago, M.Chapman said:

 

Yes, mine's even simpler with  folders for each year and subfolders for each month, Pictures/YYYY/MM Mmm, for example, Pictures/2018/01 Jan which LR populates automatically.

 

Mark

 

 

No mine is simpler, no subfolders . I just do it by year and country which is not too many as I don't travel that much. The only reason for making folders at all is for ease of back up which I do manually by copying entire folders which could be several hundred GB to extrenal drives. I am a backup luddite - I don't trust backup software.

 

I never shoot JPEGs so want to render the raws as quickly as possible. The article by Victoria Bampton is very interesting I think.

[Martin P Wilson]

I have been using the same folder structure for 15 years (and backdated to 2000) it is:

 

Year/Month/Datecode + location or event (so some days there  are multiple entries - e.g. at a sports event it might be folder for each class or category, travelling it may be different towns)

 

My images are renumbered to datecode (4chars) + 9999 (sequence number for the day) so I can tell when a picture was taken by the reference.

[John Mitchell]

21 hours ago, Martin P Wilson said:

 

You can subscribe to C1Pro but I don't. I started with a free version I picked up at the Focus photoshow, from the Canon stand, in about 2003/4, probably v1 or 2. I have upgraded (major version) every 2 years or so for around €100 (v10 to 11 at the end of last year). I did miss one major upgrade when they were not handling metadata very well, but the next upgrade was still much lower cost than a full new licence. All the intermediate releases are not charged for the life of the version, say every 3-6 months. I take them pretty much as soon as they come out, major releases I sometime leave until the first minor release comes out and the initial bugs are fixed; it depends whether there is something I particularly need, sometimes to support a new camera (although that often comes in minor releases)

 

You have to dopwnload the update and apply, no automatic upgrades so you are in control. Maintains settings between upgrades, at least minor ones and transfers most add-ons etc to the new major release.

 

Thanks for this. I'll have a look at Capture One Pro for Sony when it comes time for my next computer upgrade (shudder).

 

Right now everything is still humming along just fine (touch wood), so I ain't gonna try and fix it.

[M.Chapman]

1 hour ago, Martin P Wilson said:

I have been using the same folder structure for 15 years (and backdated to 2000) it is:

 

Year/Month/Datecode + location or event (so some days there  are multiple entries - e.g. at a sports event it might be folder for each class or category, travelling it may be different towns)

 

My images are renumbered to datecode (4chars) + 9999 (sequence number for the day) so I can tell when a picture was taken by the reference.

 

Oh yes, I forgot to say my files also get renamed on import to include YYYY-MM-DD_  as a prefix to the image number. LR does this for me too.

 

How do you get a 4 character date code that denotes a given day?

 

Mark

[Duncan_Andison]

I dropped Adobe CC in favour of Affinity Photo & Affinity Designer. I already had Capture One Pro both 10 (all cameras) and 11 for Sony only. Paid for not on sub. Affinity apps are great as you pay £49 (or £32 when there's a discount ;-) and all updates are free!!! 

 

For Mac users it's great. Stick on 2tb iCloud and you have a workflow that's available on all computers (synced) so you can go from one computer to another and the updated files are there for you. Affinity is geared up to work with iCloud and Capture One sessions work excellent on it too!

 

Only there software I use is FCP X & Motion 5.

[M.Chapman]

Ys

9 hours ago, Duncan_Andison said:

I dropped Adobe CC in favour of Affinity Photo & Affinity Designer. I already had Capture One Pro both 10 (all cameras) and 11 for Sony only. Paid for not on sub. Affinity apps are great as you pay £49 (or £32 when there's a discount ;-) and all updates are free!!! 

 

For Mac users it's great. Stick on 2tb iCloud and you have a workflow that's available on all computers (synced) so you can go from one computer to another and the updated files are there for you. Affinity is geared up to work with iCloud and Capture One sessions work excellent on it too!

 

Only there software I use is FCP X & Motion 5.

 

Yes, I quite like Affinity too. I picked up a copy for £25 at this year's Photography Show at the NEC. It's user interface is quite similar to PS. But I found it too slow on my MacBook, it takes about 10 seconds to open a RAW file, the sliders were slow to respond and the cooling fans come on too frequently for my liking (I note that it's supposed to use the GPU, but on my MacBook it says "No compatible GPU", so that maybe the reason). I also struggled to get a good blend of sharpness and noise reduction. I found LR/PS/DxO and Capture One all seemed to recover more detail. Affinity's auto CA removal also wasn't as good as DxO, Capture One or PS/LR/ACR. But that's just my take on it. Some of my difficulty in finding the best settings in Affinity was undoubtedly due to the poor response times of the sliders. It's focus stacking was pretty useful though and I've submitted some to Alamy using this.

 

Of the "newcomers" Luminar and Apple Photos offer promise for the future.

But Luminar hasn't yet got effective CA removal, eyedropper WB adjust was erratic, cloning and healing were awful, which ruled it out.

Apple Photos editing tools are now really fast and responsive, and there's an excellent DxO plugin for lens corrections, NR etc. but photos have to be imported into Apple's awful Photo Library before you can edit them. So that ruled that out too.

 

I rated all the apps I tried (based purely on the functionality I need for stock photography and my personal preferences ) and arrived at the following order (best first).

 

PS CC + LR6

Capture One

Affinity Photo

DxO Photolab + Viewpoint plugin

Luminar Jupiter

Corel Aftershot

Apple Photos + DxO photos plugin (Mac only)

ACDSee

Pixelmator Pro

 

One thing that's clear is the level of choice is growing, with some newcomers aiming to pick up those that refuse to buy into Adobe's subscription model. All the above (apart from DxO photos plugin) have free trial versions, so it's easy to have a play with them.

 

 Mark

[Martin P Wilson]

21 hours ago, M.Chapman said:

 

Oh yes, I forgot to say my files also get renamed on import to include YYYY-MM-DD_  as a prefix to the image number. LR does this for me too.

 

How do you get a 4 character date code that denotes a given day?

 

Mark

 

I just use a letter for year and  another for month since 2001, then 2 digits for day. I did make a mistake in that I should have started with a year digit in 2001 which would have extended my sequence to 36 years and kept the sort in the right order (by then I would hope to be 86, so it may well be moot whether I need more ). In 2026, if I am still shooting I will need to think what I do for 2027 onwards.

[John Mitchell]

19 hours ago, Duncan_Andison said:

I dropped Adobe CC in favour of Affinity Photo & Affinity Designer. I already had Capture One Pro both 10 (all cameras) and 11 for Sony only. Paid for not on sub. Affinity apps are great as you pay £49 (or £32 when there's a discount ;-) and all updates are free!!! 

 

For Mac users it's great. Stick on 2tb iCloud and you have a workflow that's available on all computers (synced) so you can go from one computer to another and the updated files are there for you. Affinity is geared up to work with iCloud and Capture One sessions work excellent on it too!

 

Only there software I use is FCP X & Motion 5.

 

How do you like Capture One for Sony only? What kind of a job does it do on noise reduction and cleaning up CA?

[Duncan_Andison]

4 hours ago, John Mitchell said:

 

How do you like Capture One for Sony only? What kind of a job does it do on noise reduction and cleaning up CA?

 

It works really well. There are a lot of controls to manage NR. I tend to turn it down a lot when at base ISO as the Sony sensors are very clean. I can quite easily process images at ISO 6400 (a7riii), maybe a little more and still sell them. Just need to make sure you over expose a little when at higher ISO and then dial back to make the shadows cleaner. If your coming from LR, it will take a little getting used to but they do have a load of video tutorials!

 

CA is managed well. They are very quick to get lens profiles out (made by Phase One) and don't just rely on Sony's manufacture profiles. Also, the diffraction correction is very affective. I guess a lot will depend on lenses used as well though. 

 

The good thing is, for the $79 for the Sony.... plus another 10% off if you pickup a discount code from Sony Alpha Rumours, it's yours and if you don't upgrade camera or lenses, then it's good for 2-3 years really. They normally update the current version to work with the new OS before the new version of C1 Pro is released.

 

Best thing to do is try it out for free for a month. You have a choice of using Catalogue or Sessions (mini catalogues). I prefer Sessions, easier to manage.

 

[John Mitchell]

5 minutes ago, Duncan_Andison said:

 

It works really well. There are a lot of controls to manage NR. I tend to turn it down a lot when at base ISO as the Sony sensors are very clean. I can quite easily process images at ISO 6400 (a7riii), maybe a little more and still sell them. Just need to make sure you over expose a little when at higher ISO and then dial back to make the shadows cleaner. If your coming from LR, it will take a little getting used to but they do have a load of video tutorials!

 

CA is managed well. They are very quick to get lens profiles out (made by Phase One) and don't just rely on Sony's manufacture profiles. Also, the diffraction correction is very affective. I guess a lot will depend on lenses used as well though. 

 

The good thing is, for the $79 for the Sony.... plus another 10% off if you pickup a discount code from Sony Alpha Rumours, it's yours and if you don't upgrade camera or lenses, then it's good for 2-3 years really. They normally update the current version to work with the new OS before the new version of C1 Pro is released.

 

Best thing to do is try it out for free for a month. You have a choice of using Catalogue or Sessions (mini catalogues). I prefer Sessions, easier to manage.

 

 

Thanks, very useful information. I didn't know about the Alapha Rumours discount code either. If DxO  -- I'm using DxO Optics Pro Elite -- goes belly-up, I might migrate to Capture One. I tried the free "Express" version for Sony a couple of years and liked the interface. However, it is much too limited for anything serious. I'll check out the trial of Capture One 11.

[Duncan_Andison]

9 hours ago, John Mitchell said:

 

Thanks, very useful information. I didn't know about the Alapha Rumours discount code either. If DxO  -- I'm using DxO Optics Pro Elite -- goes belly-up, I might migrate to Capture One. I tried the free "Express" version for Sony a couple of years and liked the interface. However, it is much too limited for anything serious. I'll check out the trial of Capture One 11.

 

The Sony version is exactly the same as the Capture One Pro full version. I transferred to the Sony one after C1 Pro 10 (all cameras) when I sold the Olympus camera to fund a 2nd Sony and now use C1 Pro 11 Sony version. 

 

Because they are working with Sony, most of their main features all work with them. I use the tethering a lot, I don't think it's available to all Sony Cameras but it is for a lot of the newer cameras. Tethered without live view means you can control the camera from the laptop and the image is transferred to the laptop directly and not on the camera. Live view gives you the extra benefit of being able to see any changes to the scene on the laptop.

 

ILCE-A7III

Yes

Yes

Pro Only: Tether support and Live View

ILCE-A7	Yes	Yes	Pro Only: Tether support
ILCE-A7II	Yes	Yes	Pro Only: Tether support and Live View
ILCE-A7R	Yes	Yes	Pro Only: Tether support
ILCE-A7R II	Yes	Yes	Pro Only: Tether support and Live View
ILCE-A7R III	Yes	Yes	Pro Only: Tether support and Live View
ILCE-A7S	Yes	Yes	Pro Only: Tether support and Live View
ILCE-A7S II	Yes	Yes	Pro Only: Tether support and Live View
ILCE-A9	Yes	Yes	Pro Only: Tether support and Live View
SLT-A99II	Yes	Yes	Pro Only: Tether support
SLT-A99	Yes	Yes	Pro Only: Tether support
SLT-A77 II	Yes	Yes	Pro Only: Tether support and Live View

 

a6500	Yes	Yes	Pro Only: Tether support
a6300	Yes	Yes	Pro Only: Tether support
a6000	Yes	Yes	Pro Only: Tether support
a5100	Yes	Yes	Pro Only: Tether support
a5000	Yes	Yes	Pro Only: Tether support

[British Gent]

On 02/05/2018 at 17:51, Allan Bell said:

 

At the time I was also on Windows XP.  I still think XP was the best of what has followed in Windows since.

 

It was late 2013 when I came over to iMac and I am here to stay. Never going back to Windows.

 

Allan

 

 

 

I was perfectly happy with Windows 7 back in two thousand and whatever and took a keen interest in the news and reviews of Windows 8 as it neared release. Less than an hour of actually using it though and I was ready to punch holes in the nearest wall. Switching to Apple was a foregone conclusion. How is it possible that the most powerful and pioneering software company in the world can release a product that leaves its users staring at a screen and unable to work out how to go forward or back? Surely the most epic fail in user interface design ever. Any time I find myself helping elderly friends with their PCs I'm reminded why my only mistake was leaving it so long.

[Allan Bell]

16 hours ago, British Gent said:

 

I was perfectly happy with Windows 7 back in two thousand and whatever and took a keen interest in the news and reviews of Windows 8 as it neared release. Less than an hour of actually using it though and I was ready to punch holes in the nearest wall. Switching to Apple was a foregone conclusion. How is it possible that the most powerful and pioneering software company in the world can release a product that leaves its users staring at a screen and unable to work out how to go forward or back? Surely the most epic fail in user interface design ever. Any time I find myself helping elderly friends with their PCs I'm reminded why my only mistake was leaving it so long.

 

One of the most peculiar things with Windows, up to XP at least, was the need to click on "START" to end and close when you had finished working on the net.

 

Allan

 

 

[Richard Laidler]

45 minutes ago, Allan Bell said:

One of the most peculiar things with Windows, up to XP at least, was the need to click on "START" to end and close when you had finished working on the net.

 

Chuckle. You've reminded me of a tale which used to do the rounds on various internet forums back in 1990s, when Windows 95 was the then latest version. The story goes that at a major IT conference, Bill Gates said of General Motors, "if you made cars like we make software, we would all be driving around in $50 cars".

 

General Motors considered this, then responded:

 

if we made cars like you make software, they would have the following characteristics:

• you could be driving along perfectly safely when for no reason the  car would decide to crash
• at random intervals, the engine would cut out, and refuse to start again until you simultaneously grabbed hold of the door handle, wing mirror and radio aeriel (Ctrl+Alt+Del)
• purchase of the car includes the compulsory purchase of a complete set of Rand & Goodbody road maps. Any attempt to exclude these will seriously degrade the performance (an oblique reference to the tight integration of Internet Explorer into the operating system)

and more like this, but they kept the best till last:

• to stop it, you press a button marked "Start"

 

[M.Chapman]

2 hours ago, Richard Laidler said:

 

Chuckle. You've reminded me of a tale which used to do the rounds on various internet forums back in 1990s, when Windows 95 was the then latest version. The story goes that at a major IT conference, Bill Gates said of General Motors, "if you made cars like we make software, we would all be driving around in $50 cars".

 

General Motors considered this, then responded:

 

if we made cars like you make software, they would have the following characteristics:

• you could be driving along perfectly safely when for no reason the  car would decide to crash
• at random intervals, the engine would cut out, and refuse to start again until you simultaneously grabbed hold of the door handle, wing mirror and radio aeriel (Ctrl+Alt+Del)
• purchase of the car includes the compulsory purchase of a complete set of Rand & Goodbody road maps. Any attempt to exclude these will seriously degrade the performance (an oblique reference to the tight integration of Internet Explorer into the operating system)

and more like this, but they kept the best till last:

• to stop it, you press a button marked "Start"

 

 

I heard a slightly different version of the last line.

• to stop it, close all open windows and then press "Start"

Seriously though, as soon as Windows 10 started forcing upgrades on me (which I couldn't postpone) and when these updates failed to correctly install and then it repeated the whole update process again (including a GB download), I went back to Windows 7 and then migrated to Mac.

 

Mark

[British Gent]

18 hours ago, M.Chapman said:

 

I heard a slightly different version of the last line.

• to stop it, close all open windows and then press "Start"

Seriously though, as soon as Windows 10 started forcing upgrades on me (which I couldn't postpone) and when these updates failed to correctly install and then it repeated the whole update process again (including a GB download), I went back to Windows 7 and then migrated to Mac.

 

Mark

 

Ah yes. A personal favourite was always the 'background' update. You know the one - it takes 90% of the processing power, but being 'background' it doesn't tell you what it's doing. In fact, there's nothing on the screen to tell you the machine is doing anything; the only clue is the several long seconds of lag after each mouse click. Eventually, after much clicking around and attempts to shut the damn thing down, a box pops up to tell you Windows is performing updates and may be some time. This gives you the overwhelming impression that turning on the PC was for its benefit, not yours. Your requirements are secondary. You have to wait. I don't think I'm being difficult, but I object to being insulted by my electrical goods.