The creeping cost of upgrades

I have notice with a sadness that the former champions of perpetual license (ie you buy the software) in the graphic/art/ photography areas, where doing well because they picked up a lot of extra buyers running away from Adobe’s Subscription model. Particular at the start up adobe did ot upgrade much. The champions were upgrading often and charging a smallish amount (20-30%) for the upgrade, and this also went down well with users.

Things have changed a lot of the last two years. Adobe have reduced subscription options (particularly for a single piece of software or group of complimentary tools) and increased subscription for the full creative ? to a ludicrous level (if you aren’t using it for a profitable business). This is clearly gouging a customer base. Not nice and another way or suggesting they are cutting of your nose to spite your face.

Unfortunately the price of upgrades are creeping up to 70-80% of the first license. If the software has been upgraded significantly that may be ok. A couple of suppliers prompting upgrades aren’t yet advertising an upgrade price, if one is even to be offered. Perhaps waiting 2-3 upgrade cycles is still ok. However it is rapidly reaching the case where if you are a loyal software user the amount you pay annually is not a lot different between perpetual licensee and subscriptions.  Both teams are gouging their user base. Possibly there is a little churning of software sold to the same number of users. In both cases we the users are the losers.

The case of Luminar Neo, is a particularly blantant attempt. It is probably a market driven ploy trying to prompt hype aboput all new, limit time/number pre-purchase seats, etc, etc but I personally just see something that isn’t legacy compatible and does not offer a  bigger step forward as is being over-hyped. I have Luminar AI and love it (not as my main photo editor that’s still ON1) but because some of the AI features are really useful and time saving. I feel I share a lot this think with Peter Forsgård . Until there is a trial version I can try I will not commit to spending anything on what is still vapourware.

Suspicious behaviour, and a decline in trust

The news that Adobe was going to put the price up (actually doubling the price) of their basic Creative Cloud Photographic offering, was soon “retracted” as just a marketing A B test. That’s some test!

Then came the news that long time CC subscription holders would have to update and only be able download two of the most recent versions of the adobe apps. The reasons given escape me because I also found them a bit difficult to swallow.

Next a third strike for Adobe!  They were exposed writing to users warning them that using old version of the software (that those user paid good money to “rent” from adobe) would leave them open to a third party legal action. Again I find this unbelievable unjust. Like Adobe is happy to abandon them. What is going on at Adobe, don’t they care what their users think.

So I must admit I was feeling a bit smug that I resisted the subscription model (for purely cost reasons) Even though I still have to occasionally update my software. Many companies try to get that upgrade fee out of you often (eg yearly) I normally resist and upgrade on the second or third iteration and or when new features I would regularly use are rolled out. Generally I download the free trial versions first so I get a good idea of what I need versus could wait a little longer for.

Such an upgrade was the latest version of Corel Video Studio it performed way better with the 4K video from my new little Olympus and I like the multi cam synch capture. Suddenly I was  being annoyed by a nagging pop up messages every day (offering what seamed a reasonable discount). So I caved in and ordered the upgrade at the AUD$51 price. Even before I had finished and had only downloaded the initial setup program, another message popped up offering a slightly higher discount. Bummer, This is not clever marketing this is just annoying.

I do like the Corel Video Studio 2019 Pro by the way. It is a good upgrade.

What the heck are your heavily automated market teams up to software suppliers? Do you understand why you are loosing our trust?

Clone Painting Comes of Age

I took advantage of a discount offer and bought myself Corel Painter Essential 5. I’ve had corel Painter Lite since I first bought Aftershot Pro and I love it. It’s easy to use, offers lots of great brushes and has layers. However there was a lot of flak from previous Painter essential 4 users they wanted Clone painting (aka Auto painting where the computer created a painterly effect from your photo) Yes I did tolerate that but it sort of lacked thought in how the marks where made. A bit sterile but the colour palettes and variable stokes did add some charm.Painter essentials 5 is still fairly automatic but the marks are true to the brush and surfaces being used and the “feel” of painting considerably stronger. Bringing creativity to those keen to find it. I’m also trying out the mobile version on the android phone. Watch my tumblr blog for results

ManyMistresses :: What the heck!

The frustration of Picasa & Windows 10 had tested my motivation to sit in front of the computer. I figured I needed a distraction and thought what the heck, it might be time to let in a couple of new photo mistresses (my name for those distracting and high maintenance photocentric software) in. I have been having fun with Corel Painter Lite (mainly as a painting & sketching tool) and had found some decent capabilities within Pixl (on my android phone) and thought it time to look at the computer version, Finally I have used GIMP on and off for ages (typically to do editing things that other software could not achieve). Its definitely a capable bit of software but has had a very arcane interface. The other detraction was lack of documentation, but these days there are any number of good mini tutorials on You Tube to does an extensive range of effects. GimpShop is supposed to be a decent windows style interface to suit those who want a Adobe Photoshop alternative. Finally I’m half looking for a picasa replacement, must be simple & friendly and the new XnView MP might fit the bill.

Will let you know how these mistresses behave.

ArtInspired :: More Inspiration from Fred Williams

One of my Fred William’s inspired experiments escaped into the wilds of Flickr a bit sooner than I was ready for (image on the right). It is based on a series of bracketed photos I took in the Deadman’s Gully park/wetlands behind Clifton Beach, just north of Cairns. I really liked the abstract patterns of the light and shade, particular as captured in a series of autoawesome HDR* images google had produced BUT whilst the shapes where amazing the colours where not realistic and somewhat hideous. I felt they did not convey “a true sense of the place”.

The problem of getting the colour right might not worry many but Fred Williams definitely did honestly represent the colour and texture of the Australian landscape. He also likely to being the process out in the landscape as a way to anchor his works with a true sense of the place. I actually don’t have a sketch to go with these images but I do have a couple of pages in my sketchbook that document all the water based media for sketch I had taken on my trip to north Queensland,. It wasn’t hard to scan this and use it on Corel Painter Essentials 4 (yes I haven’t updated yet!) to modify the palette of colours used in my strips. I then autopainted with a standard round watercolour brush to resample these images using my colour palette to give a more watercolour/gouache look. Much closer to what I remember of the place but still about the shapes and textures.

The final step was to place the strips over another HDR image from the set and now the images is working much better as a classic William’s painting that changes your sense of the place as space as you interact with the image. To do this display the Flickr image below full screen. Being by looking in detail close up and slowly step back still focussed on the image. You should soon reach the point where you feel you are there. Enjoying the shade and respite from the burning glare of the sun. Perhaps you are looking for your next meal, a large eel lurking in the pools, perhaps a fat mud crab hiding in the gnarled roots or perhaps you have an eye peeled for that crocodile looking for his dinner.

Time & Tide

Coastal view inspired by Fred William’s strip paintings.

What is Clone Painting?

I have been a long time fan of Corel products. Corel Draw is still my go to graphics program and I use AfterShot Pro all the time now. I also have Corel Painter Essential 4 (it was bundled with my Wacom portable bamboo tablet) and Painter Lite (it was bundled with AfterShot pro). These latter two programs allow you to paint on layers over any photo and do some sampling from the image (such a colour and tone). Unlike other "artistic" filters that algorithmicly change the whole image, these works at the stroke level and the type of stroke you make leaves an authentic mark for the media and brush or pen you have selected. Well Corel have just release Painter Essentials 5, which is clearly aimed at the "art enthusiasts and emerging photo artists who want to go beyond ordinary and turn everyday inspiration into wildly impressive art". There is an autopaint setting (which can try its best to make marks suiting the media you choose). However this is really a fantastic product for anyone that wants to be creative and show their own originality (Specifically haven't already invested a lot of time and money learning the fancier side of Photoshop.)


So what is clone painting? other than a term invented by corel! It is the process of "painting" on a new layer (or layers) by sampling the underlying photo. pretty well any package that has a clone stamp and layers capabililty can do it (eg photoshop, gimp and even paint.net). At the simplest level you could say trace over the edges in your photo with a pencil (the analogy outlines on a sheet of tracing paper is good for this process). The you might change to a watercolour style brush and by again sampling the colour and tone from the photo below start to paint in the image (in a process somewhat like colouring in). Using a mouse to do this is possible but having a pen and tablet makes this all very natural and brings a lot of hand drawn authenticity into the resulting image.. The Corel Painter Series products have taken this to a high degree of sophistication by allowing automatically sampling the point under the brush at any time. Other packages may require that you dip your brush (or an eye dropper) into the photos to get the colour you want each time you need to change. Using a soft edge cloning tools some of the brush strokes may even copy the image below to the width of the brush being used and with a little feathering at the edge.

Clone Painted Self Portrait (via Corel Painter Lite)

Whilst some purist artists may look down on this process, there are very many younger artists that are running with this technique and producing beautiful and original work, Often they identify under the grouping digital artists (on a whole different level to those posting those "no longer zany" instagram filters).

Vive la différence !

The Anatomy of the Corel Aftershot Pro Workspace

This is a wonderful little program (it is about 1/8th the size of Lightroom) that is a repackage version of the popular raw image enhance post/processing program Bibble. It is very much in the shadow of other non destructive photographic management programs, particularly Lightroom. However I think it deserves better exposure particularly for less committed and/or new photographers. It is also worth considered as a fast pre-processing of raw photos (ie before loading into Lightroom Catalogue). As well as being fast it is easy to pick up. Hopefully a quick walk around the workspace and you’ll be ready to use the software in earnest,

The biggest difference with Lightroom is that everything is referenced from one screen, there are no different modules to move between. This has its good and bad points but screen real-estate becomes very important because a lot of options are available on the screen.
However editing a single or group of photos is very simple. Click on the file system tab on the left hand side and the browse through the file system navigation, to select the folder (sub-directory) containing your photos. Then scroll through the thumbnail and select your photo which will be displayed in the centre of the workspace. Now you can use the tools on the right hand side of the image and the standard Tab. Which contains most of the basic adjustments is normally display at the top of the list of tool tabs, there are a few extra tools to crop and rotate the photo on a toolbar below the workspace and some metadata and ranking tools on the tool bar above the works space. You can also easily add keywords (and keyword sets, found over on the tool tabs), making sure your photos are easy to find. You can easily save this in standards XMP file to load into other programs like lightroom.
In the example here I have just used aftershot pro to do a very of very standard enhancement (well my preferred ones) which involve a little bit of tonal adjust to lift the highlights a little and deepen the shadows, then ticking on perfectly clear and a touch of vibrance, Because the sky is a little washed out I have use the colour equalizer (a free plug in I’ve loaded, found at the end of the tool tabs) to reduce the luminosity of the blue (which deepen the blue sky). All done with a few clicks on a single screen.

The Anatomy of The Corel Printer Lite’s Workspace

I intend to write a little about the computer workspaces (what’s on the screen) that I use and how I use the tools provided (the way the software works). Too follow up on an earlier post about workspace not workflow, and some extra inspiration from Beyond Digital Photography. Rather than describing how to use each software package, I just want to show what’s there and where various tools can be found. I am not sure why I am beginning with the Corel Painter Lite workspace, it is not strictly a photo processing program but was included as a bonus with Corel’s Aftershot Pro. It is often available in such good deals, alternatively it is available as a 30 day trial.  It is now in my tool kit because its a really nice little program that lets you paint in a very natural way and it also allows you to work on photos. It is also a wonderful place to learn about brushes, colour mixing tools and layers.

Like almost all windows programs there is a Menu Bar along the top of the screen, this is set of pull down menus that can access all features of the program but I must admit I very seldom use the menus. In the centre of the screen is the work area onto which you load “documents”, which can be photos or blank sheets of paper or canvas. You can have a series of these documents open on your work area at anytime but you can only work on the top one. On the right hand side is the toolbox, which has paint brush, eye dropper to pick colour, bucket fill, eraser, selection and cropping fames, cloning dodge & burn tools. There are also controls for zooming and panning, paper surface and background colour. There is an amazing range of natural media bushes and brush categories, selected with the brush selector in the upper right. Without doubt the brushes work best with a decent quality tablet (such as a wacom tablet, I have both a bamboo for the laptops and Intuit for my desktop) so that the brushes can respond to sensitive gesture hand movement and pressure.The brush properties are shown in a context sensitive property bar on the left hand side, and can be easily customised on the go. In  the upper centre you can choose to display the recent brush list to help if you want to swap back and forth with the same brushes/tools.

On the right hand side is the default location for a number of palettes which you can chose to display. I like the navigator which give you a thumbnail and key data about your current image. The Layer Palette has been detached in my example, and all palette can be detached as floating dialogue boxes. This palette allows you to add one or more transparent layers that float above image or blank sheet (the canvas). Anything you paint on the upper layers covers up what is below, although you can also control the opacity of this entire layer. The Mixer Palette is a marvel, it has three tabs, Colour, Mixer and Colour Set Library (which is a matrix of standard colours, but not an exhaustive selection). The Colour Tab, shows a fairly typical colour wheel and is called the colour Hue Ring. Inside this is an Saturation/Value Triangle. To select a colour, dial up the hue in the outer ring and then the move crosshairs in the triangle towards the right, for full colour saturation, or upper left paler, as in adding white, or lower right to darken the tone. The sliders below the Hue Ring show the RGB values for the selected colour. Alternatively you can set the colour you want with these sliders. The second tab the Mixer work much in the same way an artists would mix colours on his palette. The brush icon lets you mix colours, the eye dropper lets you sample the colours as mixed on your brush in the main work area.

  

As an example of how I might use Corel Painter Lite’s capabilities, I have loaded a photo of some fish oil tablets shaped roughly into a fish shape as my canvas. I scrapped a few extra white lines into this photo to help emphasise an eye, mouth and fins, before I add a second layer and painted over it in greens and blues, rather than the originally over-powering mustard background, and a little red and dark blue emphasis on the fish. All easy steps once you are familiar with the workspace.

 

Dipping a Paint Brush into a Photo & Beyond

I have been reading a book called Beyond Digital Photography, Transforming Photos into Fine Art with Photoshop and Painter by Cher Thereinen-Pendarvis and Donal Jolley  It fits in nicely with a lot of my ideas (and challenges) of dipping a paint brush into a photo.

The really dramatic jolt of deeper understanding I got was that it is written for the artists (the creatives, which includes any photographer, perhaps without formal art school training, but a keen eye and a desire to create better images). The difference is it does not run through each option and nuisances of every tool (there are plenty of guide books that take that approach if that’s more your desired approach, but learning will be a lot slower that way), or an over-encompassing workflow. It begins by talking about the works space, both physical and in software and covers the use of wacom tablets and output resolution right up front. This is goods advice “Know your tools and objectives”. Each chapter begins with a discussion of which equipment is used up front and the various tools used are presented in terms of desired outcome.Then there are a series of chapters based around different media (wet & dry) and approaches(gesture, emphasizing the subject, abstract art, compositing and collage). Rather than describe each chapter in detail I suggest you go buy it, or borrow it from the library. Here are a few more excerpts for those interested in a little more detail.

ThePatch :: Is Loneliness a natural part of the Creativity?

The Patch theme this week is Loneliness/Togetherness, which at first looks like an Oxymoron. How can someone be lonely when they are part of togetherness? Yet deep in the creative process there is often that point where you are totally alone in yourself, trying something new, different, original … it is often the point at which the inspiration arises sometimes from deep within, sometimes as a chance observation. Once conceived other aspects of yourself need to kick in, the skill to design, the talent to make your marks and the wisdom to evaluate your creation. This is a perfect scenario for a little “multi-exposed” story of an artist sitting around a table. Now how to do that?
First I took a series of photos of myself in the individual poses, to tell the story. That bit was easy. The camera was on a tripod and you can see the remote control in my hand in the third shot, the one with the red shirt. Next I was keen to have a play with perfect effect 8’s layers capabilities. Alas it can only work on layers within one image, it doesn’t let you stack the layers from a number of images. So first I had to do that in corel photo paint. I little further tweak of the tone and clarity in lightroom, then back into perfect effects. You have to save a copy as a psd (photoshop format) to get the ability to use layer in perfect effects. This time I set up three different layers. The first a texturizer layer, there are dozens but I liked the Rice Paper Vignette, which I set to around 80% opacity. Next I had to set up setting up a mask around the fourth “lonely” me on the right. I used the “perfect brush” to paint in the mask and it did a very good job of stopping at the change of contrast. However it was a bit “laggy” as I used the brush so it was a bit fiddly to use (compared with the same task in corel photo paint). I then copied the mask (a really excellent feature) and pasted that onto my next layer which was a colour saturation control, called not surprisingly color reducer and here I went into the filter options and adjusted then saturation slider back to the left about -20%, rather than use the opacity of the filter. Finally I created another layer and this time using the portrait enhancer and the strong version. I paste the same mask again but this time I selected it in inverse, so what was painted out of the filters in the layers underneath was now painted in on this layer. I did experiment with incorporating another option inside this filter to give cooler colours but I felt the strong colouring suited the now darker image. These steps might sound a bit complex but it was actually relatively simple, not frightening at all! One disappointment was I don’t think I set the feather large enough, because the perfect brush masking was a bit more precise than I expected. Unfortunately once you to commit to save and close the edits in perfect effect you loose the layering and the mask itself. I now know that you can get around this by saving your work as a new preset before you exit. That way you can reload your original, apply your saved preset and have access to all the layers, filters and masks.

ThePatch :: An idea with a mind of its own

I am late as usual photographing my theme of the week, ok theme of last week, Togetherness/Love for the Patch. Rather than get to obvious I wanted this one to be more appealing at an emotional level, which to any artist suggests colour and specifically pink or red, That's easy enough, but I also know that texture can have a big connection physically for a lot of viewing. An interesting texture often enlists a longer viewing. It was the subject matter that I was a bit slow to decide on, especial after most of my initial ideas, such as of shadow silhouettes, hands, wedding rings and heart shaped bokeh etc where already used and well applied. Then I though of the lovers knot, which occurs in slightly different forms across many cultures, essentially it is a simple continuous looping interconnecting knot. Sometimes the knot is based on an infinity loop, sometimes it is two strange looped together.
It was easy to make a simple one with an old shoe lace and my wife helped out with my camera in shutter delay mode and on a tripod and a single overhead light. We held the lovers knot. It wasn’t hard to get the basic composition I was after. A little tweak on clarity and a slight vignette in lightroom and things were looking up. However the only red background I could find was the back of some pastel sketch, boringly matte and flat no exciting  texture here, albeit with some unwanted smudges of pastel. I had hoped to find a rich red lace to go with it (ok that would require extra time and the dead-line was now!) I remembered I have had great fun with texture in corel painter and corel paint, so I looked out a very old plug-in for paint called alchemy which allows you to use a brush of your own design and then control how this samples and paints an image. I quickly made up a small brush  (above left, its like a photoshop mask, black lets nothing though, white everything and greys between adjust the opacity accordingly) that used the word Love for the highlights, then I set the controls to vary the colour, size and angle of the brush depending on the hue and tone of the original photo (see detail above right). The brush they repeatedly samples the photo and the overlapping strokes create a new image. The results was definitely close to what I was after. So with a few tweaks of the alchemy settings to include some extra variation of the colour saturation, which helped enhance he texture in the background and voilà

AfterShoot & before LR

I recently received After Shoot Pro as a gift, and using it in earnest has been something of an epiphany after  my many mistresses ponderings. I have been aware of After Shot, (formerlty Bibble) for a while even tried a quick trial some months ago and seen the many reviews mainly comparing it to Lightroom. The general consensus was it was “becoming” a viable alternative to Lightroom (or Aperture)  for processing RAW format photos but the reviewers differ on who might benefit from using it. Well other than the obvious it is somewhat cheaper to purchase (particularly in Australia).
What suddenly struck me as I was only starting to review and classify and tweak a few images directly, ie without having to first import them into Picasa or Lightroom, was that After Shot pro is really fast and easy to use. After a bit of experimenting I settled as the combined thumbnails and single image display as what suited me. I can move through the thumbnails (like the film strip in Lightroom) rate the photo, do some preliminary editing and metadata tagging with only a few key strokes. In other words I can do most things on a singles screen (I don’t have to jump between modes)
The massive difference to Lightroom, and one I haven’t investigated in enough detail yet is the ability in After Shot pro to work with layers, for selective editing. Unfortunately the “spot” removal and retouching (called heal & clone) are accessed under the layers panel, so they are one step off the one single screen approach. I always try out the Auto-fix and Auto-enhance features but soon find them wanting, well at least not what I want. Perfectly Clear is a little different, sure it enhances the contrast and lifts the colours a little but it does it in a tame fashion, that closely matches what I remember seeing, Specifically it stands out from others when it comes to handling portraits, “keeping them real”. If the photo is well exposed it may not even make more than a few subtle changes but on underexposed and unfortunately strongly shadowed images it seems pretty reliable. I know perfectly clear  was, and apparently still is, a popular plug-in for Photoshop & Lightroom. Having it built into After Shoot is a bonus. The other real gem is the magnifier, all it does it is work exactly like a smallish magnifying glass, or loupe, which you can move around to view any part of your photos with the mouse. It makes that  Lightroom 1:1 viewing look and feel tedious. One final thing that soon became obvious to me was although  After Shoot Pro makes extensive use of short cut keys, they where not always the same as Lightroom, However I also found you can easily redefine the shortcuts, using file/preferences/keyboard, so I changed a few to match the shortcut keys I commonly used in Lightroom. You can also set up short cut keys to perform key wording from your keyword sets.
Yes there are several things After Shot Pro doesn’t do which Lightroom can, Red Eye removal is one obvious omission. Probably a lot of fine tunning Lightroom gives more options.  However its speed, ability to work on any image anywhere without “loading/importing it” and easy to use basic tools make After Shoot Pro perfect as my first review tools. The fact that I can transfer any rating, flagging, tagging and metadata edits into Lightroom later makes it the ideal first step to view and organize my photos without that long delay! So I see AFTER shot as a better way to review and organise photos BEFORE Lightroom, rather than a Lightroom replacement.
Lightroom has been a very finicky yet well loved mistress and doesn’t play well with other software so she is just going to be left on my studio computer and might only get used when I have time to pander to her eccentricities, everywhere else and particularly on my laptops and netbook After Shot is now my preference because she is fast, slim (less than 1/6th the size of Lightroom) and with more than adequate skills for me. The big outstanding issue is whether I will bother to re-catalogue my photo archive in Lightroom, after my recent disappointment?