The Online Photographer

Camera Raw 8.4

Does anyone know how to download ACR 8.4 for CS6 on a Mac? I keep hearing it's available but all I can find is the download for DNG 8.4. Any help or elucidation appreciated!

Management

UPDATE: Success! Thanks. Dumb mistake on my part: under Help > Updates, I saw "Camera Raw 7," but I failed to realize that there was a drop-down menu under that, which was hiding v. 8.4. When I ran it, it updated.

ACR 8.4., of course, has RAW support for the Fuji X-T1. I've just opened the first few RAF files, of shots I took to deliberately torture the sensor, and I'm starting  see why Fujifans are so high on their Fujicams' IQ. More on this (and Sigma Photo Pro) next week.

DxO Film Pack for Free, and Salgado's Method

Written by Kevin Purcell

An interesting free offer that TOP readers might like to try:

Sony and DxO together are offering Film Pack 3 Essential for free download for Mac or Windows. It previously cost $79. It runs as a standalone application or a plug-in for Aperture, Lightroom, or Photoshop. It's a Nik Silver Efex Pro and Color Efex Pro competitor and does a similar job. The offer is good until October 31st.

It's not upgradable to later versions. Current version is DxO Film Pack 4, so the web page for the current version doesn't say much about the old version, and the Film Pack UI has changed too.

You give them your email address to get the activation code (you can turn down email solicitation and still download the software). The email you get contains the activation code and links the download for the software (should you need to redownload it or get both versions). For the Mac it's a 166MB download.

Visit this URL to download Film Pack 3

The PDF manual for DxO Film Pack 3 is on their support website. (Take care not to download the manual for Film Pack 4.)

It lists the supported film simulations. It looks (to me) like most of the major films from Fuji, Kodak, Polaroid, and Ilford are there.

See the text file "Download DxO Film Pack 3 Essential films" for a full list of supported film simulations extracted from the PDF.

Luis Inácio Lula da Silva (right), president of Brazil in 2006, receives the book Trabalhadores ("workers") as a gift from the photographer Sebastião Salgado. Photo by Wilson Dias.

You might notice that one of the endorsements for DXO Film Pack on the current Film Pack page on the DxO website is from Sebastião Salgado. From a variety of interviews and public comments, and forum threads*, here's a reconstructed summary of Sebastião's digital > film negative > darkroom print workflow:

1. Shoot with a digital camera
2. RAW demosaic (+ exposure correction, I suspect)
3. Process with DxO Film Pack for Kodak TriX 400 or TMax 3200 film simulation.
4. Print that image to a 35mm technical film internegative (so you have a real negative whose image simulates his favorite old films without adding grain).
5. Print the internegative to silver halide paper in Parisian darkroom using his regular printer** (with dodging and burning for the Salgado look).

This workflow lets him shoot digital images that look identical to his film images and result in a silver halide archival print and an archival negative (that can be printed from in the future).

I think many photographers today have no idea about darkroom printing annotation and pro printers (see for example "Magnum and the Dying Art of Darkroom Printing" on The Literate Lens). They can add enormous value to a print.

Salgado gets the best of both worlds. He (or his assistant) doesn't have to carry 50 lbs. of film to remote locations (and through many Third World X-ray scanners) but he ends up with a negative and print as he did with film.

I don't know if any other photographers have taken this route. I'd be curious to find out. I know that Daido Moriyama (well, his assistant) uses Nik Silver Efex Pro to get his film look with the image from the compacts he shoots with, but he doesn't bother with an internegative (as far as I know).

Kevin

*Citations:

• Testimonial
• Interview
• Interview in Portuguese
• Commentary (especially on the lack of silver in modern film)
• Forum comments
• Forum comments

[**Regular TOP readers know who that is. —Ed.]

©2013 by Kevin Purcell, all rights reserved

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Featured Comments from:

Jack Nelson (partial comment): "What a great marketing idea. Give the customer a free un-upgradable copy and on the download page include a link to a discounted new version. I'll bet they get a few people who would not otherwise use their product to try it out (like me) and of those I'll bet they get a few that like it and buy the discounted version 4."

Jim Bullard: "I've played with DxO as a trial program and even did a review on my blog that compared it with other B&W conversion packages. In the end I went with Nik Silver Efex Pro because my object was to produce the best conversion for my intent, not to make it look as if it had been shot on film. The Nik software can add film grain and rendition but that's not its primary intent nor is it mine."

Warning! Lightroom 5 has a Potentially Catastrophic Bug

Jeffrey Friedl's Blog details a potentially heartbreaking bug in Adobe Lightroom 5 that could conceivably cause you to unintentionally delete master copies of your files—maybe without even realizing it. The "Silent Killer" Bug.

"Bug" is such a small, innocent word. In the auto industry, there are recalls, and there are recalls. One might be because one corner of a floor mat starts to fray on a very small number of cars. Another might be because copious numbers of the affected vehicles are spontaneously erupting in three-story-tall James-Bond-movie fireballs if you tap the wrong place with a ball-peen hammer.

Okay, I'm exaggerating. But thus with bugs: it's a range. My conception of photography is that there is an awful lot of dross and only a little gold—so the rare "hits" you get amongst all the "almosts" become precious; a lot of not-quites go into one genuine success. This bug strikes us as at least shading into the catastrophic end of the range—anything that can end up in the accidental loss of one of those rare, precious, and needed files is very bad behavior on the part of processing software indeed. BEWARE!!!

At least it's not as bad as the 2000 Multidata Systems International bug at the National Cancer Institute in Panama City, Panama, which caused software to miscalculate radiation dosages for patients undergoing radiation therapy. That bug resulted in eight deaths and severe radiation overdoses to at least 20 other patients—and led to the doctors, who were contractually bound to double-check the dosage calculations manually, being indicted for murder.

So, okay—could be worse. But still. Tell your friends.

Mike
(Thanks to Michael Tapes)

UPDATE wednesday a.m.: We heard from the Product Manager of the Adobe Lightroom Team, Sharad Mangalick, who says, "We're well aware of this particular issue and are assessing potential options, but I just want to point out a workaround: When viewing images in the Publish Service panel within the Library Module, ensure that you are selecting images using the Filmstrip. This will ensure that the correct images are selected."

Original contents copyright 2013 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

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Featured Comments from:

Kenneth Tanaka: "This is unquestionably a potentially hazardous bug that Jeffrey was well justified in calling out last June. It needs to be fixed before the next official release. That said, it certainly does not merit the blanket condemnation of LR. I've always used the Export facility to send images online, and never the newer more push-button Publish facility, and have never encountered a problem."

Mike replies: I was assuming that LR users (of whom I am not one) would care to read the entire piece at the link, and was perhaps remiss in not pointing out that it continues over four pages, through several "Continued here..." links at the bottom of each page. The last update is dated August 2nd concludes that the bug is not fixed in LR 5.2 as even he originally reported.

I absolutely don't agree that this is not very serious. Maybe for you software ninjas it is not, but for ordinary schmoes like me who struggle with software and its Byzantine complexity, the idea of being innocently led into doing something serious to your own archive while a) not meaning to and b) not being aware of it after it's done is the kind of thing I live in horror of. I did it once in 2003, and the memory still stings.

The fact that it lurks in an out-of-the-way corner of the program and is seldom encountered makes it worse, not better, because it increases the chance of accident whereas a front-and-center bug would be better publicized and more widely understood. Serious indeed.

ADDENDUM from Kenneth Tanaka: "It is noteworthy that Adobe lists this as a 'top issue' onits  Adobe Labs developmental site. So it has their attention."

daniel francisco valdez: "I was bit by this bug...when I deleted a virtual copy, the original file was also deleted from my hard drive! Luckily I had exported a 16-bit TIFF and I had the original unformatted SD card. I downloaded and installed his plugin so I feel confident deleting files again. Coincidentally, I have been using his Export to Zenfolio plugin since day one and have been supremely satisfied with it and with his update schedule."

Michel: "Back up! It might make an interesting article to cover backup strategies for hobby photographers. Just a thought."

Bojidar replies to Michel: "I've written such an article here. I would be very happy if Mike republishes it and if people help me extend the article and turn it into an active Internet reference.

"Same thing with the article 'Best Practices' for photographers about image security while on the road, available here."

Adobe Photoshop Creative Cloud, Part II: The Good

This week's column by Ctein

Last column I told you what is wrong with Adobe's Brave New Photoshop, and we had a jolly good time bashing the Big A, didn't we! Now we've got that out of our system. (and please don't repeat the same rants this week, pretty please? You've had weeks to vent. Let's move on.) This time I'm going to talk about how I've come to think this is a really good idea. Seriously.

Last October, I was on an airplane thinking high and lofty thoughts (I need an airplane to get there) about Adobe's plan to, several years down the road (ahem), move their products to a subscription system. It had not been a prospect that pleased me. But as I followed said thoughts along, an epiphany occurred: This could prove to be the best thing that could happen. For Adobe and, more importantly (to me) for Photoshop users.

And, so, on that flight, I became a convert. While it holds a great many potential "gotchas," I think subscription licensing allows Adobe to solve a whole bunch of problems for them and for us that would otherwise be nearly intractable. I shall explain:

Part 1 of the epiphany: A company like Adobe, with a mature market and an expensive, mature product, is looking at a gloomy future. We are not just entering the post-PC era, we're entering the $.99 application era. Increasingly, people are expecting to pay very little for a piece of software. That trend is even stronger among newer users. It's not a purchasing attitude that is terribly compatible with $500+ programs.

The situation is even more extreme when you look at tablet applications. Adobe just has to be looking hard at those. Aside from it being the major growth market now, a tablet is just such a perfect tool for a traveling photographer. While Photoshop-iOS is just a bit much to hope for with current technologies, think of what you could do with full-fledged Lightroom or Bridge plus ACR on an iPad! But, how many iPad apps have you seen that are priced above $10? Uh huh. Serious disconnect with the market.

(Sidebar: in fact, I'm really surprised that I haven't seen Lightroom or Bridge for the iPad, yet. The hardware is up to the task and even the current desktop interface design works fair-ta-middlin' on an iPad. I think it's gotta be the code port, which isn't trivial. But I'm waiting, he said impatiently.)

Adobe ain't stupid. They can see the handwriting on the wall. Figuring out what to do about it is another matter.

Part 2: The prevailing revenue model for companies like Adobe screws everybody over, badly. Their economies and cash flows depend on new version releases, because the market isn't growing enough anymore to give them significant revenues from new customers. They have to make their money on releases. It's feast with a new release and try not to starve until the next one. This is a destructive and hurtful system.

Ask code jockeys how often they'd like to see new product releases and they'll tell you no more frequently than once every 2–3 years. That gives them enough time to figure out the improvements they'd like to make, write reasonably decent code for them, and properly (fingers crossed, here) debug them.

Ask the folks who control the bank accounts how often they'd like to see new product releases and they'll tell you once a year. Because they need to keep the money coming in, and they need their balance sheets to not fluctuate wildly from fiscal year to fiscal year, and most importantly they need to deal with the plutocracy who actually own their asses and have the attention span and farsightedness of mayflies.

Do you really think the big institutional stockholders give a damn whether the product you buy is buggy as all hell or really has enough new features to be worth the price of upgrading? Nope, not so long as things don't get so bad that you stop buying. Which you won't, because we've all gotten used to the idea that lame and half-baked are adjectives that inevitably accompany version X.0, which will be very quickly followed by version X.1 that fixes a whole bunch (but by no means all) of the crap that should have been fixed before the product was ever allowed out the door.

Except...properly fixing all those known bugs or getting the new feature to really work right would have delayed shipping by so many weeks, and there'd go Someone Important's dividend or stock price.

This gets reflected in the way these companies work. You'd think that mature, well-established companies wouldn't operate like garage startups. Except, they do. They perpetuate a culture that expects their employees to work absurdly long hours without any additional compensation in the weeks/months just before release, to ensure that the product can get rolled out on the schedule the moneymongers have demanded. Doesn't matter that it's an insane way for people to have to live and work. The folks in charge certainly don't care, because they know full well that if you're too sane to put up with that kind of madness, they can likely find someone else who's just as brilliant and more servile (or at least hungrier and more desperate) than you.

All of this is hard to change, especially the too-early, half-baked buggy releases, when your company is entirely dependent upon selling those new releases to stay in business.

What does a subscription economic model do? It gives a producer a way to drop its (perceived) price. In the few years that Adobe has been pursuing this course, it has been steadily pushing the price down. Not as far as I think it needs to go, yet. $19.95 is not a magic number. $9.95 is. It's sales psychology: inflation be damned, single-digit prices still sell hugely better than double digits. (I'll bet you anything that by the time the "introductory year" is up, that first-year price of $9.95 a month will become the permanent price for installed users.)

On the whole, consumers find it more palatable to pay $10 a month on an ongoing basis, than to have to spring for $150 every year or two. It's not about how much it adds up to, it's about how much it hits the cash flow and how it's perceived psychologically. Equally importantly, more people find it palatable. There's been some fallacious thinking that the photography world is divided into three groups: Those who pay for Photoshop, those who pirate Photoshop, and those who don't care at all about Photoshop. Wrong; there's a very large untapped market of people who would get into Photoshop if it wasn't going to cost them more than half a grand. A very large fraction of that group won't think twice about paying the monthly subscription fee; frankly, it's not a lot of money for most photographers, or even for many college students these days.

Want to expand your market? Making your product more affordable is a sure way to do it, and a monthly subscription is definitely perceived as more affordable by more people.

Which is why this is a good deal for Adobe, even at $10 a month.

But what about the rest of us? I mean, personally, I don't care about Adobe getting a good deal. Why do I think this'll be a good deal for me? Because, it makes it possible to break that cycle of abuse that's created by profit-driven product release cycles and that saddles us with half-baked software.

If people are subscribing and they're satisfied with the product they're getting (that's important!), a steady cash flow is assured. There's always some subscriber rot that has to be balanced by new subscribers, but it's predictable and even, not boom or bust like release cycles.

That means there's a lot less pressure to release a new feature until it works really right and there's no pressure to release a new full version. You don't have to rush a half-baked, buggy hunk of code out the door by Date X, tricked up with cooler tailfins and more chrome on the grille, just to insure the rich get even richer. This is good for thee and me: there are fewer changes and the ones there are are more meaningful and useful.

The transition's rocky. You've got to give people an incentive to make the switch, which is why Photoshop CC has the usual panoply of new bells and whistles, both astonishing and trivial. Once that switch is made, though, there's little reason for people to stop subscribing unless a competitor comes out with something preferable. This relieves the code monkeys of much of the burden of trciking out next year's model, because there doesn't even have to be a next year's model. They can concentrate on rolling out new capabilities as they develop them and on fixing the deficiencies that bother users the most rather than on what will sell upgrades (they're not the same thing).

Is it guaranteed to work out this way? Oh, most definitely not. Never underestimate people's ability to figure out ways to screw things up. But it allows for the possibility—even (in this case, I think) the probability. The release-driven profit model just doesn't give you a chance.

There you have it. That's my epiphany, and I'm sticking to it.

©2013 by Ctein, all rights reserved

Ctein (it's his entire legal name) has been writing for photography publications for more than four decades. This is his 288th column for TOP.

Original contents copyright 2013 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

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Featured Comments from:

Andre: "I work in the software industry, and Ctein's absolutely correct that businesses that run on a subscription model (or get most of their income from ongoing support contracts) have less external financial pressure to 'get something out the door this quarter.' Whether that will translate into better products in Adobe's case remains to be seen. There are a lot of other drivers of 'bad behavior' in big software houses that can still result in dumb decisions regarding release schedules, feature sets, and product quality."

Doug Howk: "I think the Adobe coders and QA people may see it differently. Its one thing if new features stand alone; but that's unlikely with a huge code base such as Photoshop. Without a target release that all coders/QA etc. are pushing for, you will have more buggy small releases. Its like coding for the cloud: one forgotten update for a file that actually impacted more than one new feature will affect everybody using that code base, i.e. users. Stable releases that have been QA'd as a whole are a lot safer."

Chris Morse: "No Lightroom for iPad? Have you seen Photosmith? Disclosure: I'm co-owner/co-developer."

Gato: "First, I think this is a great deal for new users. Second, I think younger people are far more open to subscription than we older folks. Together that sounds to me like a win for Adobe—and many of their customers. Depending on what assumptions/guesses you make about upgrades and pricing, it looks to me like a new user is ahead for at least five to seven years in terms of cash outlay. Longer if they put the costs on a credit card and pay interest. A lot of people who couldn't afford Photoshop (or Creative Suite) before will likely be jumping in.

"A lot of those prospective users are of a generation already used to buying their music, television, movies and more on subscription. One more $20 tick on the credit card is mostly invisible to them, I suspect.

"For the record, I am a convert. Adobe introduced the subscription model at a time when I desperately needed to buy InDesign and Illustrator. At first I felt forced into the subscription model, but the more I played with the math on the cost the better it looked. By now I've gotten several really useful upgrades, plus I have picked up Premier Pro and attempted my first videos. My next self-assignment is learning the collaboration features in the cloud. That will let me partner with a new business in the next town down the road. I'm supposed to be retired, but I'm using Adobe for some kind of personal or business project almost every day of the week. I'm sure the cloud plan will not work for everyone, but it sure works for me."

Rob: "It seems contradictory to refer to Photoshop as a mature product, while praising the new subscription policy as a means to promote greater innovation by the developers. 'Mature' implies that there are few major innovations remaining to be added to the program. Therefore, periodic upgrades will most likely consist of minor tweaks and frilly features. Nevertheless, Adobe is asking users to pay continually for the privilege of using software that may not be improved substantially over the coming years. It is clear how this is to Adobe's advantage, but not so clear how it is to ours."

Will Frostmill (partial comment): "Ctein, Your scenario is lacking drama and complexity—it is in fact quite dull. And therefore likely to be quite accurate. Good job!"

The Ideal Editing Software

This might be the most interesting comment from the Editing Software post, which came in rather late in the day from Camilo Polymeris. Camilo points out that not having one program do everything would be a-feature-not-a-bug:

I prefer small, light software that does only one thing and does it well, and am perfectly fine with using one program to organize, one to develop, and one to edit photographs. Plus a bunch of smaller tools to do specialized stuff like panoramas, perspective correction, or HDR, if that is your thing.

In fact, that makes most sense to me. In part it might be my UNIX background, where that approach is standard, and in part the conviction that it leads to overall more flexible and powerful environments, by allowing each user to select the tools that fit his or her workflow the best. So, more than one tool to dominate them all, I would love to see more open intercommunication standards, so each of us can chose their own manager, developer and editor and they still would work nicely together.

Of course we have something approaching this with plugins, although many of those are add-ons to what are already supposed to be full-featured programs. (The more successful plugins then seem to be appropriated by the mother software like the Blob smothering its enemies). It might be interesting to see a "program" that was essentially an empty framework for open-source editing apps that anyone could provide, from which each user could then pick and choose. I don't know enough about it to know how viable such an arrangement might be. It sounds more 21st-century, at least.

Photo Ninja (ya see what I did there?)

I've been experimenting with the nifty Photo Ninja (again) and mean to give PhotoLine a try, too.

Mike

Original contents copyright 2013 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

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Featured Comments from:

Dave: "I wanted to comment on the original post but didn't have the time...I think we can look at electric guitar for an example of where things might head with image editing software. Guitarists have relied on various effects pedals to modify their tone since the dawn of amplified music. With the digital revolution various guitar effects companies came up with all-in-one digital effects pedals. These all-in-one devices were kind of like Photoshop in that they were designed to be a one stop signal processing solution. However, now that the dust has settled from the guitar digital revolution, most guitarists still use multiple pedals. To get a signature sound a guitarist might use a mix of vintage pedals coupled with some newer digital effect. Guitarist have a very diverse set of tools to choose from. I'm hoping that photography is headed in the same direction."

SerrArris: "I am also following the for-each-purpose-one-program approach. That makes my collection of tools kind of large, but I can work very comfortably that way.

• Scanning—Vuescan
• Fast edit and finalizing from 16 bit TIFFs—Fixfoto
• Batch processing—Irfanview (Fixfoto could also do that, but I am used to the Irfanview GUI for that matter)
• RAW Conversion—DxO Labs and Filmpack
• Noise reduction (not used any more)—Noise Ninja
• Printing—Photoline (Cheapest program that can use ICC profiles)
• Multi layer edit, dodging and burning—Gimp
• Panoramas—Hugin

"As said, I am confortable with that approach. In fact, the complete software package did cost me less than $400 (with DxO being the most part of that), spread over years. And all the software runs on my outdated Thinkpad T61! Amazing."

Stmpjmpr: "I agree that separate, focused tools would be ideal, but it in order to maintain one of the main benefits of apps like Lightroom and Aperture, nondestructive editing, some standards would have to emerge that communicated the effects of the application as instructions instead of rendering the image with the effects applied. Given that this is a technologically huge hurdle, and that the vendors wouldn't agree to any presented solution that didn't put them at the center (witness RAW formats), we're probably stuck with applications that are too monolithic."

Clueless or Calculating?

I didn't actually know this when I wrote yesterday's post about photo editing software—I'm generally more clueless than calculating—but it turns out that Adobe is about to release the newest edition of Lightroom, Lightroom 5. You can order it now, available for download from Amazon, or as a download or in the box from B&H Photo. (I don't know about you, but I prefer to have a disc version of my major software products. Why? Because I needed to, once. Once was enough.)

Do I need to try LR? I'm quaking in me boots...I have too much to do lately already, what with the great home reorganization project soaking up the leftovers of my rather minimal supply of personal energy.

And by the bye, did that post set a record for the number of Featured Comments in the shortest time? I think maybe it did.

Mike

P.S. Speaking of calculating...the nod for the funniest idea in the Comments recently came from Ed in the Netherlands, who speculated that maybe TOP is put together by a team of professional writers doing a canny imitation, for commercial purposes, of one person with a distinct personality. Made me laugh. Actually, I really am a person (just one), and I really do cobble TOP together from an 11x11' room in a small ranch house in the wilds of Wisconsin. No foolin'.

Here's the calculating part, though: remember that if you buy your software through our links, you make B&H and Amazon share their profits with ol' Mike. And how cool is that?

The Staff, in cracked bathroom mirror

Original contents copyright 2013 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

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Featured Comments from:

robert e (partial comment): "It surprises me that you don't already use LR, Mike, if only because it's an editor that seems to have been designed by digital-savvy former film photographers for their own use. It's got one foot in the old days and one foot in the new days. Which I think is why it suits me so well. (I don't feel it's in any way hindered by the analog paradigm, either.) I think it would be well worth an hour or or two of your time. It shouldn't take more time than that to download, install, and poke around enough to see if you're compatible with each other."

There Is No Good Photo Editing Software

Home sweet home for me...Adobe Camera Raw (ACR)

I've been thinking about this for the past few days now, and I've been struck by an idea that won't leave my head: Is it possible that good photo editing software just doesn't exist?

I use ACR and Photoshop CS6 myself. ACR comes closest for me (I'm happy that Zalman Stern, a member of the core of the ACR development team, is a TOP reader), and I use it for 90% of what I do—but it doesn't do everything and it isn't available separately. To my mind, it would be the best basis for an all-in-one photo editing program for photography. But partly that's because it's still simple, and added complexities have so far been useful and have not (yet?) become pointless or gratuitous.

Lightroom, on the other hand, now does the trick for most photographers, but it too has shortcomings because, like ACR (which it incorporates), it's intended to be used in conjunction with Photoshop. (Lightroom is essentially the greatly expanded distant descendant of Bridge, with DAM capabilities emphasized.)

Second-tier programs such as PWP and GIMP have serious weaknesses or limitations—PWP's Mac capability is a patch, and GIMP is 8-bit only.

Tiny independent RAW-converter-based editors such as Photo Ninja are cool, but haven't penetrated the market or become standard, and most of them don't generate the capital for continuous improvement (I'm guessing). Every now and then a genius like Fabio Riccardi comes along with a better mousetrap, but the marketing and public acceptance aspects of managing a commercial product create substantial walls that impede success (and there's that capital problem...maybe; I don't know).

Aperture and DxO have strengths and weaknesses and seem to offer real alternatives, though it's widely agreed that neither are perfect.

And Photoshop itself isn't it, because photo editing is actually a fairly small part of its overall functionality, it's vastly too complicated even for some regular users (ahem), and it's too expensive...even before CC. It might be the everything-including-the-kitchen-sink software, and the one all the pro graphics and printing people use, but that doesn't make it ideal.

So is it possible that, when it comes to photo editing software, there's just nothing really, well, good out there? Nothing that works well with all files, is reasonably standardized, is intended mainly for photographers, doesn't need to be used in conjunction with other products, and that does most of the things that most of us want it to do but doesn't do most of what we don't need it to do? And that works well, and is reasonably simple to learn and straightforward to master? And that is reasonably affordable, and updates often enough but not too often?

Seems to me we just all sort of muddle along with a) what we've been muddling along with in the past, b) some combination of programs we happen to own or be familiar with, and c) what we can afford.

Or maybe I'm wrong. I'm the first to admit I'm not an expert on software (I'm really not, I'm not being modest)...just observing the passing scene.

Mike

Original contents copyright 2013 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

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(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:

Charles Lanteigne: "Just so I can understand where you're coming from, what would you like ACR/LR to do, that they don't at the moment, that would make them what you'd call 'good photo editing software'?"

Mike replies: As I said, I don't use LR, but I'll answer your question with a question: if LR is everything anybody needs, why are so many people so upset about Photoshop CC?

Bill Pierce: "For a long time, I processed digital images exactly as Mike does—ACR and Photoshop. As Photoshop expanded (understatement alert) to meet the image processing needs of non photographers, a lot of us slipped over to Lightroom, bouncing into Photoshop when we needed to retouch pictures of our wife or girlfriend.

"But, if you want to do it all in one program, from RAW file to print or screen display, here’s another alternative in addition to the ones that you mentioned that’s pretty good—Capture One. Their base interpretation of color and sharpness for a specific camera file can be different from that of the Adobe programs, but is quite good (I think better at times). and, of course, the files are completely adjustable if you want to change their interpretation. They are usually fairly fast in expanding the program to handle the RAW files of new cameras. You can set Capture One to store and retrieve your images either from your existing filing system or in a filing system established by the program. And they promise to always have the latest version of the software downloadable and not updated from the 'cloud.' They usually have some kind of trial period that will let you try out the program for a short period of time without paying for it. The program’s controls are close enough to the Adobe programs that the leaning curve isn’t too horrible. People might want to add it to their list."

David Paterson (partial comment): "Perhaps Photoshop Elements ticks most of the boxes you mention? I don't know—I'm only suggesting; I have very little experience of Elements. My wife uses it but I find the interface so off-putting that I can scarcely bear to use it."

Markus Spring (partial comment): "The former Bibble, now AfterShot Pro, might be quite close to what you look for—nondestructive, extendable, fast, allowing to restrict modifications to regions, it does at least for me 99% I ever needed. And it works on Mac, Win, and even Linux (where it is the only commercialRAW  converter available). The problem with it? The last update from Corel, the new owner, dates back ages, and new cameras' RAW files are simple not known to it...."

Speed (partial comment): "Is it possible that a definition of 'good photo editing software' just doesn't exist? Or is different for each user? It is said in the context of a large and complex application that nobody uses more than 15% of its functions but everybody uses a different 15%. My experience is that when I start with a new application I don't know which 15% I need, and with time my use changes and grows."

Kevin Pfeifle (partial comment): "I could not agree more! I'm using both DxO and lightroom. Neither has layers, which I think is a huge problem, but I refuse to pay for Photoshop (too expensive and too many things I don't need or want). LightZone was starting to move in the direction I wanted....

Jack: "Yeah, welcome to the digital world. You could write that third-to-last paragraph about almost any kind of program, from the lowly word processor on up. My pet peeve is that in the digital world there are no experts. It seems that the time it takes to master a new technology advancement is longer than the time to develop a new advancement. It used to be, not that long ago, that you dedicated yourself to learning something, became an expert at it and you were set for a long time. Not any more."

Mike replies: Yeah, that bugs me too. A lot. It always makes me chuckle when somebody asks me to write a detailed comparison of all the major editing programs. That would require mastering them all first. I'll start in on mastering the second one as soon as I master the first one, but I've been working on mastering the first one for 19 years now, and I'm still not close, so they shouldn't hold their breath.

John Yuda (partial comment): "I don't know if they're fully there yet, but Pixelmator and Acorn are both getting very close from my perspective. They're Mac-only, and built on Apple's Core Image technology...."

Ed (partial comment): "You seem to forget the RAWTherapee and that my dear freind is missing out on free greatness."

Jim Kofron: "You indirectly mention Lightzone (Fabio Riccardi), which continues to be my favorite photo editor (even with its warts). I'd like to let you and your readers know that although Fabio closed up LightCrafts, he graciously has donated the code to an open source project that has been gaining some significant momentum since the beginning of the year. The site is Lightproject.org, and I'd encourage your readers and any developer types to participate in this effort. The first couple of times I tried Lightzone, I just didn't get it. On my third trial, something just clicked and I thought to myself—'Brilliant.' It's a great paradigm for photo editing, even if it's missing the 'pixel pushing' tools like a healing brush. I was more than happy to buy the 'lifetime' license, and have used it to finish my photographs ever since. But yes, I think it's safe to say that there are no good (or great) photo editing software packages out there...."

JTW: "I absolutely agree. Software always seems to have the tendency to try to be all things for all people, and ends up being too ponderous, too unwieldy, and too complex (and too expensive). Two examples: Microsoft Word, and Photoshop."

Adam Isler: "I think your title is too strong. Surely there's no 'perfect' photo editing software that has just the right set of features for what you want and no more, with an intuitive interface that makes it a breeze to use. But there's certainly 'good' photo editing software. I myself have standardized on Lightroom with Nik plugins and the occasional use of Photoshop CS5 (and I'm considering whether CC will be worth it for me—waiting to hear from Ctein on Wednesday).

"Am I overjoyed with this set-up? Is it perfect? No. But it's comfortable enough and, while I miss the scent of hypo and acetic acid mixed with sweat from my old bathroom darkroom, this is way better."

Dennis Mook: "I would like to see Lightroom Plus. Take Lightroom, add 50% to the price and give us about 15 of the most commonly used tools we utilize in Photoshop. That would give us database capability, non-destructive initial editing and then the commonly used attributes we go to Photoshop to use for what we now can't do in Lightroom. That would be perfect for me."

Gordon Lewis (partial comment): "Let's remember that image editing (meaning manipulation, not deleting weak images) is an option, not a fundamental requirement."

Stephen Scharf: "Have to respectfully disagree. Despite Adobe's Machiavellian behaviour of late with respect to Creative Cloud, Adobe Lightroom rocks. If you ever had to go through a day's take of 1000+ RAW images for your PR director at the racetrack, identify selects, and burn to a disc in time for deadline press, you'd know what I mean!  ;-) ."

Harold Merklinger: "Even before Photoshop existed, I believed that there were certain fundamental principles that guided software developers.  The rules go something like this:

1. Every software package must contain at least one highly useful 'killer' feature or capability not available in any other package.
2. Every software package must lack at least one essential feature or capability found in nearly every other competing package.
3. No software package may be entirely free of bugs.
4. Every software package must contain at least one undocumented feature that every user needs to know.
5. The native file format must be incompatible with competing software packages and preferably incompatible with earlier versions of the same package.
6. Where possible, there should be multiple similar, easily confused pairs of functions or capabilities. Any documentation supplied must describe both functions of a pair in a single paragraph and any examples must use both functions in such a way that it is impossible to determine precisely which function does what.

"I believe my list eventually contained a total of 37 such design rules. Suffice it to say that the first two principles alone determine that everyone needs all available software packages.

"That said, I must say that Photoshop has been for me the best of all the software packages I have used. I started with version 2."

Fazal Majid: "Lightroom was not designed as a Photoshop adjunct. Most users report it has the opposite effect—PS usage declines dramatically once you start using LR. Also, in genesis it was a skunkworks project at Macromedia Labs before the company was even acquired by Adobe. Apple's release of Aperture forced Adobe to release LR, albeit for internal political reasons with the tag 'Photoshop' attached to the product name."

Rob (partial comment): "I am a recent convert to Photo Ninja, which I think puts ACR deep in the shade as a raw convertor. At this early stage of its development, PN does not have many of the features and workflow enhancers that can be found in programs such as Lightroom, Aperture and Capture One, but I find that PN's output is so good that I have much less need for additional tweaking in Photoshop than I previously did with other raw convertors."

MJFerron (partial comment): "Actually PS Elements 11 is a nice affordable option."

Marc Rochkind (partial comment): "There's nothing at all in LR that requires, or even suggests, that Photoshop plays a role in the workflow. You can go to PS and back smoothly, which is nice, but this is definitely not central to what you do in LR."

Dan Gorman (partial comment): "The key thing that keeps me coming back to P'shop is the ability to work in layers—including adjustment layers and layer masks—and the resulting ability to make very precise local edits. I'm not aware of any other program that has this capability (though I'd love to be informed otherwise)."

Jamie Pillers (partial comment): "I've used Aperture for several years now, since it first came out. Recently I added the Nik suite of software (which loads as an integral add-on to Aperture). Aperture has always done everything I've needed."

david stock: "Folks might want to check out Photoline. It does virtually everything Photoshop does, for a fraction of the expense. I wouldn't use it for RAW processing, but for those times when you need layers, selections and special tools, it's very capable. Of course, like Photoshop, it has a learning curve...."

David Dyer-Bennet (partial comment): "I actively do not want 'all-in-one' software. I don't want DAM integrated with photo editing, in particular—a nasty path that both Bibble (in v. 5) and Lightroom (from the beginning I believe) went down. [...] As a general philosophical thing, all-in-one tools are second (or so) best at each thing they do, maybe actually best at one thing if you're very lucky. Given how photography pushes data storage processing speed issues, I can't afford second best for many aspects of my photo software."

Tom Kwas: "Once again, as I've said almost every time someone on here talks about 'pro' processing and editing software:

"One: Photoshop was never meant to be a photographer's software, strictly pre-press, and it was marketed to me as such back in the '90s when I was running a big studio for a retailer. For those on here that said it's now getting to have too many features for the general photographer, it always did. It was never written using photo specific terminology that all pro photographers understood, like 'grades' for contrast, and 'stops' for brightness. C'mon, sharpening that has to do with radials and distals? What the what is that? And no 'one button' B&W conversion for years, when other software had it....

"Two: Capture One is what everyone I ever knew in a professional studio used, especially in large commercial studios with a lot of varying equipment and medium format sized digital cameras. Photoshop was only in the pre-press and assembly departments!"

Adobe Photoshop Creative Cloud, Part I: The Bad

This week's column by Ctein

This is the first part of a two column series on Photoshop CC. In this column I will talk about what Adobe got wrong (oh, so badly wrong!) Pertinently, I'll also correct some broad misconceptions that people have about Photoshop CC. Feel free to rant, fume, and bloviate to your hearts content in comments; that's what this week's column is for.

Next week, I'll talk about why I decided (to my surprise) that this is a really good thing for Photoshop users and Adobe, both. No, don't anticipate me; you will not be able to guess where I'm going with this. I think I've got an interesting take on the whole thing; if we can get our rants out of our system this week, we'll have an illuminating discussion next week. (So call me a cockeyed optimist.)

I'm limiting my scope to Photoshop. I don't use Lightroom, and I rarely, if ever, use any of the other Creative Suite components (in other words, I am typical of 90% of photographers using Photoshop). If you're a Lightroom or major Creative Suite user, you likely have concerns and issues that I'm not competent to discuss. That doesn't mean I think your gripes aren't legitimate, just that I am restricting my scope.

Diving into the lava pit, without further ado...

Adobe did not spring this on us in the worst possible way, but it's way high up on the incompetence scale. Some of their strategy and marketing people need to be fired. I'm not kidding. Most of the whirlwind they are reaping is entirely of their own making and was entirely unnecessary.

To start with, there's the style. You don't surprise customers with a change like this with one month's notice. Yes, Adobe's been talking about this fundamental strategic change for several years, now, but only with vague timetables that put it years in the future. The result was entirely predictable, forcing people to make long-term strategy decisions, with just a month to figure this all out before the hammer falls? How much would you think this might piss people off?

Enough that you see a marked uptick in people using the phrase "Adobe tax." Yes, it's a brain-dead, bumper-sticker-slogan bit of rhetoric (you call your monthly phone or garbage collection bills "phone tax" or "garbage tax"? Really??), but it's a fair indicator that people are really upset. A change.org petition? OMG. Sure, it has no force whatsoever and a pretty small number of signatories compared to Adobe's installed base, but when was the last time you saw anyone attempt to start a social movement over a change in product licensing terms?!

PR-wise, Adobe couldn't have made it much worse if they'd offered to kill a puppy with every purchase of Photoshop CC.

Oh, wait. They did manage to make it much worse. There was the content. The murky, unclear, incomplete, convoluted content. That's where most of the misconceptions come from. In the days following the announcement, a large number of people were unclear about just what this physically entailed, because Adobe had decided to wrap the whole thing up in the high concept of the Creative Cloud. Was the new Photoshop application going to be client-resident or server-resident? Where did your files live? Were updates going to be push-obligatory or optional? Would you even be able to buy CS after CC comes out?

I had a friend who is exceptionally knowledgeable about streaming and server-based technologies and services (because it's her job to be) ask me three days after the announcement if the new Photoshop was going to be client or server based, because the short-form press releases hadn't made that clear even to her. (If it were server-based, she was most curious how they'd solved some bandwidth/latency problems.) I had to ask Adobe's PR agency several questions myself, because I couldn't figure them out even after delving deeply into the Adobe website. In a couple of cases they couldn't give me an answer because Adobe hadn't told them yet.

Here in a nutshell is what's really going on (I'm glossing over some technical details). Photoshop CC is not any different from Photoshop CS. It resides on your computer. The files you work on reside on your computer. It does not require a constant connection to the Internet to work. It does require a periodic connection to keep working...but so do CS versions of Photoshop! You didn't know that? True. I've had CS occasionally reset itself and need to login to revalidate my copy and pull it out of 30-day-trial mode. In some cases it's even needed me to reenter the serial number.

The only difference for the user is that Photoshop CC revalidates itself on a regular basis (30–99 days, depending on the license), while Photoshop CS only does it when some internal bit of logic deems it necessary. That's it.

That discredits the argument that this change is somehow about dealing with piracy (next week I'll tell you what it is about; be patient). It'll be no more difficult to pirate Photoshop CC than CS. Well, okay, they may have rolled out some new anti-piracy tweaks to the activation/validation system in the new version, because they're always working on that, but it's nothing inherent in the CC model; those would have been in CS 6.5.

The reason all this misinformation is out there is because Adobe couldn't figure out that they needed to explain this cleanly and simply, and not inextricably and confusingly wrap up the presentation in some fancy Cloud conceptual package that was irrelevant to most Photoshop users.

Then there's the confusion on pricing. A lot, maybe even a majority, of existing users think their Photoshop costs are going to go up, because they'll be paying out $20 a month. Except, they won't. For existing users, the price is $10 a month. It's only $20 a month for brand-new users (or current users of really old versions). Yes, it's a one-year "introductory" price. But, I've got good reason to think it'll become permanent and, anyway, that's what it is now. Ten dollars. Not $20.

Except...was this clearly and prominently displayed on the Adobe website? No! You found this out only if you drilled down through the purchase options. It's not that Adobe is trying to rip us off; the information does come up clearly once you get a layer or two in and before you'd be making a purchase. It's maladroit presentation.

Dear Adobe, since it seems you do not know how to suck eggs, let me explain this to you. Here is the way you present something like that, especially since your primary audience is a pre-existing installed user base: The very first page that discusses pricing should say "Price for the next year: $9.95 for users of Photoshop CS[x] and later." And the price for new users? That goes in smaller type or maybe even footnoted. Oh, and not so by the way, this information should be very near the top of the presentation because, y'know, it's the very first question people are going to ask, and making them dig for the information is not good salesmanship, it's just plain poking at the bear. Except, it seems you don't know that, so I'm telling you.

All of this, plus these postings:

Photoshop and Creative Cloud: We're Listening

Creative Cloud team: We're listening; stay tuned

You should never lose access to your work, period

...make it clear that someone(s) at Adobe whose job was to think these things through did not do so. Not even a little bit. We're not talking about rocket-science corporate communications issues; these are all such basic and predictable concerns and questions that Adobe should have had all the answers ready and promulgated clearly and prominently the moment they made their announcement.

Adobe truly earned all the vitriol that's been directed at them.

That's it for this week. As I said, next week I'll tell you why I've decided I actually like this idea, despite Adobe's best efforts to make me hate it. For now, have fun with the torches and pitchforks and tar and feathers. Just remember, kids, to have a responsible adult around. I mean, it's all fun and games until someone trips and pokes an eye out out with one of those pitchforks....

Ctein

©2013 by Ctein, all rights reserved

Regular columnist Ctein explicates the pros and cons every week on TOP.

Original contents copyright 2013 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

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(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:

George Feucht (partial comment): "OWNING something (that doesn't require costly upkeep) is much better in the long run than RENTING it."

Eric: "A monthly subscription for $10? Check out the European prices...."

Mark Cotter: "I jumped to CC about six months ago. I figured that I use Photoshop, InDesign, Lightroom and Premiere (occasionally) enough to justify the cost. And I decided that I preferred the idea of always having the current version rather than upgrading every couple of years when I couldn't work effectively with the files others had sent me. OK, not quite the person you were aiming your column at but I do agree with you—and I expect to agree with you next week. Oh, and I work in education so get a hefty discount. Win-win for me!"

Mark Roberts: "What's infuriating—and infuriating is the word for it—about this 'Creative Cloud' is that one will no longer be able to just buy Photoshop and be done with it. (Yes, I'm aware that technically one 'licenses,' rather than purchases, Photoshop.) The amount of the payment is less annoying that the fact that it is recurrent; it'll keep coming back on a regular basis. 'Nickel and Dimed,' 'Death of a Thousand Cuts,' whatever you want to call it. I already have too many of them in my life. I suspect many others do, too."

David (partial comment): "I don't rent anything except floor sanders, jackhammers and some extra lighting equipment when I need it."

The End of the Photoshop Era

I've used Photoshop for 20 years, more or less. I've upgraded every two or three versions. Each time I do, it's like going into my house after someone sneaked in and rearranged everything, sometimes subtly, sometimes not...taking a few familiar things away and leaving a few new things. It's mostly familiar, it's just that lots of things aren't quite where I left them, and I don't quite know where to go look. It always takes me a while to groove my practices with a new version. Sometimes it's a bit of an adventure. (Not the sort of adventure I enjoy—for the most part, I hate gratuitous change. But that's a rant for another day.)

I hesitate to admit this, and I would never do this now that I have a public "presence," but I must shamefacedly admit that I used a pirated copy of Photoshop for a while, too, when I was too poor to pay for it. (Hey, I'm a single parent. My current copy of CS6 was fully paid for, high retail, with cash money.) So I completely understand why Adobe is setting things up so that people will have to pay for the use of its software. It has the right. I'm walking proof of why it might be necessary, and I can't complain.

As I understand it—and I really haven't done nearly as much reading about this as I should have (software issues bore me)—Adobe will be making constant, ongoing updates to the CC program, something they're touting as one of the advantages of the new arrangement. (Is that correct?)

My issue is not so much that I'd have to pay a monthly fee, but that constant updates would mean I'd never get comfortable. That stranger sneaking into my house and rearranging everything would be doing less of it, but more often. I find it hard enough to do what I want to do in Photoshop, which I have never really come close to mastering. Add in constant, ongoing changes of the sort that have appeared in the past in new versions, and I'd never feel like I'm standing on firm ground.

Anyway, I doubt very much I'll be a "subscriber" under the new regime. I'm not a "power user." My Photoshop era may be coming to an end...or will as soon as CS6 gets too long in the tooth to remain fully practical.

Several readers have suggested that I do a survey of other software options. That's like asking me to write about higher mathematics. I have strengths and I have weaknesses, but, really, you don't want me writing about software, believe me. I don't learn software easily or well. (It was one of the reasons I got into photography in the first place, and I'm really not kidding—so I wouldn't have to get anywhere near computers! That's the truth. ) I can't write intelligently about the software I use, much less every other option too.

However, Dpreview to the rescue—they've just published a list of ten alternatives to Photoshop. Granted, two of the ten have "Photoshop" in the name, and are from Adobe, but aren't Photoshop.

Personally, I'm leaning toward DxO. Anyone have any comments about that?

And many photographers just use Lightroom now, and that won't change. So to a lot of people, I suppose, this whole Photoshop CC tempest is taking place in someone else's teapot anyway....

Mike

Original contents copyright 2013 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

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(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:

Greg Roberts: "You said, 'I'm walking proof of why it might be necessary....' I think the complete opposite is true: you are walking proof that if people are able to use, learn, and appreciate, quality software then they will pay for it when they can. I did the same, when I could not afford Photoshop I used a pirated copy, and once I could afford it I bought it, and have continued to pay for it every two years. Whether it is monthly rental or annual purchase, if you can't currently afford it then you are not going to buy it. Adobe's efforts to stop piracy will not increase their income, as the majority of today's pirates aren't going to instantly subscribe tomorrow. A lot of people are going to migrate to other products and find those other products are pretty good for most of the work they want to do. Look back at your own piracy—did you actually cost Adobe money when you pirated the software? Failure to gain is not loss. If the pirate can't afford it the pirate will not buy it."

Tim Bradshaw: "I don't have a recommendation. But if you want to escape the endless stream of annoying changes you really have one choice: don't use software."

Mark Roberts: "Mike, as you probably know I've been teaching Photoshop in college now for... a long time. It's not surprising that old farts like you and I are fed up with getting our rooms rearranged, as you describe it. But the last time I told a class full of students that the release of a new version was imminent I received, rather than expressions of excitement or enthusiasm, an audible groan from the room. This from 19-year-olds on their first version of Photoshop."

FrankyB: "Adobe's plan reminds me of a humorous skit I saw on television. A poor widow is in the funeral home and the director is selling her a suit for her dead husband and is charging her by the week.

"I have used Photoshop for many years and paid full price for it and each upgrade through CS6. However, I will not be forced to purchase all future upgrades. I will continue with CS6, until I feel the need to move to something else. I will then purchase a program with a permanent license from a different company."

Charles Lanteigne: "I found DPReview's list farcically inadequate. Apart from Photoshop Elements and GIMP, which are novice versions of Photoshop, the rest are not even close to being alternatives to Photoshop. The only way they could be construed as such is if all along you've used so little of Photoshop that it's actually not what you needed. The list actually includes either alternatives to Camera Raw (to perform global ajustments, some dodging/burning and such) or alternatives to "Paint" (used to draw stuff). Image manipulation applications that can perform complex local adjustments, masking and compositing (which is what Photoshop is all about)? Sorry, there are no alternatives."

John K: "I stopped using Adobe products a couple of years ago. No PS, no Flash, no Acrobat. I'm doing just fine. I use Aperture 3 with the Nik suite of plugins for most editing and Pixelmator for anything Aperture can't do. There are lots of non-Adobe options."

Michael Matthews: "Since Lightroom's develop module is essentially the current version of ACR, plus some different approaches to achieving similar ends, it should continue to serve as an up-to-date entryway to your existing flavor of Photoshop. Nothing in your copy of CS6...or CS 5.5...or CS3 is going to stop working just because there's a new function in the subscription software. Do the ACR work in Lightroom and, then, if the image needs more (or if you prefer the Photoshop layers and tools approach) bump it over to Photoshop and continue. Updating Lightroom at $79 for a new release is a lot less expensive than updating Photoshop has been."

Robbie Corrigan (partial comment): "Been using the subscription version of PS6 for a good nine months now. Can't see what the hassle is in keeping it bang up to date with camera/lens profiles."

Greg (partial comment): "Please, let's not discuss PS Elements—in 2013, 8 bits per channel is crippleware."

Phil: "When it comes to computers, I'm what people refer to as a power user. I've used hundreds of programs of all kind, and I don't fret much when I need to use one I don't know—they're pretty much all the same to me. As far as I know, and I've seen a lot, the only area where PS (and Adobe products in general) truly outshines others is in color space management. If you need to go to print (and I do mean magazines and the like), then there is little latitude in tool choices. I don't say that Adobe do it better than others, they just do it in the way the industry understands and handles color spaces. If you are like the vast majority of users and don't need to go to print, then just about any tool set will get the job done quite well, usually with a softer learning curve and much less hassle and aggravation over time."

Don Bryant (partial comment): "I'm surprised no one has mentioned Capture One software. An excellent alternative probably the top contendor to replace Adobe PS and LR."

Yannick Martel (partial comment): "I strongly suggest RawTherapee, which I find very efficient once I get used to it."

Max Sang (partial comment): "I've used Bibble (now renamed AfterShot) for a few years now and it's really nice."

David Dyer-Bennet (partial comment): "My bulk processing goes through Corel Aftershot Pro (formerly Bibble Pro). They've ruined it (dropped the Noise Ninja integration, so newer versions are useless to me). Adobe's attitude has made me not willing to use Lightroom except as an absolute last resort."

Bernie (partial comment): "I have decided to give Pixelmator a try."

Manuel (partial comment): "I can't praise DxO Optics Pro 8 highly enough."

Godfrey: "I have Photoshop CS5. And hardly use it. No need to upgrade. I debate whether to even keep it installed. Lightroom does well for me."

John (partial comment): "I have used Picture Window Pro for several years now. I like it and still use it for most of my detailed editing."

Jim Kofron (partial comment): "I left Photoshop years ago, tempted by a new program that was advertised here at TOP: Lightzone. For me, Lightzone was an ideal system once you figured out the gestalt (it was much different than Photoshop), and as long as you didn't have to push pixels around (no healing brush). The sad news is that Lightcrafts closed up shop a few years ago—but the good news is that Fabio recently agreed to open-source the code. http://lightzoneproject.org/ is where the action is, and there's Windows and Linux betas out now. Hopefully the Mac beta will be coming shortly."

adamct (partial comment): "I have to lob in another recommendation for Photoline."

Mike Weatherstone (partial comment): "I do as little post processing as possible, preferring to get it right' in camera' if I can. The reason is just that I get no pleasure at all in doing it. Frankly it bores me rigid."

Mike Plews "Maybe it's time to go back to doing all my image processing with Dektol."

John Camp: "I've been involved with a long torturous discussion of this on Luminous Landscape, and anyone who wants to read or participate in a long torturous discussion should go there—there's a lot of information. Here's what I believe (others may disagree):

"Adobe may have had several reasons for going to the subscription-only form. The main one is, it'll make them a lot of money. If you upgraded with every single new version of the stand-alone product, CC will still cost you more (other than the first loss-leader year.) If you did what many people did—upgraded every other version, it'll cost you more than twice as much. (This is compared to upgrade costs, not to first-time buyers.) I have a very serious, but infrequent use for Photoshop, which really leaves me in a quandary. Do I want to pay more than twice as much for what is already a very high-priced product, to use it six times a year? I think many other people are in the same boat. Other reasons that some people claim Adobe may require CC: to cut down on piracy, to smooth revenue flow, to reduce engineering complications in maintaining two versions, and because Photoshop was reaching the point in its development when new important features were becoming harder to provide, so people might more frequently opt out of new versions (and thus reduce Adobe revenue.)

"Adobe has suggested that there will be no CS7—that CS6 will be the last stand-alone Photoshop. They have promised to keep it updated for some time, but not forever. That means that within a relatively few years...probably three or four—you would no longer get and updated camera base for CS6, and if you use Mac computers, then the very next OS upgrade might no longer support CS6. So CS6, without support, will probably go obsolete relatively quickly, unless you mothball an 'archival' computer with an OS that sports CS6. The problem will be somewhat less with Windows machines.

"The objections to Adobe's decision generally follow these lines:

1. Too expensive, especially for independent artists, part-time pros, or independent pros. One well-regarded commenter on LuLa suggests that Adobe his basically going for corporate sales, and is willing to sacrifice non-corporate sales.
2. Locks up your work, as well as Adobe's. If you drop out of the subscription system, you will be allowed to continue using Photoshop (as I understand it) for 90 days, and then the program will stop working. (So here I make up a story.) Suppose you are a serious photographer, with several thousand images in Photoshop files. You lose your job, and can no longer afford to pay the monthly fees. You then must move all your files off Photoshop, into some other DAM program, or they will be locked up—after 90 days you will have no access to the files, including your personal work on the files. The program simply won't work anymore. It is possible to move the images, but if you have, say, several tens of thousands of them, you'd have to do an enormous amount of work to get them out before the program is locked. The objection here is that Adobe is not only locking their program—they're locking up your work.
3. Some people have claimed that if the move to CC is successful with Photoshop and the other Creative Suite programs, that Lightroom will be next. Adobe has more-or-less denied this, saying that Lightroom will remain stand-alone for the foreseeable future. If Lightroom also went CC, that would again require those who do not wish to subscribe, to do an enormous amount of additional work to save their own past work on the LR program. The question here is, what does 'foreseeable' mean? Definitions are thin on the ground.
4. Since you must be online to keep the program working, you could have problems if you go off-grid for more than three months  (traveling to a third-world location, for example.) And because of the frequent updates projected by Adobe, people who live in rural areas with not much bandwidth avaIlable, upgrades could take a lot of time.

"Jeff Schewe, who has written well-regarded Lightroom/Photoshop books, has mounted a generally intelligent if somewhat cantankerous defense of Adobe on several threads at LuLa. I don't feel like defending them, so go there if you wish to see Jeff's defense.

"Bottom line, as I see it: Adobe is going to hurt a lot of people who supported them in the past, but for Adobe, the change makes sense in terms of revenue. There may be other consequences that would be less favorable, but those are all speculative."

UPDATE: I've been more impressed than ever by the variety and thoughtfulness of the comments to this post. The idea of the "Featured Comments" is to provide a briefer sampling of a variety of good or interesting (or amusing) comments for readers who might not have time to delve into the larger stack of unedited ones, so I've been reluctant to expand this section too far, but there are quite a number of valuable comments in the main Comments Section. Thanks to everyone who took the time to share their thoughts.

UPDATE #2: A friend at Adobe wrote to clarify that updates to Photoshop CC will be optional and adoptable on the user's timetable. They'll come through the Adobe Applications Manager. —Ed.

Bear.: "For my business, I much prefer software licensed monthly. No capital costs tied up. Outgoings match revenue. No tax issues. But for my personal affairs, I greatly dislike the monthly model. I don't use the software day to day. It is is a discretionary purchase. And I generally don't need the latest update. I will keep a copy for years. Hence, from my personal perspective, Adobe is pushing Photoshop to professionals, and away from amateurs. This will shrink its market. And I image either Adobe or someone else will fill the gap."

Ctein (partial comment): "Keeping a chronological perspective on it, it's a bit early for anyone to be worrying. If one is good with Photoshop CS6, nothing is going to change until the operating systems go through enough generations that it will no longer run. That's difficult to predict—a bit less so on the Mac side. And especially since I know your habits. In your case, assuming you go with your plan to get a new machine when your AppleCare warranty expires on this one, you're going to be good for at least four more years and quite possibly seven. Which is, like, forever in computer terms. Just saying, it's not an immediately pressing problem. Remember, Creative Cloud isn't going to negate anyone's existing CS6 license or operation."

Brian Ellis (partial comment): "I've spent hundreds of hours over the years reading, watching videos, attending workshops, buying books, etc. to get to my present knowledge of Photoshop. I'm not about to use some other program unless there's absolutely no choice."

Crabby Umbo (partial comment): "Photoshop is so ubiquitous, that I've lost management jobs during interviews by saying 'I've used Photoshop in the past, but use alternative software today, as do most photographers.' The HR stiff only knows that the department head told them the candidate must be proficient in Photoshop, even though it isn't their job to use it...."

James Moule (partial comment): "Adobe is creating an opening for Google (which has recently acquired Nik) to develop a full-featured replacement for Photoshop."

MM (partial comment): "One commenter recommended xara.com (Windows only). I had never heard of it, but from their website it looks very capable and the more expensive version ($300) claims to have full PSD support."

Alan Barnard: "I'm a graphics professional and photographer who uses Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, Dreamweaver, and Lightroom on a regular basis. For someone like myself who uses the full suite of Adobe tools, CC is a welcome alternative. That said, I'm pretty sure I'd be disappointed if I was strictly a Photoshop user."

John McDevitt: "I can't believe DPreview neglected to mention Picture Window Pro (PWP). I've been using PWP for years."

Lightroom 5 Public Beta Released

Adobe has released the public beta version of Lightroom 5, available for download. The new features in Lightroom 5 are said to be: Advanced Healing Brush; "Upright" (one-click straightening of tilted images); Radial Gradient; Offline editing with Smart Previews; and Improved photo book creation.

There's a brief review by Sharon Machlis at Computerworld.

The beta version will expire on June 30th, but it's free to use until then.

Mike
(Thanks to John Camp)

Original contents copyright 2013 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

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Featured Comments from:

Lou: "Those new features are obviously pointless gadgets, but we will keep paying the Adobe tax to get the bug fixes and the newer camera support...."

Adam Richardson replies to Lou: "I'd love to hear what you think a non-pointless gadget is. Adobe regularly does free updates that support new cameras (4.4 being the last one just last week that included extensive RAW engine work to handle Fuji X-trans files). Plus, the relatively small price of this upgrade largely obviates the need for buying/upgrading the vastly more expensive Photoshop, unless you really need layers, or the pano stitching and HDR work as Svein-Frode mentions [in the Comments section —Ed.]. As they build in more functionality it becomes a single solution, so it's actually a money saver....

"In my mind a proper healing brush is super useful and something I've missed since switching from Aperture. It saves a round trip via Photoshop to take advantage of its context aware fill, but that comes with its own issues of image versioning.

"PNG file support, finally—very nice. PDF support would be great too so that it can be used as a more holistic asset library.

"One-click proper full screen view, finally, is very welcome.

"While it's not necessary for me, the ability to keep a relatively tiny size database on a laptop is super useful for working photographers.

"The horizon alignment is a nice to have if it works well—yes, you can do it yourself (and I have to, an embarrassingly large amount of the time), but this is a nice time-saver, and after all isn't that a lot of what working with digital is about, to make tasks that used to be arduous more convenient?

"The Upright function is an extension of the functionality that's been there for lens/perspective corrections, and looks like it brings some enhancements that avoids the weirdness you can sometimes get with the functions in LR4. It means you don't have to invest in expensive tilt correcting lenses, and avoids a round trip to Photoshop for its (til now) more sophisticated abilities."

Complete Nik Software Suite for Huge Discount

In a move seemingly just for folks like us, Google has reduced the price of the entire Nik image software suite from $499 to just $149. [UPDATE: See the comments for coupon codes allegedly giving further savings. Also, if you purchased one of the programs recently they'll give you the rest for free, I'm told. —Ed.] This comes with an assurance from Google that the famous imaging tools aren't going to be abandoned (Google acquired Nik last fall—primarily, it was widely believed, to get Snapseed. That left the fate of the rest of Nik's products not in limbo but in doubt.)

The present offer includes Nik's famous Sharpener (the latest Pro 3 version) originally based on Bruce Fraser's excellent book. [CORRECTION: Whoops! This is wrong. It was Pixel Genius PhotoKit Sharpener ($99.95) that was based on Bruce's ideas. Thanks to David Mantripp for setting that straight.  —Mike.]

I've only used Sharpener and Silver Efex Pro 2, the B&W conversion tool, but Nik software is prized by a great many photographers and post-processing ninjas.

The download process is efficient and quick and loads right into your applicable programs (as plugins in Photoshop CS6 for me—with Lightroom too I'm told).

To see more go to the opening page of the Nik Software site or just Google "Nik software."

Mike
(Thanks to Kevin Purcell)

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Featured Comments from:

Stephen Scharf: "As a registered Siver Efex Pro 2 customer, I can confirm that just sent me a link to download the rest of the suite for free."

 

A Tip: Canvas Value in Photoshop

Homage to What the Duck

This is an artwork on display at the AIC. Made me smile because it reminded me of the What the Duck duck. Unfortunately I didn't note the title or artist of the piece. That's probably just as well, because I doubt the artist would be impressed with my "interpretation." Although Aaron Johnson might be.

But I'm just playing. Here's the tip I wanted to pass along: because I'm dealing with tone a lot in practicing my B&W conversions, It's important to have a neutral background for the images. Photoshop CS6's default in Preferences > Interface is a dark gray. I like that for the bars'n'boxes, because it converts the text labels to white which makes them easier for me to read. But then the "canvas" (the background, when the image is smaller than the working space) is too dark.

You've probably heard of "middle gray." That's the name for the gray tone that's supposedly halfway between black and white. It's 18% reflectance, or 50% lightness in Lab Color, or hex triplet #777777, or 128 in hexadecimal notation (confused yet? All just ways of saying "sort of a medium gray"). Middle gray is allegedly what in-camera meters assume an average scene should average to; actually it isn't—they use 12–13%, as Ctein has written about several times. In the Zone System, middle gray is Zone V (Roman numeral five) and it's what everything else is pegged to. 

But middle gray is a bit too dark for me. I prefer about a Zone VI (six). Any darker and I get "fooled" into making my picture a bit too dark, because it pops off that too-dark background even though it's slightly too dark itself. Zone VI is #999999; I prefer a tiny bit lighter, #9e9e9e (158). Of course you can set it for bright fuschia is that's what tickles your corneas.

So how do you reset the value (value = lightness or darkness) of the canvas (the background) in Photoshop? It's easy: Just pick the foreground color you want, then choose the Paint Bucket, then hit Shift-click. Viola, as the second fiddle said.

And now you can tell that I overcorrected for corner vignetting. Bet you didn't notice that in the version up at the top.

Mike

P.S. Anyone want to confirm whether it's done the same way in Lightroom? That I don't know.

Original contents copyright 2012 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:

Glenn Gordon: "The sculptor is Constantin Brancusi...I believe the title of the piece is 'The Blonde Negress.'"

Mike replies: Thanks for the tip! It appears that he did many variations, and I'm guessing the "blonde" ones are the gold-colored metal ones. This one is "White Negress II."

At any rate, not a duck.

Dave Polaschek: "Note that in Photoshop you can right-click on the canvas and get a pop-up to choose the value for the canvas fill, too. Even works when right-clicking on the background in the print dialog as of CS6. And if you open multiple views on a single document (View > New Window for {document} ) you can have different canvas colors for each view (and the print dialog will track which one was frontmost when you selected File > Print...) which can be useful when you're proofing for display."

Deal o' the Day: PaintShop

Amazon's Gold Box Deal of the Day this morning is either Corel Photo and Video Pro Suite X5 for $49.99, or PaintShop Pro X5 alone for $29.99. These are editing programs for Windows 7, Vista, or XP.

Mike

P.S. Just kidding about the mouseover text (or am I...very sleepy...).

Original contents copyright 2012 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.
A book of interest today:

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Featured Comments from:

No featured comments yet—please check back soon!

Free Today: Zoner Photo Studio 14 PRO

Stephen Sienczyk passed along the news that Zoner Photo Studio 14 PRO is being given away as a free download for the next 11 hours or so. Normally $70. It's a PC-only image editor, and I know absolutely nothing about it; so this isn't a recommendation, just information; hereby passed along in case anyone might be interested. Suit yourself.

Mike
(Thanks to Stephen)

Original contents copyright 2012 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.
A new product of interest today:

(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:

adamct: "I undertook a personal project of looking at about 30 different low-cost image editing programs a while ago. The clear winner was Photoline, which is an unbelievably powerful product and a truly viable Photoshop alternative. Importantly, you can run Photoshop plugins on 16-bit images with full color management. It is the only product I could find that had that functionality. Unfortunately, like Photoshop, it's not the easiest product to use.

"If my memory serves me well (I don't have my notes here), Zoner Photo Studio scored quite well. Whatever version I looked at was undoubtedly several versions ago, but I seem to remember thinking it was a very capable product with a good user interface. Since it is free, it is worth checking out. But if you can put together the €59 ($76) that Photoline costs, I can't recommend it highly enough. Don't let the absolutely abominable website put you off."

Google Buys Nik Software

Both Google and Nik Software have announced that the former has acquired the latter. Nik Software is the developer of Capture NX, the image editor optimized for Nikon users; Silver Efex, a leading B&W conversion program; Sharpener; and the photo app Snapseed, among other products.

Mike
(Thanks to Kevin Purcell)

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Photoshop Deal Extended

Looks like the Photoshop deal has been extended to tomorrow, and is now spelled out on the site. Just a heads up.

(The link above is for Macs; here's the link for PCs.)

Mike

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Buy Lightroom and Get $400 Off Photoshop

I'm a little puzzled by the logic behind this offer, but I'll pass it along anyway: for today only (today's the last day, rather), if you buy Adobe Lightroom 4 for $140, Adobe Photoshop Elements 10, or a bundle consisting of Photoshop Elements and Premiere Elements, B&H Photo will, within 48 hours, email you a code good for $400 off of full Photoshop.

Why you would want both Lightroom and Photoshop makes sense, although people sometimes do choose one or the other. But why you'd want Elements and full Photoshop eludes me. Unless the latest version of Elements does something full Photoshop doesn't? That seems unlikely, but I don't know.

Then again, Elements only costs $65, so you still save $335 on full Photoshop.

(Note that the promo code must be used by August 31st.)

Mike

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Featured Comment by William Schneider: "If you are a student or teacher, another great offer from B&H is today's deal on Adobe's Creative Suite 6 Design and Web Premium educational package for Mac or for PC. It's just $249, today only. As faculty, I qualify and took advantage of the offer—through this web site's link of course."

The Creepy Box

Don't run away screaming...it's just that Adobe Photoshop CS6 has arrived at B&H Photo. With the creepiest box illustration yet. It looks like something from some sort of futuristic horror movie to me. (Of course, I don't watch futuristic horror movies, so my creepy-meter might be badly calibrated. Still, I think I might not like having that box in the house.)

Here's their link for Photoshop CS6, and the one for all other CS6 products.

Mike

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Featured Comment by David Mayer: "Glad I'm not the only one to be creeped out by this. I know it's a matter of taste, and I also know it's just a box, so it probably doesn't matter, but still. When I overcome my initial repulsion and look closely, I see the scalloping which I assume are supposed to be scales. I guess I've seen too many bad 'shop jobs but this reminds me of really bad use of cloning tool. Maybe they want to sell some Photoshop (TM) courses."

Featured Comment by Chris Crawford: "The Lightroom 4 box is pretty freakish looking too."

Featured Comment by Ivan: "Weird, fantastic, cinematic, imaginative—and best of all, not corporate. Kudos to whomever had the guts to go with this."

Featured Comment by Andrew Kelley: "People still buy software in boxes?"

More Planned Obsolescence: Evil Lion

By Ctein

[Before we get started...want to help me do some research? I'm studying printer variability and I'm looking for owners of Epson 3880 printers who are willing to make a couple of 8.5 x 11" prints for me to my specifications. If you're willing to help out, please e-mail me at ctein@pobox.com with the approximate purchase date of your printer. I'll get back to you with details. Thanks!

We now return to the usual program in progress.]

If you're a long-time Mac user and you upgrade to Lion (OS X 10.7.x), there's a good chance at least one of your programs or peripherals will stop working. Lion will not run PowerPC-coded programs because Apple decided to eliminate the Rosetta translator.

This will be old news to some of you, but not all. To find out if this is going to affect you before you upgrade, launch About This Mac/More Info...and click on Software/Applications. Click the Kind column and your applications will be sorted by type. Scroll down the list and look for anything that says PowerPC. You may well be unpleasantly surprised.

Drivers for older peripheral equipment—scanners, printers, cameras, etc.—may never been rewritten for Intel processors. Older applications may also turn out to be PowerPC. You may, but not always, be able to upgrade them to Intel versions for some outlay of money.

This is an unsatisfactory situation, he said with extreme understatement. Apple's behavior around this one has been cheap, mean, and, frankly, stupid.

Any time there's a major OS or application rewrite, stuff breaks, and sometimes it is very difficult to repair. See Windows Vista, Microsoft Office, Adobe Creative Suite. Mind you, I'm not going to stop railing against that progressive obsolescence, but I do understand why it happens. There was the year Apple eliminated the Classic compatibility box from OS X. I've had to keep an old Mac running OS 9.2 around for the small amount of business-critical software I have that never got upgraded to OS X by the manufacturer. Part of the problem for Apple was that Classic mode never was fully functional, even in its final incarnation. When Apple decided to migrate to the Intel platform and rewrite all its core functionality for 64-bit, it's easy to see how the problems of even keeping Classic compatibility working as not-very-well as it did could became overwhelming. It interacts intimately with OS X functionality.

Rosetta is another matter. It's a translator; it converts PowerPC code to Intel code. It's dealings with OS X are much more constrained. Frankly, if I were to imagine a technical need to eliminate Rosetta, it would've happened when Apple moved from OS X 10.4 to 10.5. There was major recoding of the core functionality. But 10.6 to 10.7? This is an evolutionary product, and there are only modest issues involved in ensuring Rosetta compatibility.

This wasn't a case of Apple saying, "This is going to be really tough to do," it was a case of them saying "Screw you, we can't be bothered." That's the cheap part. I'll get to the mean and stupid part presently.

First let's dispel a few apologias concerning Apple:

1.) "It's the price of progress." No; the price of greed, perhaps. The progress from 10.6 to 10.7 didn't fundamentally break the concept or functionality of Rosetta or even require a major rewrite. This was not necessary, technically nor economically. It's a very minor development project in the total scheme of the OS.

2.) "You got your mileage out of those old programs, you might as well upgrade or find an alternative." Assuming those exist—they don't always. It also ignores the money you'll have to spend to do that and the considerable time (= money) you will have to spend installing and bringing yourself up to speed with the new software. Conservatively, an upgrade to Lion would cost me $1,000.

3.) "Why should all users have to pay for something only a minority need?" With any big-tent operating system or application, most users don't use most of the features. A major OS, or an application like Microsoft Office or Adobe Photoshop, has to include all the functionality that all their users might need, even though no user will take advantage of any but a small fraction of that. If I listed the 10 major features of OS X, hardly any TOP readers would be making use of all of them. Conversely, the majority of TOP's readers make use of some obscure OS component that a very, very small fraction of users need. That's just the way it is. Anyway, the cost of keeping Rosetta is not huge.

4.) "No one is making you upgrade to Lion." Oh, they will. If I buy a new Mac I'm going to be stuck with Lion. Worse, it's SOP for software manufacturers to not support OS's more than a generation back (the early release of Mountain Lion may throw that off for one cycle). Photoshop CS6 will run under Snow Leopard, but will CS7? CS8 surely won't. Within a few years, one way or another, this is gonna bite me.

Okay, so what should be done, given that big companies like Apple almost never backtrack on technical decisions, no matter how brain-dead they may be? Well, there is a simple and only mildly inconvenient solution. Allow users to virtualize their copies of the older OSs. VMware, Parallels, and VirtualBox can all run virtual Mac OS X; folks have hacked their way through the technical thicket to show that's the case.

Just one little problem. Apple's end-user license forbids virtualizing older Mac OS X clients, even on Apple equipment. Consequently, virtualization software does type-checking to prevent installing a Mac OS client. Usually. An interim release of VMware had a different installation interface that would allow client Snow Leopard to be installed. I quickly grabbed it and created virtual Snow Leopard machines to experiment with (figure 1). I believe the current version won't do that. I have this suspicion it was a trial balloon that Apple pricked.

It's illegal and it shouldn't be. My virtualized Snow Leopard client OS, running here under VMWare, is prohibited by Apple's EULA. Think I'm going to delete it? Think again!

Apple could enable this with the stroke of the pen by issuing an EULA addendum for the older client OS Xs stating that they may be virtualized on Apple hardware, and that Apple does not support this. That means they're not responsible if the older virtualized OS doesn't work, so no cost to them.

That's all it would take. Let me run Snow Leopard, or even Leopard, or maybe even Tiger in a virtual machine on my Mac. I get to keep all my old functionality with modest inconvenience and expense. A couple of paragraphs from Apple would solve so many headaches and it wouldn't cost them a penny. (It's not like there's a big market out there in pirating old OSs, and besides, pirates don't pay much attention to EULAs.) So far, though, they haven't budged.

That's the stupid and mean part.

Ctein

TOP runs its verbal Ctein emulator on Wednesdays.

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Featured Comment by Thomas: "Rosetta isn't Apple's code to do with as it wishes. (Source here.)

"I'm a former software engineer who is now a patent and copyright attorney. Part of my work involves reviewing software license agreements. I'm posting semi-anonymously to make clear that I'm not soliciting clients with this post.

"It is the typical practice for software to be licensed in commercial environments for a certain term. That term might be denominated in years, in relation to other software releases, or anything else.

"Your invective at Apple would be sorely misplaced if their hands were tied.

"Say, for example, that Transitive, the owner of Rosetta, had licensed it to Apple for five years or three major releases of OS X, whichever came first. (I'm making the exact terms up, but you get the idea.) Apple would have had to go hat-in-hand to Rosetta to get a license if Apple wished to included it with Lion. Today, however, Transitive is owned by IBM. IBM might will simply not be interested in helping Apple maintain backwards compatibility or, perhaps, the necessary technical expertise to maintain this old code isn't there anymore and so IBM can't or won't license the code to Apple.

"I can speculate (and so can you) as to what really happened here, but we simply don't know. Getting nine women pregnant won't result in a baby in one month; no amount of cash is sufficient to conjure software out of thin air. Given the software patent environment of late, it is even possible that IBM wanted to license it to Apple, but another patent holder who'd given a license to Transitive/IBM refused to grant a necessary license. I doubt we'll ever know.

"If 30 years of hanging around the computer industry has taught me one thing it is this: you can't upgrade part of a system and expect that nothing could break and, eventually, you have to upgrade part of a system because old hardware will fail. In other words, find a working system and enjoy it while you can because, eventually, you'll have to find a new and different working system to replace it. Change is the only constant.

"Happy computing!"

Ctein replies: I much appreciate you posting an authoritative reference on the Transitive/Rosetta business. It's nice getting that confirmed instead of dealing in third-hand information.

That said, this is something of a red herring. As you carefully note, this is all speculation. It might have been beyond Apple's control. It might have been entirely within their control. We don't know. The real point is that they, like most of the companies in this industry, don't even care that they screw people by systematically breaking existing hardware and software. This is merely just one more example of it.

The industry has collectively decided that it's okay to constantly break our tools in the name of next year's profits. They've decided it's okay to screw us over, repeatedly. I've decided that policy sucks. I don't have to lie back and grin and take it. This isn't even close to the first article I've written about planned obsolescence in the computer industry; I've been in it for 45 years. I promise it won't be the last.

If, and I emphasize if, Apple had no choice in this matter, then Apple could ameliorate this with the stroke of the pen, by changing their EULA. That's just policy, not engineering. Policy can sometimes be changed by force of opinion. This is mine. I don't plan to stop writing about specific complaints against the computer industry's planned obsolescence policies.

One-Day-Only Deal

If you're one of those who hasn't moved up to any form of Lightroom yet, and you don't mind getting the older (but tried and true) version 3 as opposed to the currently-in-beta version 4, today might be your day. B&H has a one-day-only deal of Adobe Lightroom 3 for PC or Mac for only $69.95. That's a whopping $200 off just for taking the last-gen version. Thought a few of y'all out there might want to know.

Mike

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