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GFS

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Posts posted by GFS

  1. Firstly ... I think Serif have done a fantastic job with Focus Merge.  I have been using Helicon for a number of years, but have dropped it completely now with AFP's Focus Merge.  It's massively simpler and thus, much much faster and the results are often considerably better and seldom worse.  So well done on a good job.  (I would actually buy AFP for this feature alone, despite a couple of bugs in its implementation: Flipped source files (vertical/horizontal) and sometimes all the images not being used in the render).

     

    There is one area that could be improved though and that is specular highlights.  I often have these in my work and AFP's Focus Merge tends to render them as very soft/blurry highlights.  Ironically, sometimes this is quite nice.

     

    Request:

     

    • My ultimate would be to have a single brush that could be used over the entire image (without having to find and select the corresponding Tiff in the Sources Panel) so that I could selectively *and easily* brush the  blurred highlights in/out.

     

    • Failing that, it would be useful to have a checkbox in the New Focus Merge dialog (or on the Sources Panel ... which I guess would mean a re-render) to allow specular highlights to be either soft or hard by default.

  2. Simplest way?

     

    1/ Add a nested Gaussian Blur filter to your pole's shadow shape.

    2/ Select the Gaussian Blur mask, then with the Gradient tool selected, drag a line in the direction you want your gradation to be.

     

    Change either end from black to white according to what you want in terms of strength.

    NB, you can slide the little symbol in the middle of the gradient's line, to offset the centre.

     

    Works for me.  :)

  3. Hi MBd.

     

    No.  That's not what I mean.

     

    I'm looking at being able to soften the effect of brush strokes 'after the fact' as it were.  Sometimes when painting it looks fine as you do it and then you sit back and look at it again and think there's maybe an area that is too strong.  My old app lets me switch to a brush that will 'diffuse' or water down the effect of the brush strokes.  Very useful.

  4.  

    That said, I would welcome a platform that allows catalogues of external data to be incorporated,

     

     

     

    Once again Aperture has this covered.

     

    You can choose to have files either 'managed' in the library, or 'referenced' somewhere else, e.g. a networked drive.  The really cool bit is that it is really easy, using Aperture, to *move* files around.  For example, using Aperture, you can move them from one drive to another, or if you want, you can change them to 'managed' so that they reside inside Aperture, which is handy if you need some files when you are away from your studio/workstation.  Upon return, you can just as easily move them back to where they were.  Aperture recognises instantly when a drive with referenced files becomes available and I would expect it to work with Mountain Duck. 

     

    Apple really got Aperture right ... what they got wrong, was dumping it, but on a positive note, they provided what is hopefully great inspiration for Serif to make as good a DAM.

  5.  

     

    There isn't really anything sensible out there that allows you to tag images, manage copyrights (let's not forget that), sort on all sorts of parameters including whatever available EXIF data and even dimensions etc etc etc. 

     

    Well, of course Aperture easily answers these requirements.  Apart from plenty of tagging tools, you can setup basic and expanded view parameters for list view, grid view and the viewer window and toggle between them with a key press.  Sorting is a simple as clicking the column header and smart albums can use all this stuff.  You can even add custom fields to your hearts content as well.

     

    Here's what you can choose from

  6. Hi Ronny, you are obviously talking from the viewpoint of a graphic designer, not as a photographer/videographer that has to grapple with thousands of RAW files/terabytes of video on a daily basis. The iPad is pretty much dead in the water however much Apple adds a "Pro" to the name, simply because they have crippled it with regards to input/output options. There's simply no way to get the required data in and out fast enough through wifi or lightning connector, not to mention limited internal storage, to make it a usable tool for pro's like myself.

     

     

    You don't necessarily have to get the data in and out.  I work with a > 20 year old software which can apply its edits to any file. Any file.  So for example, you could work on a tiny jpeg on the iPad and syncing via cloud, have those same edits applied to a full sized file somewhere else.  I'm sure that AFP will have something along those lines.  They have also talked of feature parity with the desktop version.

     

    As to whether or not Apple can be trusted for pros going forward, sadly I have to agree with you.  As an Aperture user, I very much doubt that I would *ever* trust Apple for pro application use again.  The cavalier way that one of the most wealthy companies in the world 'dumped' us, was unbelievable.

     

    The downside of the Surface, is Windows.  Nothing they currently say can make that any better.

  7. No, that's not what I meant.

     

    The guy's top level ... Senior Engineer for Aperture.  Does it get better?  He's left Apple and decided to carry on with that work.  Aperture is an absolutely superb piece of software in the view of many people, myself included.  I tried Lr three times since it was launched, but always found it lacking by comparison, particularly as a DAM, as have many others, notably lots on here.  Also the UI, Aperture is superb and Lr is ... well uggghh.  Adobe have never ever made the slightest effort in UI.  So what's interesting for us photographers, is that this guy is working away to produce a solution.  First step, a really very nice looking raw convertor, with some excellent features.  v1.5 will doubtless add missing features.  v2? from his comment ... maybe a DAM and that would be excellent, because as Aperture's Senior Engineer, he's likely to produce a pretty damned good DAM. :)

  8. So things just got a whole lot more interesting for Aperture users.

     

    Aperture's lead engineer has just launched a RAW processor, which is very very cool for a v1 product.  It is based closely around Aperture's tool set and it isn't DAM (yet) but a shy hint that a DAM would be a 'cool thing' suggests he may have that in mind for the future.  The RAW processor is either an extension for Apple's Photos app, or runs standalone.  Launch price promotion of just $10.  Seems like it's worth it just to encourage him to keep going.  The RAW processing looks really excellent, as we might expect from someone of this calibre.

     

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BSpHIT0ok_Q

     

    http://gentlemencoders.com

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