For me, Adobe's recent subscription strategy ("Cloud Computing") rubs the wrong way. Adobe (and Microsoft, for what that's worth) are switching from a "buy" to a "rent" proposition, which I've seen the negatives for in the past.
I understand that many will not have a problem with this new model and I'm not in any way trying to negate or belittle anyone's choice to use and pay for Adobe's products. We all have different needs, for sure!
OK. Having said that, I'd like to hear from those finding good alternatives to Adobe products. Knowing what our choices are is a good thing.
My own "suite" includes Tiffen Dfx and Pixelmator. Since I'm on a Mac, I can and do use the Iridient raw converter, which I consider excellent. For viewing and quick editing, I find Picassa to be much better than either Apple's or Microsoft's "kit" tools.
Tiffen Dfx provides me with what Light Room would, and fits my needs very well. It also provides a bit of Silver FX thrown in to boot. Tiffen has a great set of masking tools that make it possible to do some pretty nuanced processing. Perhaps LR and Silver FX do too? For effects, I especially make use of the light "reflector" tool (hopefully not too much) and "haze" removal (again the same). The masking capabilities help me achieve realistic looking results with these. My quibble with Tiffen Dfx is that the image quality (sharpness, resolution) seen while editing is much less than what the final output will be. This can lead to wrong choices for sharpening and/or smoothing. Tiffen definitely needs to work on that, or perhaps there's a "see final" button that I'm not aware of.
As a Photoshop alternative, I'm finding Pixelmator to be quite useful. Obviously it doesn't have all the Photoshop features but it does have the ones I'm interested in using: Healing and cloning. With some not-too-bad "content-aware" healing, to boot. It can do a pretty darned good job, and of course the more you try and practice with it the better and quicker your results become. I'm not certain, but I don't think it has the "skewing" capability for a cloned patch that PS has - can anyone confirm or dispel my initial finding here?
The Iridient raw developer has quite the set of parameters to help get the real looking detail out of a file. I've been able to get much better results than out of the camera jpegs for Fuji X-E1 and Panasonic LF1, and better than post-processed out-of-camera jpegs.
Picassa has a nice model for making edits and launching my other processing tools, for backing out changes, and for grouping and viewing images. I also like using it for initial image cropping, it has most all of the standard format ratios, and I try to stick to those while cropping. I don't use it for straightening a tilted shot, however: I've found that the output blurs more Picassa's "tilt" than does Tiffen's.
How about you? What are you finding works nicely, and how do you use it in an overall image viewing/processing approach? What could be better? How do they compare with Adobe tools (if you happen to know)?
I understand that many will not have a problem with this new model and I'm not in any way trying to negate or belittle anyone's choice to use and pay for Adobe's products. We all have different needs, for sure!
OK. Having said that, I'd like to hear from those finding good alternatives to Adobe products. Knowing what our choices are is a good thing.
My own "suite" includes Tiffen Dfx and Pixelmator. Since I'm on a Mac, I can and do use the Iridient raw converter, which I consider excellent. For viewing and quick editing, I find Picassa to be much better than either Apple's or Microsoft's "kit" tools.
Tiffen Dfx provides me with what Light Room would, and fits my needs very well. It also provides a bit of Silver FX thrown in to boot. Tiffen has a great set of masking tools that make it possible to do some pretty nuanced processing. Perhaps LR and Silver FX do too? For effects, I especially make use of the light "reflector" tool (hopefully not too much) and "haze" removal (again the same). The masking capabilities help me achieve realistic looking results with these. My quibble with Tiffen Dfx is that the image quality (sharpness, resolution) seen while editing is much less than what the final output will be. This can lead to wrong choices for sharpening and/or smoothing. Tiffen definitely needs to work on that, or perhaps there's a "see final" button that I'm not aware of.
As a Photoshop alternative, I'm finding Pixelmator to be quite useful. Obviously it doesn't have all the Photoshop features but it does have the ones I'm interested in using: Healing and cloning. With some not-too-bad "content-aware" healing, to boot. It can do a pretty darned good job, and of course the more you try and practice with it the better and quicker your results become. I'm not certain, but I don't think it has the "skewing" capability for a cloned patch that PS has - can anyone confirm or dispel my initial finding here?
The Iridient raw developer has quite the set of parameters to help get the real looking detail out of a file. I've been able to get much better results than out of the camera jpegs for Fuji X-E1 and Panasonic LF1, and better than post-processed out-of-camera jpegs.
Picassa has a nice model for making edits and launching my other processing tools, for backing out changes, and for grouping and viewing images. I also like using it for initial image cropping, it has most all of the standard format ratios, and I try to stick to those while cropping. I don't use it for straightening a tilted shot, however: I've found that the output blurs more Picassa's "tilt" than does Tiffen's.
How about you? What are you finding works nicely, and how do you use it in an overall image viewing/processing approach? What could be better? How do they compare with Adobe tools (if you happen to know)?