Listening to the Voices in My Head

You know, everyone goes on and on ad nauseum about Adobe Products. Why? It's not like they are the end all be all of image development/editing. 'Industry standard'? Adobe itself labeled themselves that, and it stuck.

Here is a list of equal, if not better, programs to use. True, not all the Adobe plugins work with them, but many do (mostly the ones that were made to be used on more than one photo editing program)

Affinity - Non-destructive (you know, technically, as long as you don't SAVE the image, overwriting the original, they are all non-destructive) editing program, has both Mac and Windows version. Has features that you have to buy plugins to get the same result. Mixed bag on plugins made for Adobe products (ie Nik tools, they work but with cavaets) Full on camera raw editing, updated by Serif when new raw formats are available. You do have to make a new 'pixel layer' when you want to do multiple edits on different layers, as Affinity doesn't do it automatically.

TopazStudio - Fully featured, non-destructive, camera raw editing. Has a free and a pro version. Works perfectly with TopazLabs plugins, as you would expect. TopazLaps and StudioPro isn't free, BUT you buy it once, and all your updates are free, even to new versions.

Alienskin Exposure X2 - again, non-destructive camera raw editor (I donated 5Ds, 5D4, 7D2 raw files to during development) Fully featured, and again works flawlessly with Alienskin Plugins.

TwistedBrush Pro Studio - Not only an excellent art program, but a much underrated photo editing software. Again, I helped by testing and donating CR2/ORF/RAW files to improve the camera raw edits. You can use some adobe compatible plugins, but alas only 32bit. Because of that 32bit limit, file size can cause the program to crash. Ken Carlino is looking into getting a 64bit version written.

ON1 Photo RAW 2017 - Crammed packed with features. Not only a raw editor, but great as a stand along photo processing/editing program. With layers, brushes, gradient tools, filters and presets, even a way to make your own custom presets and filters, you could use On1 as a plugin for Photoshop, or use it as a stand alone. It's latest version even has lens profiles to correct for aberrations and distortions, BUT unlike DxO Optics, you can choose to not apply the lens correction (DxO forces correction for fisheye lenses) You can, if you choose, do all your edits and effects, and punt a high res JPG to a different photo edition if you want to use a specific plugin in a photo editing program.

Capture One - Also a fully loaded editor that until the latest version was so so slow. Again, non-destructive layer editing, and as great as CO is, it can be a bit overwhelming.

Corel PaintShop Pro X9 - Non destructive layer editing, but you do have to make new layer as it doesn't make them automatically. (import image, duplicate layer, use a plugin. Duplicate result on another layer to keep doing other edits) Many of the plugins made for Adobe will work with PSPX9, but again, with a few cavaets. As with Affinity, you can use plugins that were made for generally any photo editing programs.

I know I've left a few out, but that was because I had iffy results, or that they decided to go the Adobe "rent me" method.

Since ZonerPhoto went rental, I have been on the look out for a new, GOOD, alternative to Photoshop. I found one. Affinty Photo. It has been available for Mac users, but they have now come out with a Windows version, and I have to say, I like it. A lot!

So far, once I figured out that they wouldn't work on CR2/ORF/RAW or other raw files, I exported image as a JPG. So far, I have gotten good results with Nik Viveza 2, Define 2, Color Efex Pro 4, HDR Efex Pro 2, Silver Efex Pro 2, Topaz Labs, and Focus Magic. Alien Skin plugins have issues with Pixel transparency, Piccure and Piccure Plus just don't start, and neither do Redfield plugins. And it doesn't even see any of my OnOne/On1 plugins. Oh well, proprietary software can be something of a boondoggle, yes?

Many of these haven't been tested by Affinity programmers, but I thought I would give them a try.

Many of the 'native' filters and tools amazing. It has some features and tools that Photoshop/Lightroom do not have (or if they do, I haven't found them)

Overall, I am rather impressed.

Ok, for some odd reason, CS6 won't kicks back all Camera Raw files as not the right kind of document. And OnOne PhotoSuite 9 keeps erroring out with a strange code (have forwared it to OnOne)

CS6 64bit Bridge isn't reading Camera Raw files, but CS6 32bit does.

So, for now, until the problem is actually fixed the workflow is as follows.

Open Photoshop CS6

Open Bridge CS6 32bit

Open Raw image by right clicking "Open in Camera Raw"

Make Adjustments in ACR.

Save file as Jpg from ACR.

Open file in Photoshop, and use PhotoSuite version 8.

Yeah, a bit finicky but it will keep me working until this is figured out.

The final solution to Adobe CS6 Bridge being slow is this:

Copy the Adobe Camera Raw.8bi v8.3 into the C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\Adobe\Plug-ins\CS5\File Formats folder. This way, you will get all the metadata, AND when you press space bar to preview the images, you get the full embedded jpg view.

You have to right click, "Open With Photoshop CS6" and ACR 8.3 opens without a hitch. But if you right click and select OPEN IN CAMERA RAW you get the "unable to use the Camera Raw plug-in. It is not compatible with this version of Bridge." (leading me to believe if I had really great programming skills, I could remove that version checking that would allow it to launch on a double click. Maybe someone other than me can figure that one out.)

On the rare occasion I really need to tweak a jpg in Adobe camera Raw, I'll just use CS6 to do so.

I downloaded and installed beta version of  PhotoSuite 8. It worked great, but it caused some problems.

1: Disabled certain other OnOne plugins.  PhotoTools 2.6 Pro would open to solid black previews, and PhotoTune 3x kicked back an error and wouldn't launch.  PhotoTune not too much of an issue with me, but PhotoTools have custom presets that weren't transferrable to PhotoSuite 7x, so pretty sure I will have the same problem with v8x.

2: Prevented Browse In Bridge from functioning in ALL versions of Photoshop. CS5E, CS6E and CC, both 32 and 64bit.

I uninstalled it, and all is working as it should again.

Now, this could be because it's beta, but going to tell them about it, because if this happens in the full release, I'll be very pissed off.