New software

[Lee]

Great Podcast, very informative. Thanks for posting that, Welles. Based on that information I went ahead and pre-ordered it as I have access to student pricing through Rachel (my better half). I would definitely not have purchased at $499 but $249 seems reasonable after listening to someone who has really used the actual program. I though he did a great job of showing both the pluses and minuses of the software. I had originally posted that $149 would be the price I'd consider but that may have been a little premature.

Anyway, I don't use iPhoto at all and have never been real happy with the Bridge. It's very versatile and all but..... As I plan on primarily using Aperture as a way to sort and store my images (well over 2000) it looks great. PS will always be my choice for manipulating those images, though.

[gare]

I hope Aperture serves you well, Lee. It most certainly looks and smells like the professional photographer's tool that is the claim.

Recently, I've been working with RAW; my camera's almost 5 years old, doesn't write RAW, so I use images my friends have taken. I see that both PS and Elements pop up a special interface when you load a RAW image. Like Aperture (I'm supposing), you have a histogram, and several tone and color correction features, but no real selection or painting tools. And like Aperture, you work by proxy, never tampering with the uncorrected, raw data stream; you can open a proxy image, or perform basic corrections saved to a copy of the digital negative. Then, to use the full complement of PS tools, you must dither down to 24-bit. I hope Lee or someone else who buys Aperture will eventually post some features Adobe has never covered; a reason to buy, you know?

Working with images that are what PS calls 16-bit (16-bits per channel, for a real sum of 48-bit images) has lead me to some interesting conclusions. Because common PCs have a video subsystem and display that tops out at 24-bit, you're sort of working on faith, working with data you can't see--which reminds me of a guy I met late at night on a NYC subway who was conversing with Martians to solve the ytterbium crisis in America.

The advice I give people who edit 32-bit images begins with a paradigm. Imagine a gallon jug into which you pour a gallon of water. Then you compress the water--some spills out. Then imagine using the Levels command on a 32-bit image; you compress it while you're remapping the brightness values of the pixels, and some tones "spill out". Suppose you're left with a quart of pixels in this gallon container. Yep, there's a loss, but less net loss than if you open a TIFF (call it a quart container holding a quart of pixels) and perform Levels on it.

So I recommend bumping the container for TIFFs up to 16-bit/channel (48), do your editing, then go back to 8-bit (24) for a save.

BTW, I see that PS can save 32-bit images to TIFF and JPEG in addition to psd, in case further editing might be needed.

My Best,

Gare

[Lee]

Gare - At one point a few months ago you were going to use PNG for storage etc. Did you decide to do that?

[gare]

Yes I am, Lee and BTW thanks for turning us on to SuperPNG!

In addition to levels of compression (I could do with more precise controls, but hey, the price was right), Super PNG can save to Adobe RGB color space, and embed metadata tags for camera, copyright, and EXIF fields. PS's png export doesn't do that, so adding a copyright and your email address to posted photos makes one more resaon to run, don't walk to http://www.fnordware.com/superpng/ and get this for Mac and/or Win.

My Best,

Gare

[gare]

I usually cartoon around in Xara, but yesterday I had a dilema--I need to show digital cameras in a book I'm writing, and couldn't get a response from manufacterer's press rooms online for permission to use their photos.

So I drew them using Xara Xtreme. Boy, is it fast and responsive!

My Best,

Gare

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