New software

[gare]

I see Apple has unveiled Aperture today. It's advertised as an image editor for professional photographers, with a SMRP of $500. You can pre-order it, which suggests it's not been released yet. I'm supposing it's Macintosh-only, and should be a welcome upgrade from iPhoto.

The screen caps show exposure, color-correction, histograms, red eye reduction (I've never heard of a professional photographer using a flash mounted on a camera, tho'), and other Photoshop features (I don't see a clone tool), and my take is that Aperture will have more political impact than technological--Aperture's main claim is to RAW image format expertise, and there's currently no single standard for RAW--every camera manufacturer uses a unique RAW flavor and that's got Adobe scrambling for profiles for PS.

Apple has not historically played nice with business partners, including IBM, Motorola (but they're dancing again with the new iPods), and smaller developers--Apple's scripting language was sort of appropriated from a Little Guy. But Apple going toe-to-toe with Adobe is going to send smoke signals, fer shure. Adobe's in a funny position of late: they're targeting the home market, but at the same time Microsoft has made its intentions clear about taking a bite out of Adobe graphics dominance. I dunno--Microsoft's got very deep pockets and they've successfully killed WordPerfect and Netscape. They've still not unveiled any graphics software that looks like a threat to Adobe--Paint.Net ain't it, and Expressions won't dent Illustrator sales. Has anyone tried out Xara Xtreme yet? Xara is finally going Mac and Linux in addition to Windows, and I've been using Xara Prime for image retouching lately, when I need extreme zooms and precision. Open Source seems to be the direction programs are heading; Xara is written in assembly I believe, and open source code developers innovations could be compiled and added to Xara to enhance it. They're implementing SVG, too, and perhaps a standard will come of it, making competition for Flash, something Adobe will not welcome. And I see Inkscape developers are talking with Xara.

Any thoughts, folks? These are fascinating technological times, but also interesting big business stuff. Twenty years ago, America's richest people wre oil barons; today, 8 of the 10 richest people own tech companies.

My Best,

Gare

[Welles]

Hi Gare,

I've watched all the videos about Aperture today and it looks to be a typical Apple first version... very powerful and polished software which is incredibly easy to use. At present it seems like a very sophisticated archival/browser tool which only performs global edits and integrates with Photoshop and other more creative applications. The approach is very smart, working with 16 bit RAW files in real time and the original file is never touched in a completely non destructive mode. (Oh and there is a sort of clone/patch tool.)

Were I a professional photographer using a digital workflow, I suspect this would be a must-have application. As don't really do that much with photographs it is only a curiosity. In the future we are sure to see Aperture extend it's creative horizons by accessing the built in filters in Apple's Core Image technology which was released with Tiger. Right now the most functional use of this technology is iMaginator by Stone Studios. For video about Aperture... http://www.apple.com/aperture/quicktours/?compare


Xara Xtreme is going to become a household name for graphic artists as soon as the Mac/Linux versions are released. Again, I've looked at all the info on Xtreme but have to wait to see if they can announce the Mac version or my main monitor gets fixed and returned first. My computer life is still in upheaval. I do think Xara is wonderful software and an antidote to super expensive corporate software packages. Heck I got a PC just for Xara products! (Well, those and Dragon Naturally Speaking.)

It is my opinion that Xara is the 'next big thing' in graphics.

[SCync]

I agree with you Welles. I became a Xara convert a couple of years ago, and with the recent announcement of it becoming open source for Mac and Linux, I think a lot of eyes will be opened within the graphics community. I find that as it is, right now I'm still using Illy for most pre-press (on my Mac), but I can also foresee how a lot of the frustrations that I have going from Xara to Illy will be minimal once a Mac version is in place. I'm still finding issues with going to PDF, even with Xtreme.

That's a hope, anyway.

[gare]

I describe Xara to novices as a vector drawing app that thinks it's a bitmap editor--with the right after-market book (I wish I could write it), Xara could be an all-in-one image creation program for household use. The main hurdle I see is PostScript technology, which Adobe owns. PostScript has mutated in recent revs to merge with Acrobat technology, and there exists at least two different flavors--Illustrator can save *.ai files to CS or version 3 format. And all the new Adobe products can parse the CS PS flavor. But Xara can only write to Illustrator 5 (or 6 I think) Illustrator format--it doesn't understand CS PS, and for some reason, Photoshop CS 2 won't read Xara *.ai files.

On a similar note, the fast-dying CorelDraw (I see they've exited the Mac market) still contains some very useful tools that Xara has not imitated. I need spirals for some work; InkScape and CorelDraw v. 6 and later have this tool. Also, nobody's knocked off the symmetrigon tool--a must-have tool for making gears and other complex shapes. But like Xara, it can't write *.ai files PS can read.

CorelDraw has also always had a TrueType and Type 1 font export. I create fonts as a sideline, and I have to say that although the dormant Fontographer and the robust FontLab write flawless font code, you couldn't ask for a better font creation window than CorelDraw's...except Xara's, if it did font export. I'm not alone: Nick Curtis is a well-known font cobbler who keeps a version of Draw around for character creation, then fine-tunes his fonts in Fontographer. You can get an older copy of Draw, version 5 or something, in the close-out bins at places like Staple's, for ten bucks. Every version of Draw could export fonts, so if anyone has the burning desire, a good font program costs 20 to 30x that much.

CorelDraw implemented on-screen anti-aliasing and vector shape transparency only after they licensed Xara (for 10 painful years, remember how Corel marketing tried to pigeonhole Xara as a Web graphics app?), and it looks as though Illustrator learned from Xara as well. I say it's time Xara, Ltd. did a little borrowing back.

My Best,

Gare

[gare]

Darkling's Dark Tree shader isn't new, but I've never seen it discussed.

It's a procedural texture creater, it's $400 and change, but worth every penny IMO if you need a good and quick texture background. http://www.darksim.com/

If you're not familiar with a procedural tree shader, first, it has nothing to do with physical trees--the "tree" is a cascading list of color, bump, and other components which you add to in branching order. Procedural means the resulting texture is made from a recipe of math equations, which can include fractals...and even bitmap samples, but overall, a procedural texture formula is scalable, producing images of almost any resolution with clarity. And textures can be animated.

This is the best texture farm I've seen since Alien Skin's TextureShop which was released as a Mac-only program.

Below is a crummy, short gif (due to file limits here) of wafting cloth. Animated smoke and fire are also easy to create, but you need an animation compiler such as Painter (or ImageReady) as sadly, Dark Tree can only write sequentional stills, in 24, not 32 bit.

My Best,

Gare

[Lee]

I looked at Aperture today, too. Typical Apple in that it is a very cool piece of software from a design and function point of view. Apple has always been good at that. Better than the Bridge? No, not in my opinion and that's it's main competition. Certainly not a replacement for Photoshop - not even close. Then again, I really don't think they were trying to compete with PS.

Actually, truth be known, in may respects I liked it better than PS's Bridge. They both have their strong points but that light table feature was way cool. Also, I liked how the program grouped images together based on how they were photographed - ie bracketed images - before you even downloaded them. There were a few others I really liked and can't think of them right now. Problem for me is the price. I would add it in a heartbeat if it was $100 to $149. $500 is out of the question. My finance is back in school going for her Masters so we qualify for student discount prices but I heard that was $249. Still too much for me as I don't think I'd get $250 benefit over the Bridge.

Film at 11

[gare]

Lee! Haven't heard from you in a while--hi!

Originally Posted by Lee

My finance is back in school going for her Masters...

Lee...it's fianc?, but unintentionally made your remark a propos.

Adobe Bridge seems to be an equivalent of Adobe Elements' (or Album's) Organizer module. I don't see any editing features, but instead just a convenient thingy to preview and load images for editing in PS. I use iMatch for archiving and cataloguing--it costs $$$ while Bridge is free, but it's very quick, and the biggest difference is that iMatch uses a standard database format. Which means I can play with the database in Excel and Access--in contrast, Bridge uses a proprietary database. Both iMatch and Adobe have ITPC standard fields and display camera data recorded with digital photos.

On Xtreme: the biggest push will be Xara going open source. As their FAQ said, this decision ain't going to make the company rich, but that's not their goal. You're going to have developers parachuting from all continents to play with and tweak the code--I expect the Inkscape folks will have some tastey stuff to add.

M y Best,

Gare

[Lee]

LOL - Can't tell what I have (unconsciencly) on my mind, can you?

[Welles]

I've only had access to the Apple pitch videos but ran into this rather lengthy podcast by David Biedny which is a very astute analysis from someone who is more knowledgeable than I'll ever be and has had a chance to really assess Aperture.

http://attentionphotoshoppers.libsyn...73&comments=on

[gare]

Dave and Bruce Fraiser are two Photoshop gurus I trust; they're not the pop stars I'll not name--I'm downloading the podcast right now.

Which sort of begs the question: when will there be a Windows version of Aperture? One would think that Steve J. had learned his lesson with the iPod--ya got a serious product to roll out, you do it to all platforms.

My Best,

Gare