I started with Microsoft Word v1. I graduated to Microsoft Word for Windows, then up through the many upgrade versionis until Word 2007 completely changed its user interface, and I could not longer find functions which I had mastered up through Word 2003! IOW, if Microsoft charged me a monthly fee and then broke it for me in Word 2007, For several years I struggled with it, less effeciently, because my employer provided it. For my home PC, I would have become very angry at the destructive 'improvement' foisted upon me; I never paid for Word 2007 on my home PC
I know I am not alone in the frustration of the UI change that came in Word 2007. Was the ANY 'benefit' to 2007?...I could not identify one that I needed. At present, I am in the same situation with Lightroom...there is no feature I need from the latest version.
well, I’d start compiling spare parts for your computer so you won’t ever need to upgrade because I doubt LR6 will actually run on any newer computers. It’s getting pretty long in the tooth.
all that being said, I do feel your pain of not wanting to have to pay a monthly fee. It’s a real shame the other image editing software companies aren’t putting the effort in to provide replacement functionality. The DNG spec isn’t a secret. Adobe stores all the metadata of what they do in the DNG files (assuming you converted to DNG). Anybody who wants to can write some code to read that metadata and provide a UI that does the same thing. There’s nothing in LR that is particularly ground breaking in features or functionality. They just happen to have a reasonable mix of UI and good ongoing support for newer hardware when it comes out.
As long as Win32 is supported, it should run OK. You won't get GPU acceleration, or be able to take advantage of newer Windows API calls, but worst case, you could probably run it under Wine at this point.
I've been very impressed with Affinity Photo-- I realize at least one person on here had problems with their customer service, but the software has been a good replacement for Photoshop. That includes GPU support, and they've also shown a willingness to listen to customers-- the most recent point release included the "Divide" blend mode which had previously been available in Photoshop, but not Affinity Photo.
I'm not entirely sold on Darktable as a replacement for Lightroom, but it too has some nice functionality. Strangely, Darktable has *not* implemented support for the CR3 raw files (Affinity has) from Canon. It's available in the open-source libraries, but the Darktable team is concerned that Canon may come after them for using a reverse-engineered library. I haven't done any tests to compare it with DPP4-- if I'm serious about raw conversion from my EOS 90D, I use DPP4.
Both products support DNG natively for import, but they can't *write* DNG, which limits the functionality a bit.Since Darktable is non-destructive, writing DNG is less important, but in Affinity, that's an oversight.
I just wanted you to say it. ;-)well, there will also be a point where you can’t add any new features or change things just for the sake of changing things. We’ve seen how that works too. Just look at the path of Microsoft office, or really any major piece of software used in business that’s been around for the last 15-20 years. How much has been changed for the sake of change as opposed to actually improving it and making it better, easier to use, or faster?
as a user, I would very much rather have a relatively static and well designed user interface that does what it’s supposed to do and gets out of the way, and pay a small amount of regular support to ensure that it always works, even if I upgrade my computer or get a new one all together.
Let’s be real here, much like word processors peaked in terms of actual functionality over 10-15 years ago, raw image conversion and basic image catalog management peaked a long time ago. We’re well past the 80% functionality mark and have been in the ‘add useless features and change the UI because we can” phase for a long time. If we want that software to keep working, it costs time and money.
live tested both, and came away wanting better DNG support. Unless they’ve made big strides in support the last few years, their DNG support is very basic, and I’d be amazed if they actually provided support for the functionality in LRs develop module. Be sure you’re actually looking at something it rendered, and not just showing the embedded preview that ACR/LR put there. If you make a DNG file with no embedded preview, you find out real quick just how little support they actually have.
I just wanted you to say it. ;-)
It’s absolutely unacceptable and untenable that the haphazard way OS’s and APIs is developed and maintained should result in users and developers having to use resources to “update” software that doesn’t need updating.
What’s more the whole idea of monolithic applications and an OS is beyond antiquated and counterproductive, and has been known to be so at least since the seventies.
What worked and perhaps was necessary from a small disc with small pool of slow memory, is just a stupid skeuomorphism in the last several decades.
There are certain fields and realms that simply won’t stand for that kind of crap.
That’s why IBM still has a lucrative business selling and maintaining mainframes to run FORTRAN and COBOL programs written in the sixties.
But they are just a comparatively small island that doesn’t have the clout to pull the rest of the industry in a saner direction.
It’s something that will have to change very soon though. And it puts a big fat line under the fact that software development, especially the civil kind, is still a woefully immature field.
I haven't tested DNG functionality in either, because I haven't really moved into the DNG space-- as I said, for any serious RAW file manipulation, I turn to DPP 4.
But if you haven't tested it in "the last few years", that's at least a generation of software development. Both products have seen extensive development and changes.
Before I retired, I was running 1200 baud modems to communicate with remote sites in another state. (Basically 9600 bits per second compared to my current internet at over 100 million bits per second) I used it to monitor temperatures and building data and control HVAC. lighting and other functions in the building to reduce energy consumption. The equipment there ran at that speed and it didn't make sense to replace the hardware in the remote buildings to speed it up. It would gather data line by line and you could watch the cursor moving across the screen like an old teletype machine. The only failure I ever had was a couple of the modems which I bought in advance for repair stock, just in case. But the proprietary communication equipment never failed in over twenty years. The customers, the owners of the buildings, were paying me monthly to support the systems, for over twenty years. It was a sweet deal.
I love hearing these stories.
Office in grade school was still using a mimeograph machine in the early to mid 90's. Because it worked. Never jammed, never needed to call Xerox to send in a tech. The stupid smelly machine just rolled on and on.
Given the recent cyber attacks that have been happening to things like, oh, I don't know, that gas pipeline on the east side of the U.S. I'm sure they're having to rethink things.
Just remember, any time you don't think you need to have security for something, you just haven't spent enough time thinking about how someone could attack it. It's not a matter of if it will be attacked, but when. Don't be dumb and leave the attack surface wide open. Almost everything can be tightened up while still remaining reasonably usable.
That's the thing-- we've known about these vulnerabilities for, well, decades. Most of the anti-data breach laws (which aren't really helpful, all they do is financially cripple an organization if they're caught with their pants down) resulted from things like a major medical vendor's backup jobs that would backup Windows NT (or 2000) servers-- but in order to back-up off-site, they would literally turn the server's firewall off. And turning it back on was a manual process, so if someone forgot to do it, their aging, insecure Windows server, was vulnerable to any idiot with a script.
And compared with utility companies, medical companies are downright paranoid about security. *sigh*
It's getting better, but there are pharmaceutical pumps used by hospitals that are networked, so they can be monitored-- but they use insecure protocols that can be intercepted by any patient with a laptop, and have factory default passwords that you can't change. And it's very rare for hospitals to isolate these kinds of devices on their own network. It's possible the guy in the room next to you with a laptop could change the dosage you're receiving from that automated pump plugged into your IV. *sigh*
Most of my job for the past 25 years has been managing hundreds of workstations, and then servers-- network security has been an essential part of that job. It's frightening how many admins just don't worry about it.
That is the standard explanation. Unfortunately there is clear evidence that it isn’t even something as willed, scheming or nefarious as that. If only... That would at least be something.I don’t disagree, however, this is a capitalistic economy here in the US where selling the next new thing is how companies make money. Unfortunately, that means that software will always change, even if it doesn’t need to. This is also why things like toasters and coffee makers aren’t something you buy once per lifetime, and are made to be replaced instead of serviced and repaired. Companies figured out a long time ago that making things to last wasn’t as profitable.
If you make a small software machine that does a job, like inverting a colour negative and removing the orange mask, essentially doing what the filters and paper in the enlarger originally did, and you write it in a standard language like a LISP derivative or C, then having it run (perhaps with slight tweaks) for “all eternity” shouldn’t be a problem at all. And it would benefit everyone involved.
that seems simple on the surface, but it pretty quickly gets complicated. I should know, I’ve actually done such a thing for my own uses. We can use something as simple as getting the input as an example. So you scanned it raw with a digital camera. Great. A proprietary file format. OK. We can either reverse engineer it (lots of time energy and money), use and rely on a third party library to do that for us, or require the user to first use the raw processing software that came with their camera to convert it to a 16 bit tiff file in a known color space that we then ingest and invert. Option one is not very tenable as you’ll quickly discover all the cameras that users will insist on using that you’ll have to support. Option two is a little better, but still not great as then you’ll be stuck in an endless upgrade cycle every time the third party library is updated to support newer cameras (which you’ll have to support as there will always be some user that has the latest and greatest), and you’re now beholden to that library and it’s constraints. Option three is the simplest in terms of technical difficulty, but puts a lot of onus on the user to get it right, and opens you up to spending huge amounts of time helping users get it right, because, you know, almost nobody reads the freaking manual.
so there you have just one tiny part that seems simple on the surface to the less than initiated but in reality, is not so simple. What would be the best thing to do?
Option two and three, you are too pessimistic about IMO.
Don’t call it stupid smelly machine, everyone in my classroom when I was in grade school loved smelling these purple printsThe stupid smelly machine just rolled on and on.
Don’t call it stupid smelly machine, everyone in my classroom when I was in grade school loved smelling these purple prints(and the white glue with the small spatula too, smelling like butter almonds..). And we knew when a pop up quizz was coming…
...Gestetner machines!
I seem to remember a lot of purple ink all over your fingers like an Iraqi voting in an election.
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