An alternative to Negative Lab Pro and Lr has to exist (C-41 reversal and orange mask removal)?!

[Adrian Bacon]

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.

you just articulated exactly my point. I would rather a company get it to at least 80% functionality as quickly as possible, and spend a good chunk on getting the UI right, then charge a small regular support fee to ensure that it always works.

where Adobe is losing you is loss of usage of the program if you don’t pay the support fee. What they should do is simply not support it if you don’t pay, not shut it off.

 

[grat]

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.

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.

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.

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.

 

[Adrian Bacon]

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.

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.

 

[Helge]

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.

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.

 

[Alan Edward Klein]

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.

 

[grat]

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 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.

 

[Adrian Bacon]

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 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.

 

[Adrian Bacon]

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.

last time I looked at either was a couple years ago. Affinity was because a client was trying to load my DNG files in Affinity and was having problems. I opened several support tickets with them to fix things. I never checked if they actually did anything about it because the client switched to a different piece of software. Similar thing with darktable.

 

[Cholentpot]

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.

 

[Adrian Bacon]

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.

15+ years ago I worked at a company that did critical infrastructure protection for SCADA systems. SCADA stands for supervisory control and data acquisition. It's what utilities and the like use to control the power grid, water systems, gas pipelines, building control systems, etc. Pretty much any time you need to monitor something and have control points to open and close switches, turn stuff on and off, open or close valves, etc, without rolling a truck and a guy out to the physical location.

Anyway, the product I worked on encrypted the communication lines between the control room at the utilities and the remote site where the substation or remote terminal unit was. When we went to install our product into the utilities substations, it was like walking into the 1940s or 1950s. All of the electronics and equipment was the same as it was when the each substation was originally built and had never been changed or upgraded. All fo the stuff worked and the utility favored system stability over upgrading, so once it was up and running, they left it as is. They had a sizable backlog of spare and replacement parts, so most of the control system was literally a time capsule of what tech looked like back in the day.

What was considered state of the art back then is downright antique by mid 2000s standards, and even more so today. I remember they had standardized on 1200 baud control lines and everything was a variation of RS-232 called switched carrier, ModBus, and Conitel2020, which was a synchronous serial control protocol. That was an interesting job. Sadly the company went out of business because the utilities couldn't be bothered to put security into their control systems for exactly the same reasons why they never upgraded anything. 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.

 

[grat]

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.

 

[Adrian Bacon]

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.

Yep. preaching to the choir. All it'll take is something to happen that costs them more money than what it would have cost to secure their stuff, but even then, often times, they just absorb it and don't change anything. It's straight up scary how hard somebody can step into you and mess your life up something fierce in cyberland, even with seemingly innocuous things. That stuff is no joke.

 

[Helge]

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.

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.

It’s overall just a lack of long time planning, overarching thought vectors and foundational ideas that is sorely lacking.

Non-repairable physical products and monolithic early bound software might seem to (and do to an extent) share some similarities on the surface, but are fundamentally different in kind.

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.

 

[urnem57]

That’s the beauty of film. I use a camera made in the 1940’s and a lens from WWII. No batteries needed. Nothing electronic.
The whole digital thing is a moving river. You jump in and then you can float for a while. But the river keeps moving. You can’t hold on to the same rock for very long.
You can’t get married to technology. It doesn’t work like that.
I use both film & digital. One process hadn’t changed at all in the 50 years I have been using it. The other one? Not so much.
Just one guy’s observation.

 

[Adrian Bacon]

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?

 

[Helge]

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?

Yet some systems and habitats has made it work.
Fields where losing data and a programs functionality to lack of constant attention and “updating” is not deemed acceptable.

The aforementioned IBM mainframes and their users and ancient programs, is a good example.
IBM got a deserved rep for being overly conservative and monopolistic in many ways “back in the day” but they where never pervasively and aggressively mediocre, myopic, and shortsighted like Microsoft made it a normal to be in the nineties.
IBM for instance always had the tenet of ruggedness and deep pervasive backward compatibility and legacy support. Even before computers.

It’s never “as simple as that”, in any of life’s pursuits. It’s a basic human trait to mistake a clear view for a short distance.
But on the other hand it’s also a basic human mode of thought to mistake the status quo for the natural state of things, cut in stone.
Only being able to imagine iterative extrapolations on what is now.

Option two and three, you are too pessimistic about IMO.
People doing this kind of thing, you must presume to be motivated and reasonably knowledgable. And if they get stuck for some reason, there is always endless online resources to help them out.

If I’m to stay away from philosophy, handwaving and generalisms and get slightly more concrete, there are many examples of simple programs out there that has only seen recompiling and tweaks to the UI, that has otherwise essentially been left unchanged for decades. With the original author getting a small but steady income from the slight adjustments he has to do every five years.
Various decompression programs, games, Vuescan (which in all fairness was not very good to start with. Just the only game in town), various simple graphics editors, text editors etc.
I can name names, but as a programmer you probably know more than me.

 

[Adrian Bacon]

Option two and three, you are too pessimistic about IMO.

lol... nope. Have lived it for the better part of my professional life. There are smart people, but in general, you would be amazed at many of the dumb things users do and conceptions that they have about how something should work. The real test is to release to the general public. You’ll quickly discover all the ways your user can get stuck.

In the field of film scanning, this may be less of an issue as those users will tend to be much more technical, but that also will come with challenges as those users tend to have preconceived notions about they think film scanning should work.

that being said, I don’t disagree that it can be made to work. For me, that “small but recurring” long term income needs to be worth it, and enough to live off of it. This is something that I’m still evaluating.

 

[Anaxagore]

The 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…

 

[Cholentpot]

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…

I'd always come back from the office woozy and slightly blue.

 

[wiltw]

...Gestetner machines!

 

[Cholentpot]

...Gestetner machines!

Some of the older teachers called it that funny enough. Others called it the Ditto.

 

[grat]

I don't think I can repeat the last thing I heard a teacher call the one at our school.

Although, there were electronic equivalents-- at a previous job, we had an HP LaserJet IIIsi. Big, heavy beast of a machine. While we had it professionally serviced 4 times a year, the page count was in the millions and they'd had it for over 10 years. While it could "only" do 17 pages a minute, it could keep that rate up for days at a time.

 

[Alan Edward Klein]

I seem to remember a lot of purple ink all over your fingers like an Iraqi voting in an election.

 

[Cholentpot]

I seem to remember a lot of purple ink all over your fingers like an Iraqi voting in an election.

We should do that here...

We'd take the ink and use it as war paint. We'd play Cattlepersons and Indigenes Peoples during recess. Kids who got the peace paint got to be the freedom fighters defending their lands from the imperials!

Nah, we got to scalp our classmates with woodchips.