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Author Topic: November 2009: Win7 - Microsoft's Defiant Child  (Read 122287 times)
Seth
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« Reply #30 on: November 13, 2009, 03:22:04 PM »


I would give you full credit and links to your Qimage etc.  They are brain washed to PhotoShop and nothing else so doubt they would give Qimage a seconds thought.  A lot of them do not even believe in calibrating their monitors.

Way back hen I first started using QI, I remember Mike saying over and over that QI is a print prIogram.  I love the fact that I can final tweak without going back to other software.  BUT, QI neither does things PS can/does do nor is it designed as a full photo editor.

Having said that, Fred, your clubbers are not using Photoshop well if they won't profile a monitor!  They may as well drop back to Irfanview or Epson Color Factory, do auto enhance, and print.  Grin  Roll Eyes  Roll Eyes
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Seth
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Terry-M
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« Reply #31 on: November 13, 2009, 04:52:56 PM »

This is off subject now but ...
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Having said that, Fred, your clubbers are not using Photoshop well if they won't profile a monitor!
Seth, cough ..... not Fred's clubbers, but Jeff's. Having looked at the (nice) website of Jeff's club, I'm surprised about the attitude to colour management. Even at my little club, a recent talk  and demo on the subject went down well with several members were asking about purchase of Eye One 2 Display devices and even new monitors.
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QI neither does things PS can/does do nor is it designed as a full photo editor.
The problem with PS is the price and the much cheaper Elements version does not even have a curves feature I am told.
I have just purchased Paint Shop Pro X2 Ultimate for £49. It seems to do much of what full PS can do (I stand to be corrected on that) including raw conversion, although I will continue to use Qimage raw. Also, from various trials, I would say that PS-Pro does some things better or has an easier to use interface.
Terry
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Jeff
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« Reply #32 on: November 14, 2009, 09:07:53 AM »

Terry

We will have to move this to a new thread or we will be in trouble with Mike - do not want to upset him, he is too valuable a resource.


But in the mean time, regarding Elements 7, there is a very good curves plug in on  - http://free.pages.at/easyfilter/curves.html - it even has L A B which I find handy for adjusting the rather flat image resulting from hdr's.  I run them through Photomatix tone mapped to default and then addjust with the L A B lightness curve.

jeff
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Seth
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« Reply #33 on: November 14, 2009, 02:27:52 PM »

Oops, my bad!  Yes, I meant to Jeff. 

BTW, Fred and Terry, when I say PS I am really being generic.  PSP and several other programs do much, if not all, of what photoshop does.  Believe me, if it weren't for the Blemish, History Brush and a couple of others, I'd be off PS and its memory use.  (Getting a discount for the next two years helps a lot!  Grin)
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Seth
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« Reply #34 on: November 14, 2009, 03:03:52 PM »

32-bit. I forgot to mention it, sorry. With 64-bit the situation might be not as clear.

Kind regards

Thomas

From what I understand, the 32 bit version is easier on the soul, but as to whether or not you'll have trouble with Win7, it's basically a shot in the dark.  Also, most people who are buying computers now are looking to go 64 bit so it isn't like the 64 bit version is some obscure version.  If you happen to have one of the many applications (or hardware) that Win7 doesn't like, it could be a nightmare.  If not, you may be good to go.  Right now, it's just too new to predict whether or not you'll have trouble.  After a few weeks messing with it, I've actually found more problems now (in my 64 bit Win7 Home Premium) that I didn't know about at the time of the article:

(1) Windows Media Player 12 and some other aspects of Win7 (like search indexing and thumbnail building) interfere with file creation and update operations just like poorly written anti-virus software would.  Software that performs operations like saving a file and then immediately thereafter performs an operation on that file like setting the file date/time will fail because as soon as the file is saved, Win7 starts messing with it, opening it in share exclusive mode.  Software that uses temporary files, cache files, etc. can have problems and I've seen it happen in a few programs: you get a "file is in use by another process" error.  Doesn't happen on any previous Windows platform including Windows Vista 64 bit.

(2) During the course of a day as you use your computer, multiple instances of "Explorer" will start running and not exit.  After a day or two running without a reboot, you can start Task Manager and find a half dozen instances of "Explorer.exe" on the list.  This is Explorer, not iExplore.exe: has nothing to do with Internet Explorer, and there's no indication as to why they appear.  The fix is to "End Task" on all instances and then use "Run" from Task Manager and run "explorer.exe".

(3) When downloading very large files like the ISO files for some installations of the Microsoft site (files on the order of 1.5 GB and up), all browsers including IE8 will download the file to 99% and then when the file is done, Win7 performs some sort of file check or something that takes up to several minutes to complete.  The file is actually 100% downloaded but there is a long delay in saving it.  That delay causes the browser (have tried FireFox and IE8) to think that the connection to the server was lost and the file download fails.  Has happened many times on many large downloads.  I've disabled all anti-malware software and even disabled Windows Defender and ran the browser in "Run as administrator" mode.  Nothing helps.  It's like Win7 has an extra layer of "file fondling" that you can neither see nor turn off!  As with the others above, no issues with Windows Vista 64.  I can walk over to my Vista 64 machine and download the same file at the same time and it downloads fine.

Keep in mind this is with a clean install of Win7 64 on a relatively new (year old) quad core computer.

Mike
« Last Edit: November 14, 2009, 03:09:54 PM by Mike Chaney » Logged
teppy
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« Reply #35 on: November 17, 2009, 03:00:47 PM »

OK, so without reading this entire thread to see if its better yet(windows 7), i'm going to throw this out- come on over to the dark side-go MAC. i took the jump a year ago now.  Wink

Hi mike, its been awhile, and i know that this has been discussed and beat to death a thousand and one times over the years. I'm really picking at you, but in a way sure would love to see it happen.
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tgutgu
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« Reply #36 on: November 17, 2009, 06:52:56 PM »

Do you really believe that MAC does not have serious problems either? To me the big problems with Snow Leopard, color management, and Epson printer drivers aren't a good advertisement for the MAC either.

Kind regards

Thomas
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Thomas

Equipment: Panasonic Lumix GH2 with lenses from 7 to 300 mm

Others: Windows 7-64 bit, Lightroom 3.5 RC, Qimage Ultimate, LightZone 3.8, Bibble 5.2.2
           DxO 6.6, Photoshop CS4, Wings Platinum 4.22
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« Reply #37 on: November 19, 2009, 11:18:59 PM »

Just thought I would add a comment here.  I too, like Mike, have had every flavour of Windows (and OS2 - remember that?) and upgraded and reinstalled and collected.  Like Mike, I have software for ever, collected and nurtured and upgraded.  I have been a programmer since 1962!!!, and I HATE upgrading for no good reason.

So, because I have to support, I upgraded from Vista Ultimate 64 to Win7 Ultimate 64.  Took an afternoon, with only minor hitches.  Xrite I1 works fine.  I had to reinstall the Canon EOS utility, and I should have de-activated CS4 before upgrading, but a phone call fixed that.  Capture one the same.  My monitors - also 1920 x 1200 all worked as expected.  I have all the stupid eye candy turned off - timewasters.  But really, a pleasant upgrade experience.  Oh, and I have upwards of 80 programs of various kinds installed - no problems so far.

And whilst I'm typing - A few weeks ago I changed my system disk from Velociraptors in RAID 0 to a single Solid state disk.  Fantastic!  System is MUCH more responsive.  Worth every cent.

Thanks for listening.
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Klaus Ressmann
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« Reply #38 on: November 20, 2009, 06:11:41 PM »

Reading all this Win7 issues I am glad to use my MAC except for using Qimage via VM ware fusion and win XP

Is there really no way to persuade Mike to have Qimage also written for Mac OS?
I would be ready to buy a new version for Mac OS
What do other users of Qimage and MAC think about
Thanks for considering this idea

Klaus
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« Reply #39 on: November 20, 2009, 09:09:56 PM »

Is there really no way to persuade Mike to have Qimage also written for Mac OS?
I would be ready to buy a new version for Mac OS

Yeah, you and the ~200 other people who want Qimage on the Mac!  If you could get all 200 together and each pay $1500 in advance for me to take the 1-2 years to develop it and put everything else on hold, you might get my attention.  There was a petition a few years ago to get Qimage on the Mac.  It was distributed to every online forum available so that people could sign this petition.  It is still open today, 3 years later, and has gathered less than 250 signatures.  That gives you an indication of how many Qimage users are really switching to a Mac, and even gives you a feel for how many Mac users there are out there.  Not many!  I would never see any real return on that investment and would go bankrupt trying.

Mike
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tgutgu
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« Reply #40 on: November 20, 2009, 10:16:57 PM »

Reading all this Win7 issues I am glad to use my MAC except for using Qimage via VM ware fusion and win XP

Is there really no way to persuade Mike to have Qimage also written for Mac OS?
I would be ready to buy a new version for Mac OS
What do other users of Qimage and MAC think about
Thanks for considering this idea

Klaus

You should also bear in mind, that the majority of Windows 7 upgraders (including me!) do not have any problems so far (or at least no significant problems). Those happy users will not post anywhere about their happiness, only the problem-driven cases usually become public. Mike describes in his article a bad example for sure, but as he stated his setup is not usual.

So, there are issues with Win 7 as they are with MacOS. Are they likely to apply to you? Probably not.

Given the current state of MacOS Snow Leopard with color management and Epson printer drivers, I would say that MacOS is even more problematic for photographers than Win 7, but I am sure that the issue will be solved soon.

So the choice between MacOS and Win 7 is likely more a question of personal taste and budget than an issue of overall stability.

Kind regards

Thomas

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Thomas

Equipment: Panasonic Lumix GH2 with lenses from 7 to 300 mm

Others: Windows 7-64 bit, Lightroom 3.5 RC, Qimage Ultimate, LightZone 3.8, Bibble 5.2.2
           DxO 6.6, Photoshop CS4, Wings Platinum 4.22
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« Reply #41 on: November 22, 2009, 01:20:07 AM »

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You should also bear in mind, that the majority of Windows 7 upgraders (including me!) do not have any problems so far (or at least no significant problems).

Getting a feel for how Windows 7 is really doing requires research: things like what OS and software you are using now, whether you are going to do an update or a clean install, and whether you are using 32 or 64 bit all factor into the equation.  We're still early in the transition but I have found some common issues that are fairly significant and have been corroborated via other users.  The two main ones are:

(1) Windows 7's folder/file security is EXTREMELY non user friendly and buggy.  Doing something as simple as restoring a folder of files can cause some or all of the files in the folder to not be readable, even if you have admin privileges.  Using the Windows "Properties" function, you'll find that if you select one file at a time, you can get to the "Security" tab where you'll need to delete all user access and add back the ones you want and take ownership of the file to correct this problem, but if you select more than one file, the "Security" tab is often missing, forcing you to do this one file at a time.  Worse, this seems random, where multiple files of the same type and same (current) privileges will cause the "Security" tab to disappear, while other multiple selections do work.  It's an absolute mess.  Setting security at the folder level says it works, but it doesn't: it randomly leaves out certain files in the folder and doesn't change them.  You can end up with a folder that you own, with simple files like JPG images or text files, and some of them won't open even if you open an explorer window in "Run as Administrator" mode.  I actually had to make a command line batch file to fix the problem.

(2) The longer you run your machine, the more instances of "Explorer.exe" will be running in task manager.  I've found as many as eight copies open, each using about 15 MB of memory or so.  Only one is the "correct one" that shows you your desktop.  The rest are W7 memory leaks!  Update: I actually located the problem with this one.  If you create an Explorer shortcut on your desktop using any of the Explorer startup switches, you get a new Explorer process each time you click on that icon... and they all hang around and never close even after you close the window.  As an example, just create a new shortcut using "%SystemRoot%\explorer.exe /e,/select,c:".  Now each time you click on the icon you get a new Explorer.exe process that won't go away unless you kill it in Task Manager.  If the shortcut is just "%SystemRoot%\explorer.exe" without the switches, it works OK.  Again this is with W7 64 bit.  Doing the same thing on Vista 64 bit leads to no problem: you do get an extra "Explorer.exe" process each time you open but they go away as soon as you close the Explorer window.  Just one of a number of W7 bugs that make even the most basic of OS operations painful.  W7 just was not ready for prime time: as of this writing, it still isn't!

As I said, a lot of factors contribute so you may or may not see these problems, but they are common.

Mike
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tgutgu
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« Reply #42 on: November 22, 2009, 01:07:44 PM »

Mike,

You are right with your comments, but I am sure that most of the users would not come in touch with the problems you describe. Regarding the explorer.exe issues in Win 7 32-bit they don't stay as orphan processes, they just don't disappear in Task Manager immediately after closing the window.

Certainly Windows 7 has still bugs, which some user may come across or not. But some posters here express their reluctance of using Windows 7 because of the bad experience others had with certain cases, and others claim the superiority of Mac, because such bugs do not exist there and MacOS is much more stable.

In my opinion, this is wrong, as the current printing issues with MacOS show (these issues affect photographers much more directly than the problems you describe as a developer) that a new MacOS version does have its own problems. When my machine was not running stable on Vista, I considered to switch to MacOS. Finally, I did not, went the Windows 7 route, and am now happy that I did not switch - it saved a lot of money, still using the same equipment.

Everybody, who considers to switch to Windows 7 should check if

1) the hardware vendor already supports Windows 7 with drivers (if not, there is a risk that the hardware may not work, but it might work even so, as it was the case with my old HP scanner)
2) there is any piece of software, which a user considers essential for his work, is not supported yet. If there is one, wait with the switch (although, for my case, which is the usual stuff of office, home banking, imaging, and utility software, I did not find any essential software, which was not yet supported)
3) For non essential software, just dump it or give it a try after switching to Win 7
4) Do a clean install, because after some years of use, your machine will have a lot of "abandonware" on it.

I reiterate, that for the average user, I see no reason why Windows 7 32 bit was not ready for prime time.

Kind regards

Thomas
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Thomas

Equipment: Panasonic Lumix GH2 with lenses from 7 to 300 mm

Others: Windows 7-64 bit, Lightroom 3.5 RC, Qimage Ultimate, LightZone 3.8, Bibble 5.2.2
           DxO 6.6, Photoshop CS4, Wings Platinum 4.22
Terry-M
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« Reply #43 on: November 22, 2009, 01:33:24 PM »

Thomas,
Quote
I reiterate, that for the average user, I see no reason why Windows 7 32 bit was not ready for prime time.
The "average" user will soon be a 64 bit user now that the likes of Dell are putting it onto their machines as the standard offering and such users will not have a clue what is going on Shocked
Terry.
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admin
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« Reply #44 on: November 22, 2009, 03:05:29 PM »

Regarding the explorer.exe issues in Win 7 32-bit they don't stay as orphan processes, they just don't disappear in Task Manager immediately after closing the window.

They absolutely do stay as orphan processes, they eat memory, and they never disappear unless you kill them!

Mike
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