Mike Chaney's Tech Corner

About a month ago Ernst Dinkla mentioned a German prog "PhotoLIne"

Thought I would give it a trial.

Cannot make head not tails of it, the instructions and Videos are no help.

Not in the same league as Qimage videos.  Decided I do not have enough time left to persevere with it and will have to stick with my old Elements 7 for the few things I cannot do in QI

Sorry Ernst

Jeff   

Jeff, it was mentioned as a good alternative when Adobe decided to go in the cloud. Many found the rent you had to pay for several CC programs as too high and the programs too proprietary. Photoline has a lot of features, from vector to bitmaps, RGB to CMYK, RAW image editing to graphic design features. I like it. Printing still a Qimage Ultimate task. Three years back or so I got a Photoline license and I can still upgrade to a newer version when I want to. Meanwhile Adobe came with a better affordable price on Photoshop + Lightroom CC, so I took that for as long as I will be commercially busy. If that ends I probably renew the Photoline license and skip Adobe as a whole. I also have a Xara Extreme license but did not upgrade that one for two years. That is what I mainly used for vector arts, graphic designs in the past. The Adobe Premium Design suite was there to suit my customers when something had to be altered in the last minute, now I tell them to transfer the changed PDF. In the end I probably have Photoline, Qimage Ultimate and one of the good open source programs like RawTherapee or Darktable. Some people play Sudoku to keep alzheimer at a distance, I try to learn new programs :-) try I wrote.


Met vriendelijke groet, Ernst

http://www.pigment-print.com/spectralplots/spectrumviz_1.htm
March 2017 update, 750+ inkjet media white spectral plots

I have Photoline, if you can use Qimage you can use Photoline... There's also Affiniti photo which is very good. I dumped Adobe's subscription model and now use CS6 which is not part of the subscription model and Imatch for my database.

I've been a Serif customer for a long time and use their Page Plus and Draw Plus. They offered me to try out the beta versions of Affinity which I did. More recently I tried it again with the trial version.
Conclusion: Affinity is ok for straightforward "nice day" shots but QU raw processing beats it hands down with better highlight detail and tonal range as well as being easier to use with it's unique smart processing, minimal sliders and simple way of selecting priority areas of the image for exposure.
Terry

... anyone know of a video that shows the above for QU ?

There are a set of 3 videos here, scroll down the list to the Raw section.
http://www.ddisoftware.com/qimage-u/learn.htm (http://www.ddisoftware.com/qimage-u/learn.htm)
Also see here about ODR (optimal dynamic range)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3WxfITitP88 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3WxfITitP88)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hoIyaKR6AWY&t=227s (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hoIyaKR6AWY&t=227s)
and post with video link
http://ddisoftware.com/tech/qimage-ultimate-challenges/challenge-75-another-trip-to-scary-odr-land/ (http://ddisoftware.com/tech/qimage-ultimate-challenges/challenge-75-another-trip-to-scary-odr-land/)

Terry

Thanks a bunch Terry ... links will be very helpful.

Some of our Camera Club Members have gone to Affinity, to avoid PS monthy subs.

I am giving it a trial,  so far seems to do the job, I will not be using it for raw,  editing and things like creating email/web res images etc, but it will be a cheaper option than updating to latest PS Elements.
I only use 'external' progs occasionaly - for the things QIU does not cover.

Jeff