Dvorak on 'Rinky-Dink' Software Rant 468
DigitalDame2 writes "John C. Dvorak explores the trials and tribulations of photo editing software and why it's so difficult to use. Unless you are using these programs full-time, you spend a lot of time trying to figure things out. Is it too much to ask for a simple and powerful software program that can do the 45 things photographers do most in Photoshop?"
I agree. (Score:4, Funny)
MS PAINT 4 LYFE!
Parent is Funny (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Parent is Funny (Score:3, Funny)
I guess he hasn't heard what the girls say about him...
Re:Parent is Funny (Score:5, Funny)
Tuxpaint? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Tuxpaint? (Score:3, Informative)
you wont be sorry
Re:Tuxpaint? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Parent is Funny (Score:3, Informative)
If they'd add some decent red-eye reduction in there, I'd never need PhotoShop.
They already made it, John. (Score:4, Informative)
Affect the things you can, John. --Scorpy
Re:They already made it, John. (Score:5, Informative)
What Dvorak wants (but was scared to name it because it's only a Mac thing), is Aperture [apple.com].
Re:They already made it, John. (Score:4, Interesting)
Aperture is a professional (not personal as I mis-wrote above) photographer tool. It's meant to bring whatever's useful in PhotoShop, take out anything else, use a better interface and provide additional tools wich are all geared at professional photography.
Even the neutral gray background and interface is there to help you better visualise your images without distorsion and hue-skewing caused by otherwise too flashy UI (aka, Aqua). Just like FCP.
Re:They already made it, John. (Score:5, Informative)
Basically you open up iPhoto, you'll see the little flash of text saying, loading photos if you have thousands of them like me (if you don't you probably won't see it). You'll see the photos for which over folder or album that you select in thumbnail mode. There's a slider, to make photos larger slide the bar to the right (the icons larger at that end), to make the photos smaller (so you can see more per page (slide the bar to the left (the icons smaller on that end).
Photo navigation is handled by your arrow keys. You can go forward, backward, by using the left/right or the up/down arrows. If you want to see the photo even larger, you can click on the button that says "Desktop" and make it fit on your desktop. Though if your going through an entire row, obviously, slideshow mode in fullscreen display is far better.
Sometimes when your looking for things to be complicated, simple is just too easy. I get a lot of people who switch from Windows to Macs who ask questions about how to do this or that. That's when you really start noticing how much software has trained people to do ill conceived work-arounds that become the standard way of thinking.
I was just of this yesterday, when I was reading about this 10yr Windows user who just purchased one of the new thinner iMacs. He was discussing its grace, beauty, and overall ease of use, but then he rants about the lack of software. He wanted to load the machine up with anti-virus, spyware/malware, firewall and other security software. All perfectly fine, and available in the multitudes, for Windows. But for the Mac, you have your 5-10 main selections of anti-virus software, your built-in firewall or some UNIX base tools for those who want more control, but the category of spyware/malware software doesn't really exist.
He went on and on about the lack of developers, without ever given consideration to the fact that the category is so under-developed because it doesn't need to exist on the Mac platform. At least not yet. Typically, pop-up blockers in Safari, Firefox and other major OS X browsers, is more than enough to prevent spyware/malware (at least the kinds that most PC users think of).
Software doesn't self install on a Mac, it pops up a window requiring authentication and authorization. Which prevents the self-installation of most spyware that PC users experience. For those who want extra protection, they can block ads and banners, or purchase software like Little Snitch that will track outgoing communication from your computer, and a number of other little speciality tools. But they are specialty tools, because their for people who wish to knowingly esculate their security in specific manners.
Some things aren't required, and even more things are just simplier than you believe on a Mac machine. Even I sometimes have to take a step back and look for the simple with some of Apple's tools, becauuse my brains cluttered with the 10 or 25 step process.
Re:They already made it, John. (Score:3, Informative)
how do you lock the screen NOW
If you have fast user switching enabled, just choose "Login screen" from the fast user switching menu.
Re:They already made it, John. (Score:4, Insightful)
I have a "hot corner" set up to activate the screen saver. Or you can set up a keyboard shortcut.
But then, "maybe I don't want a password on the screen saver ALL THE TIME".
I'm sure I can come up with specific sets of conditions that Linux doesn't handle without an "external application or something". In all OS's if you want something very specific you have to do some work to get it that way. And if you really think all OS's are as bad as they were 20 years ago, I have to say I completely disagree. Just the ability for a PC to run more than one program at a time...
Re:They already made it, John. (Score:4, Informative)
With Mac OS X, and fast user switching, those times though rare are exceedingly easy. That said, if I wanted them easier, I could just pick up a small specialty application to do it for me, or go in and tweak the preferences. Personally, I'd use a specialty app cause that's what they excel at, customizing your environment for you. I have a slew of them running to make my computer, my computer.
Also, you can activate sleep immediately with a command key or the use of sleep corners (drag your mouse to the upper right or lower left corner, depending on how you set the functionality up. And there are probably other options, as well, but since its rarely a concern for me, I've never bothered to find out what works best.
Re:They already made it, John. (Score:3, Informative)
Re:They already made it, John. (Score:3, Informative)
I agree with you that it isn't exactly obvious how to perform some tasks that ought to be simple, but there's nothing in the core abilities of
Re:I agree. (Score:3, Interesting)
Different programs for different tasks... (Score:3, Insightful)
You can do 45+ photo tasks in other tools. (Score:4, Informative)
As the maker of WinImages, as you can imagine I'm rather biased towards it, but either of these would more than satisfy the needs of the vast majority of photo editing folk. Not only can one find the basic features one needs to edit photos, there are other features available you can't get in Photoshop — and they are useful, to the point, and powerful in the context of photo editing. Some examples include PSP's handling of brushes, which is vastly superior to Photoshop's, and WinImage's approach to area selection, which likewise makes Photoshop look like a horse and buggy.
You have to keep in mind that Dvorak is paid to rant. He takes advantage of the ignorance of his readers by asserting that the market is free of tools, when that is in fact not the case at all.
Re:You can do 45+ photo tasks in other tools. (Score:3, Interesting)
A couple of weeks back, I bought a copy to put on a friend's machine (he's an artist, I thought he'd enjoy the cool brushing features with tubes and so forth) and when I habitually went to jasc.com to buy it (I always try to buy direct from the manufacturer... they get the whole margin that way), I was forwarded to corel.com, and lo and behold, right there was PSP as a Corel product.
We'll have to see how the product fares under Corel's umbrella. PS
whinge whinge (Score:3, Informative)
Re:whinge whinge (Score:2)
I often had the same gripe about rigid UI - where I wondered one way around this and invariably m
Re:whinge whinge (Score:2)
"Also, he implied the "Are you sure you want to do this?" message boxes which I couldn't agree with more - for every 20 that pop up - I may want to cancel the action once. The way to fix that is to be able to undo more things. If an action can be undone, hardly any reason to stop and ask you if you are 'sure.'"
Re:whinge whinge (Score:5, Funny)
I always thought those should be replaced by
You really shouldn't be doing this
[Fuck my stuff up] [Oops, forget about it]
article is -1 troll (Score:5, Funny)
Re:article is -1 troll (Score:4, Funny)
Even the author knows he's not even trying (e.g. "yes, this is a badly constructed rant!"). This isn't Slashdot-worthy. It's not even kindergarden-worthy. It's crap!
Approximately 500 words; 0 coherent concepts expressed ("I want a whole bunch of stupid programs put together that don't add up to Photoshop.").
Grade: F, for "Fired."
Re:article is -1 troll (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:article is -1 troll (Score:3, Funny)
John C Dvorak, rinky dink for over 2 decades.
Re:article is -1 troll (Score:4, Funny)
Dvorak is the new Jon Katz.
(/crickets chirping)
Re:article is -1 troll (Score:3, Insightful)
Both may help the first time you do something, and maybe the second, but eventually you get the idea, and just want the stupid interface to get out of the way so you can get the job done.
I'm looking forward to seeing how the contextual toolbars in Office 12 work. Present the options you need for the tool
Re:article is -1 troll (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:article is -1 troll (Score:5, Informative)
It's OK. I saw the same thing among a lot of middle-aged men when I taught digital imaging workshops. He's probably tearing his hair out, looking for the "make my blurry picture sharp" filter, then worndering why it looks like shit after he applies "Sharpen Edges" eighteen times.
Photoshop is actually very easy to use, if you understand the basics of selecting, masking, and layering.
- Select an area you want to affect, apply a change.
- Mask areas you do not want to change - at different opacities, if necessary.
- Layer changes to create different effects as desired.
Photoshop is a professional's tool. Aperture is a professional's tool. Framemaker is a professional's tool.Word is rinky-dink software.
TextEdit is a utility.
It's time for Dvorak to retire. He's the cranky old man with hairy ears down the block of computer industry journalism.
Re:article is -1 troll (Score:5, Insightful)
But it is easy to learn the "45 things" that most photographers do all the time. Cropping, resizing, etc. are all either on the main tool palette or they're top-level menu items. If you can't figure out how to do these things, then I don't see how you can figure out how to use any modern computer application. You can have a discussion about how applications have gotten unuseable in general, but Photoshop is no worse than any other app in this.
If you want to do something advanced, like, say, dropping realistic clouds into a cloudless sky, then yeah, it's going to take some time to learn to do that. But most photo apps can't do something like that at all, so I don't see that it's something to complain about. And most advanced tasks either cannot be automated or you wouldn't want them to be - I can't even imagine what a "drop in clouds" function would end up doing to your photos. And even if it did basically work (which it wouldn't), you'd suddenly have eight billion photos on the web that all look exactly the same with these fake-looking clouds.
If you want a really basic image editor that's really easy to use, just download Picasa2 (it's free) and press the "I'm Feeling Lucky" button for all your photos. For most people, that's all they want anyway, and it doesn't get any easier than that (I can't say the quality will always be the best, but you can always undo, and anyway we're talking simple to use now, not best quality). Even cropping can be done automatically for common photo paper sizes, though there's no real reason I can see that you'd want to do this.
But for anything more advanced, yes, you're going to have to do some work. To me, a lot of this whining about image editors that goes on these days is just laziness - people just want to press a button and have the software do everything for them, even if it's beyond simple things like adjusting brightness, contrast or color balance. Well, it wasn't like that when people had to process all their photos in a darkroom and it's not that way today and it will never be that way. If you want to do real heavy work on your photos, you are going to need to learn how to do things and you are going to need to spend some time doing them. That's just the way it is.
Re:article is -1 troll (Score:5, Insightful)
"If you're going to come to me with a problem, make sure to bring a solution, too."
I'm sorry. That's something I hear quite regularly and it's BS. It's just management abdicating responsibility. If there's a problem somewhere, you should call it out whether you know the answer to it or not - it won't go away simply because you don't mention it. It's great advice for getting you up the greasy pole, but it's useless for actually identifying and fixing problems.
The correct attitude is "If you've got a problem, think about whether you've got a solution before bringing it to me". I actively encourage people working for me to come forward with problems they can't solve.
Re:article is -1 troll (Score:3, Insightful)
What benefit is there in broadcasting "Delay coming to me when you have a problem" and "Us guys at the top don't want to share the benefits of our experience with you underlings."?
"I would be interested in your suggested solution" is great, "Don't come to me unless you have one" is stupid.
Re:article is -1 troll (Score:3, Insightful)
If you come to me with a problem, bring me several solutions. They don't have to be workable ones, and in fact I expect you're coming to me because you don't think any of them are. So be ready to tell me why none of them work. I don't expect you to have the answer to every problem, because nobody does, but I do respect initiative. If the problem is that a decision might be too big for you, bring it to me; I may send you back to work on it and eventually you'll learn w
Dear Dvorak (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Dear Dvorak (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Dear Dvorak (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Dear Dvorak (Score:4, Insightful)
I've got to say, I'd saddened by Dvorak. He was doing so well in so many ways this time, then we hit the line:
"Make a print? How about using the drop-down menu under FILE and clicking on PRINT? Is that so off-the-wall? These programs assume that you are a dolt... these programs are in fact harder to use than Photoshop because of the rigmarole you have to go through to do a simple chore."
So... Photoshop (aimed at professionals) is "too hard", so he gets petulant, but drool-proof bundled software that's aimed at your Granny is "too easy", so he gets petulant. This porridge is too hot... this porridge is too cold...
So, what he's arguing for is not, in fact, some brilliant new way of presenting user-interface options or simplifying common user tasks. What he's doing is merely throwing a tantrum because the software isn't pitched squarely at his existing skill-level.
Here's a clue, John. People who want to use Photoshop for anything regularly buy a fucking Photoshop book. People who only want to remove redeye once in a blue moon use the idiot-proof bundled apps that anyone can use. It's not a hassle, because they only do it once in a blue moon. Anyone who wants to do it regularly learns to use Photoshop... acquiring a skill because, y'know, they'll be doing the task a lot.
Buy a book on Photoshop or learn to love using idiot-proof bundled apps... and for christ's sake Shut The Living Fuck Up, you mindless drolling old troll-fossil.
Or just, y'know, buy Paintshop Pro.
Gimp (Score:2, Insightful)
Oh I'm sorry, Picasa and iPhoto * (Score:5, Informative)
I installed Picasa on a person's computer who is a novice at using machines but wanted to make his photo's look a bit better. He nearly fell of the chair when he saw he could simply drag slider bars for highlighting and colouring changes, as simple as it could be.
Dvoark is a relic.
Re:Oh I'm sorry, Picasa and iPhoto * (Score:5, Insightful)
What is he doing using a $600 professional software package to edit photos anyway! This is not a program for your parents to edit their home home holiday snaps on, but a design tool that is very good at what is does.
I have very few compliants about how complex this software is to use and most of them involve finding and editing muliple layers which shouldn't be a concern if you are editing photos.
Its sounds to me that Picasa would be more to his liking or even MSPaint (and I'm not joking)
He should try iPhoto. (Score:5, Interesting)
...but then again, it's a Mac program, and you can't be a tech writer and like something Apple has produced unless you're biased [pcmag.com].
Yaz.
iPhoto is not that great (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:iPhoto is not that great (Score:5, Informative)
By date? (the "2005" is not a random number... it's the year. The subfolders 01 02 03
> It can't recognize duplicate photos and it will stupidly re-download all your photos every time unless you delete them from the camera
I haven't had this problem. iPhoto says something like P12312312.jpg is a duplicate. Skip? [Yes, No, Yes To All]. Click Yes To All.
Picassa (Score:5, Insightful)
It's free and easy to use and doesn't install any crap / spyware.
Re:Picassa (Score:5, Funny)
"...it automatically locates all your pictures (even ones you forgot you had)" (emphasis added).
I don't know about you, but I'm not sure I want any program finding all the photos I've got - even if I have forgotten about them!
Re:Picassa (Score:2)
Automagic indexing is good for most people -- the majority of which don't even know where on their HD the damn pics are, as they never changed their digicam software's defaults.
Re:Picassa (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Picassa (Score:5, Funny)
--
And that kids is how I met your mother.
Digital camera: $300.
Getting a cute coed drunk: $15.
The look on your kids' face when they realize that the pictures Picasa unearthed were of Mommy: priceless.
Best text+sig combination I expect to read this week.
Grasping at straws... its a stupid article (Score:5, Insightful)
Of course it's complex. What does he expect? A miracle? Artificial intelligence?
The best, easiest software is Picasa. It's interface is pretty simple, and I recommend it to all my tech unsavvy friends, and it seems to work.
Re:Grasping at straws... its a stupid article (Score:2)
Actually, it's not stupid at all (Score:5, Insightful)
If I step out of the nerd "well, duh, of course it's complicated, and anyway you're an idiot if you can't write your own program to do that instead of bothering me" mentality, and try to use them myself, as a simple user... the fact is, most of these programs are a right pain in the butt.
The user just has some seemingly simple concept, like "I want to remove the red eye" or "I want to recolor this red dress (e.g., a texture for The Sims 2) to blue, but FFS, leave the gold necklace alone. I don't want that turning purple." (I'm using that as an example, because that's one thing that _I_ got frustrated with in The Gimp. Anything short of manually tracing the outline myself, pixel-accurate, just didn't work right. The fuzzy select tool for example, just loved to go nuts and select the shoes too when I only wanted to change the dress, or and/or select random pixels from other parts of the texture.)
From a non-technical person's point of view, as in, every-day casual conversation, it's as simple a request as it can be: "I want that dress in blue." If you went to a clothing store with your GF and asked the store assistant "is that one available in blue too?", the store assistant would understand _exactly_ what you mean. You wouldn't have to go through all the hoops that these programs make you go through.
Tha problem is, yes, that it ends up, in your own words, "something that is fundamentally complex". And that's not what marketting told the user when they took his/her money. If they told the user "see, we have this fundamentally complex tool, and you need a college degree to use it", only then we'd really have the right to tell the user "well, duh, what did you expect?" At the moment he/she's led to expect the exact opposite.
And, to answer your question, what the average user expects is just that a product he's bought actually fulfills those promises that marketroids made. No more. If they said photo editing would be easy and intuitive, he expects it to be easy and intuitive, not something fundamentally complex.
And it's not an unreasonable expectation anyway. If I sold you any other product under explicit claims as to what it does and doesn't, you'd expect it to meet those claims.
E.g., if I sold someone a bicycle under the claim that it's such a new and improved model that even someone completely untrained can use it, they'd have all the right in the world to expect just that: that if they put their untrained kid on it, that kid won't fall over. Asking then "well, duh, what did you expect? a miracle? AI?" is missing the whole point. It's not their business to know how a bycicle would stay up with someone untrained on it. It could involve gyroscopes, or a computer, or whatever. It's not their job to know that. They bought a product under an explicit claim, they expect it to live up to that claim. That's all.
Re:Actually, it's not stupid at all (Score:4, Insightful)
It's not akin to your magical bycical sold as so easy even the untrained can use it but an expensive racing bike that makes otherwise impossible feats "easy" for professionals.
Irfanview (Score:4, Informative)
Weird name, useful utility.
Re:Irfanview (Score:3, Insightful)
irfanview runs faultlessly on wine.
it's one of the few programs I really miss now I'm 99% linux, so I can get my fix that way.
irfanview wins because it's very easy to use, and has a jpeg lossless rotation plugin. I install it on nearly every machine I help set up for other people, because I know they'd be lost with PSP and other things which are overly featured for 99% of photo processing work.
free-as-in-beer for personal use only
Irfan has put in a huge amount of work, it'
Simple Image Resizing (Score:2, Interesting)
Perhaps someone knows of something simple yet able to do just this?
I'm sure photoshop is great, but it's hardly worth installing a large, expensive program just to have control over the size and resolution of your images.
Perhaps a free (Mmmm..be
Re:Simple Image Resizing (Score:2)
I often use The Gimp [gimp.org] for simpler web-oriented photo editing, and bash scripts using convert and various other utils for large batches of images. I believe Gimp supports CLI scripting, but I don't think it's very advanced.
You must know about Gimp if you have a Slashdot account.
Re:Simple Image Resizing (Score:3, Informative)
I also used to do simple image editing with ACDSee [acdsystems.com] too (JPEG conversion, resizing, rotating, etc).
Re:Simple Image Resizing (Score:2)
Alchemy is also an awesome way to do batch processing on images. It really complements, rather than replaces, an app like Photoshop.
Re:Simple Image Resizing (Score:3, Informative)
Especially when converting from one format to another, I've found time and time again that imagemagick succeeds where other software fails.
For basic resizing tasks... (Score:3, Insightful)
Open image. Click-drag a box to select an area to crop. Hit Menu-Something to crop. Then Menu-Something-Else to resize. I use it all the time for day to day work w/partial screen shots and other basic image tasks.
Picassa is great too, but in many cases it's a little too invasive for a quick screenshot fix or image resize.
Re:Simple Image Resizing (Score:2)
Re:Simple Image Resizing (Score:3, Informative)
A step up (Score:3, Interesting)
I bought a camera that came with a program from Arc-Soft. It's not photoshop and it's not megabucks in price.
It does do all the simpler items needed for common photo editing and is not complicated. Red eye reduction, croping, changing size, changing resolution, adjusting contrast, brightness, saturation, etc are all not difficult. Stitching several photos together and adding text are also not difficult. Compressing for e-mail is also not hard.
The program does not have advanced bells and whistles such as adding lens flare and beveled edges for web buttons, but this might be in line of the simple but not dummed down software he is looking for.
It came bundled with my old Ricoh 3MP camera.
Re:A step up (Score:3, Informative)
This is so much better than then adware which came with my cheaper camera which made me spit in anger when it started spitting out "to use this feature, pull out your credit card and bend over". Note to manufacturers: either bundle something like ArcS
Given he was just blasting Mac users again... (Score:5, Insightful)
I think it matches the description perfectly.
I really don't get it... (Score:2)
If he's only wanting to do a few basic things, the software that comes with the camera -is- going to be sufficient for many users. On the other hand, if you want professional grade results, you have to learn to use a professional grade tool at a professional level. And that takes time. This guy's asking for a miracle, not a program.
As to photographers-professional ones that make their living that way-I'd venture a guess that they can do those "45 things" in their sleep. Because they took the time to LEARN
Paint Shop Pro 5 (Score:4, Informative)
Ha! (Score:4, Insightful)
"You want to make the picture more vibrant, get rid of red-eye, remove an object from the scene, and maybe swap the heads of the people in the picture" After all, all these things are easy to describe, so they must be easy to make as a one-click tool, right?
ha!
As someone who uses Photoshop for a wide variety of things, the very thought of trying to boil down any one of these, with the possible exception of the red-eye, to a simple one or two step tool is ludicrous
You want to make the picture more vibrant? Well, what type of colour range exists? What part of the picture are you trying to emphasize? What colour standard (RGB, CMYK, etc) is it in? These are a half dozen different tools for this for a reason, a different situation calls for a different tool.
Remove an object from the scene? Well, what types of objects are around it? What is behind it? How do the shadows affect the rest of the image? The very thought of approaching this without a dozen different tools is silly. A half dozen selection tools alone. See, in Star Trek they can hit the 'delete things' button, the computer magically makes up background, but this is real life. Ditto for the 'let's swap heads'. After all, you saw a kid doing it in a computer commercial once, so it has to be easy. Almost all the same problems, and a couple more as well.
Yes, it would be nice, but at some point the skills are necessary. If you want a more basic package Adobe and a handful of others make things like Adobe Elements which take care of a lot of this, but are still a more complex level of program. However, this is one of those things that where how complex the process is and how complicated the end result looks have nothing to do with each other. Get off it and learn the tools for the job.
Re:Ha! (Score:3, Insightful)
Every time I have to search google for a common sequence of steps it's a failure of the program or help in the program I am using. Half the time I can't remember immediately the magic Google incantation that finds me the 20 steps that it took me last time.
Yes you're right, some actions a user might want to take are inherently complex. No, we cannot make macro keys or wizards for everything
Does this happen in other fields? (Score:4, Insightful)
This sort of complaint would sound silly in another context. Imagine writing to a medical magazine about how "neurosurgery is too complicated" and they should make it easier to understand. Or rocket science? "They should make the 10 most common kinds of rockets easier to design".
I'm all for cleaning up and improving some of the actively user-hostile interfaces you come across but this kind of complaint really does sound like "complicated things should be easy and require no thought or effort".
Ironically, some of the programs that are aimed at newbies are very difficult to use because they're inflexible and patronisingly assume the user is a dolt. Better software will help people up the learning curve so they can do more complex things with their photos than they originally knew were possible.
Ame
Actually, it wouldn't (Score:3, Insightful)
Ok, if you want to make that analogy, let's take it all the way, shall we?
Imagine a world where people sell you stuff like an iSurgeon kit for home use, or a "RocketMaker Pro 5" for home use. In fact, they'd even throw in a free t
Just hide the tacky filters... (Score:5, Interesting)
If anything, I kind of wish that certain "things photographers do most" were MORE difficult to find: I'm one of the art moderators on Elfwood [elfwood.com] (a big sci-fi/fantasy art web site), and let's just say that the world would be a better place if budding young artists did not immediately pull out the lens flare filter every time they needed a fairy or extra magical sparkle in their work.
Personally, though, I prefer using Painter Classic for general digital art because I find it more comfortable to use. It's not exactly photo-oriented like Photoshop is, but it can still be used for photo manipulation. I use The GIMP occasionally as well, but I can't figure out how to make it recognize my tablet's pressure sensitivity, so I don't use it very often.
Ohh, Johnnie... (Score:2)
What are we talking about here? A button for each one of those? Because that kind of operations are often hard enough to do with full-fledged image editing software (do well, atleast)
Hrmm (Score:2)
Now, one thing I do remember about Dvorak is that he's almost as bad of a MS Apologist as Paul Thurrott [winsupersite.com], so in his mind, decent PC freeware and Apple solutions are probabally out of the question for him. Shame, he's mising out.
Re:Hrmm (Score:2)
He picked a poor time to have his petty rant with Aperture just now hitting the news sites. Worse still there are (and have been for a long while) dozens & dozens of people posting stunning pictures on Flickr using nothing but an 80 Euro camera and Picasa or this 5 Euro toy plastic "Medium Format Film Camera" made in China and the Gimp.
Man if you're gonna whine at least do a little research to make sure what you whining about is remotely valid.
An Aside question... How do you get the Euro
Why oh why?... (Score:3, Insightful)
I like the gimp (Score:2)
You could use The Gimp. And download the 45 plugins that have probably already been written because it's very easy to write a gimp plugin.
Just as everything else (Score:5, Informative)
Why is he expecting graphics applications to be any easier if he doesn't understand the basics of computer graphics?
And using PhotoShop as an example... Why would somebody who just wants to remove red-eye or crop a picture buy a $600 program? PhotoShop is complex because it is meant for professionals. Adobe also has Elements at $90, which DOES have the red-eye and easy cropping he want (and which is NOT an older version of Photoshop with name changed (apparently dvorak never even tried using it, since it blatently ovbious NOT what he describes it to be), but rather a recent version with drastically cut functionality and a "workflow"-like interface).
But apparently he wants something which only requires one button to read his mind and alter the photo accordingly. With great power comes great responsibility. Don't want the responsibility? Then don't demand the power!
But just to quote from the article:
"These programs assume that you are a dolt."
Dvorak... you ARE a dolt.
Hmm... (Score:2)
Would that be snapshot photographers (red-eye removal, tilt correction, silly filters), amateur photographers (not sure here, maybe a little bit of colour/curves adjustment, retouching), professional photographers (pretty much everything), or non-photographers (lots of artists use PS and never touch a camera)?
Not everyone needs Photoshop, it's complicated for a reason. Most snapshot-takers would be fine with Picasa/iPhoto.
Put this guy on TechTV! (Score:3, Informative)
This guys level of expertise is showing. Users just want to remove an object from the scene? One of the hardest things to do in ANY package - I suppose he expects to just click a button, then click the object and voila! It's gone! The closest thing to that function is the selection wizard - and those that use it know how prone to "error" it can be.
Oh, yes, and you want to crop.
What a numpty - it's right there on the toolbar in Photoshop, on the left, third one down. RTFM! And it's one of the easiest tools to use. What do you want? Auto crop? Click a button and the software crops the image for you. Exactly how you want it?
Essentially, you want to optimize the photo.
Start with Ctrl-Shift-L.
Then you can try this [picturecorrect.com].
Some things are hard.. (Score:3, Insightful)
Here's a clue Dvorak, doing complex things requires you to learn how to do them. Why do you make this assumption that doing everything is simple?
From ignorance... (Score:3, Insightful)
Seriously, I haven't consumed a more ignorant piece of media since the last time I watched the O'Reilly Factor.
Information isn't that simple, mister Dvorak. How are you going to tell a computer to do you want it to do when you haven't even defined it? And when you do try to define it, it's so nebulous as to be irrelevant.
You want to be able to do something skillful while lacking skills? And at the same time, you criticize programs that try to lead you through the process? That sounds pretty "rinky dink" to me.
again, iPhoto (Score:2, Informative)
I also agree that Slashdot should stop posting the trash he writes.. he complains about Windows, hates Apple, and is nowhere near smart enough to even *try* using Linux (imagine the articles that would come out of that experience). Why should people care what
Has Dvorak even thought about the problem? (Score:4, Insightful)
The fundamental problem with photo software is that computers don't have a clue about what they are doing so they can't help you. You may just wan't to make the subject stand out from the background, but the computer can't tell the difference between a cat and an orange so you have to describe exactly where the subject is. Magic wand tools are a help, but there not that good because even when you've defined the outline of an object accurately the computer doesn't have a clue what it is so you still have to describe exactly what you want to do with it.
In this respect photo editors are tools, not aids and must require training.
Compare this to a PIM tool where the defining a data object is as easy as typing text into a text box. The computer knows what you mean when you gesture to remove an ex-girlfriend from an address book because you have told it what an entry is and how to delete it. We're many years from being able to say "remove my ex-girlfriend from all of my old photos" and have it work as effectively.
One of the best rules of thumb in computer science is if its hard from computers its easy for humans, and vice versa. Nothing emphasises this more than dealing with images and objects.
The biggest problems (Score:5, Insightful)
The vast majority of the time when someone asks me for help with Photoshop the conversation usually goes along the lines of: "Hey, how can I remove a blemish in photoshop" "Use the Clone-Brush tool" or "Hey, how can I fix the color on this old photo I scaned" "Adjust the color balance", or "How can I darken this bit of the image to make a shadow" "burn tool" etc.
It's not that these people are stupid, it's just that photoshop uses a lot of jargon that people aren't really familiar with.
The second biggest problem I think is that people who haven't done a lot of digital editing don't tend to think in terms of things like layers, fill, opacity, etc. Instead people have the tendancy to see the image like a sheet of paper.
Aside from these two big problems, the most common thing I see people have trouble with is selecting things out of an image- mainly because people spend an hour meticulously trying to select what they want to cut out instead of using the magic wand to select the background- invert selection and be done with it. Doing so is simply non-obvious to people.
Re:The biggest problems (Score:3, Insightful)
On a different subtopic, Photoshop is a high level and very powerful tool,
Re:The biggest problems (Score:5, Insightful)
For analogue photograpers like me, this is wonderful, as I can apply everything I know from the dark room directly to photoshop, and obtain similar results. I still use slide film, and scan the slides. Works wonders. Photograpers who have a digital workflow still understand very well what is going on.
Poeple who just wish to do simple image ajustments, red eye reduction, cropping and so on, Photoshop is not the tool for them. They never were able to make those corrections, now they can, but Photoshop expects too much of a analogue background. You will leave 90% of the power of Photoshop untouched. (the digital dark room bit, that is). In that respect, Photoshop is just the wrong tool for them. Please note that this doesn't say anything about the inteligence of these people or the capabilities of the tool.
Palm Desktop, and UIs generally (Score:5, Insightful)
So rather than getting bogged down in photo editing software, I'd be far more interested in people citing examples of software which has a well thought out UI, which allows simple things to be done without either having to master a lot of complexity or have the software use a condescending tone (the "rinky-dink" Dvorak talks about).
I'll start with Noteworthy Composer [noteworthysoftware.com]: for fine output I'll work with Lilypond, but for quickly jotting down a bit of music and preparing a presentable printout and midi stream it "does exactly what it says on the tin."
The Perfect Troll (Score:4, Insightful)
I smell some shady marketing stunt for Aperture (Score:3, Interesting)
Fits the image Dvorak has in public too.
John Dvorak on the Macintosh, 1984 (Score:5, Informative)
The whole concept and attitude towards icons and hieroglyphs is actually counterrevolutionary - it's a language that is hardly 'user friendly.' This type of machine was developed by hardware hackers working out of Xerox's Palo Alto Research Center. It has yet to find popular success. There seems to be some mysterious user resistance to this type of machine.
PhotoStyler (Score:5, Interesting)
- Magic wand that can select based on hue (perfect for green screen)
- Magic wand with a threshold that you can adjust AFTER you have clicked.
- A color picker that can average a region.
- A pixel accurate crop box.
Those were really useful features that I still lack today. PhotoStyler was a professionnal tool costing more than 800$ and worth every penny. PhotoStyler was that feature rich. I was doing only the basic things but it was doing it well. It didn't had the fancy swirl effect but I never had a customer who required a swirl.
What happened to PhotoStyler? I was bought by Adobe and discontinued. It was a superior software at that time and it was the only way for Adobe to continue selling PhotoShop.
The guys who coded PhotoStyler decided to restart again and came up with Ulead PhotoImpact but that product not as good as the original PhotoStyler. They decided to target home users instead of professionals because of PhotoShop dominance and removed important features like CMYK support and added tons of useless features (for professionals) like a button makers and
Real men (Score:4, Funny)
Dvorak... love 'em or hate 'em... (Score:3, Interesting)
I don't go around complaining that the emissions test computers they use on your car is too complex for the shadetree mechanic. I don't go around saying that the tools they use at the optometrist to measure occular aberations is too complicated for my wife to use to test my kids.
These are professional tools, meant to be used by professionals who will have the necessary training and time invested to learn to use them. That the everyman finds them complex shouldn't be surprising or criticised.
Paint Shop Pro, until the most recent versions anyway, was always nearly as powerful as Photoshop and considerably less complex. For someone like me who does some occasional graphics work, but is far from a professional, it was nirvana. Why Dvorak can't see that is beyond me.
Ah, sorry, of course I can see why... he's a writer, and he's gotta write, and when you read anything by Dvorak you have to ask whether it's something legitimate (sometimes) or just a fluff piece to meet his required allotment of columns for the week (frequently). This one falls in the later category as far as I'm concerned.
Re:*cough*The Gimp*cough* (Score:4, Informative)
I've downloaded GIMP... had no idea what to do with it so after a couple sessions of randomly pushing buttons left it sit to gather stray 0s and 1s that collect on my HDD much like the dust gathers on my Windows 95 MCP book.
Re:*cough*The Gimp*cough* (Score:3, Insightful)