Mac Update 10.5.2

This update just came out and seems safe. Please always:

1. Backup first!
2. Run Permissions Repair from Disk Utility
   
3. Verify your disk with Disk Utility
4. Unplug peripherals (printers, disks, etc.)
5. Run the update and be patient
6. Plug things back in and test critical programs and data carefully one by one.
   

Also, after the 10.5.2 update another graphics related update will appear. Go ahead and run it too.

Call me if you need help.

Acorn Review, Version 1.0.3

There are a lot of digital photographers that just don't want to join the Photoshop Army. And why should they? It is expensive, hard to learn, often problematic technically and just way too much for the average everyday photographer that isn't a real computer enthusiast. So, I’m going to review some alternatives to Photoshop, Lightroom and Aperture for photographers that either don’t need all the complexity of those products or the cost. You will see reviews here soon of Pixelmator, Acorn, Compositor and any others I can find. Send me suggestions for others if you are interested.

I'm going to make some assumptions:
• that on the Macintosh platform you are happy using iPhoto for cataloging and organizing but that the editing feels like too little and you'd like to experience some growth in that area.
• that on the Windows platform you are happy using Google's Picasa for cataloging and organizing but that the editing feels like too little and you'd like to experience some growth in that area.
• that you'd like to spend less than $100 ( nice price!)
• that you'd like the product to create industry standard files that won't be "lost" in the future as technology progresses (necessary!)
--

Acorn, Version 1.0.3
$39.95
flyingmeat.com/acorn

Acorn is a very promising new choice for a low cost application that supports editing of photographic images. It touts itself as "Simple Image Editing" and it is that. It is fun and easy to use. As a Macintosh only program it takes advantage of the GPU processing power and built in functions that make it easy to manipulate images in some powerful but not quite complete ways. I'm looking forward to seeing what comes next in this young product. Some of the basic photographic controls are missing but it is still an interesting choice. It has some helpful "Actions" that allow you to send images to iPhoto, Mail, and the Preview applications.

The interface is simple and consists of three main pieces; the image window, an easy to understand tools and layers palette which is a bit bigger than you might expect but it holds a lot of information and functions in one rather than having many multiple palettes floating around as most other applications do, and the filter dialog windows that appear for making large changes. The tools are at the top of the main palette and are accessed through a text list; Move, Select, Draw etc. The layers and controls for them are below. The layers functions seem quite powerful and easy to learn though there is no masking. The program is excelling here as this has always been a steep learning curve area for digital photographers not already familiar with Photoshop.

Acorn has a handy zoom control built right into the Window on the lower right corner. It remembers where you place your tool palette in between launches of the program. It feels very quick on a new iMac and I like the easy keyboard letter commands for choosing tools; V for Move for example but I don't understand why they are under the View menu. Changing the size of an image is as easy as holding down the Option key while dragging the corner of the image window.

Acorn will open the normal formats (not camera raw files) including Photoshop and will save out to: Acorn (retains layers), PNG, TIFF, GIF, JPEG, and BMP. While working with layers you would be advised to use Acorn but for archiving images for the long term, photographers should absolutely use TIFF for archives and JPGs for sharing. It would be nice if layers could be saved in the TIFF format. Acorn will save changes in a Photoshop file if you open one but PSD is not listed as a choice normally and layers are discarded. Information from the developers' website forum pages (which appear very active) indicate that version 1.1 will include a "saving for the web" feature as well as others.

As for adjusting photographs, Acorn is almost there but not quite. It has controls for exposure, saturation, brightness and contrast but I'd like to see Levels, Curves, and color cast functions. There is no histogram to look at so the adjustments are all by how things look. This is a definite area of need in the program. The controls are all under the Filters menu and in one unexpected twist you can stack controls as you work. You choose a filter then click a small (+) sign to choose another and make all your adjustments in one sweep. However, you can't step back through them one-by-one. There are many, many filters for applying changes for color, composites, and stylized artistic effects. The Sharpen filter appears to work well and quickly too. Cropping and re-sizing are easy and intuitive but I do not like the procedure to straighten a horizon. You have to use a very touchy little jog wheel to adjust the rotation. It is way too small and sensitive which creates the need to guess the angle and type it in. Then you use the Crop tool to finish the fix.

I'm very interested in Acorn. I think it is attractive, intuitive and will definitely grow into a very useful program for photographers. It shows some understandable rough edges that are common in first version software. Some of the functions are oddly misplaced such as Transform Selection being under the Layers menu rather than the Select menu. If it soon gets controls for levels, curves and a histogram display I'll recommend it to photographers that don't need Photoshop. I look forward to using it myself to for quick adjustments to size, or format or crop.

You can download the demo here: flyingmeat.com/download/Acorn.zip
It allows you to use the program in an unrestricted way but after using it for awhile it puts up a request-for-payment banner on top of your image. You can quit and reopen it to do away with the banner for awhile.

Requirements: Mac OS X 10.4.9 or later, works great on 10.5.

Compositor v2.9.9 Review

There are a lot of digital photographers that just don't want to join the Photoshop Army. And why should they? It is expensive, hard to learn, often problematic technically and just way too much for the average everyday photographer that isn't a real computer enthusiast. So, I’m going to review some alternatives to Photoshop, Lightroom and Aperture for photographers that either don’t need all the complexity of those products or the cost. You will see reviews here soon of Pixelmator, Acorn, Compositor and any others I can find. Send me suggestions for others if you are interested.

I'm going to make some assumptions:

• that on the Macintosh platform you are happy using iPhoto for cataloging and organizing but that the editing feels like too little and you'd like to experience some growth in that area.
• that on the Windows platform you are happy using Google's Picasa for cataloging and organizing but that the editing feels like too little and you'd like to experience some growth in that area.
• that you'd like to spend less than $100 ( nice price!)
• that you'd like the product to create industry standard files that won't be "lost" in the future as technology progresses (necessary!)

--

Compositor, version 2.9.9
$35.00, $33.00 if bought through PayPal system
artlythere.com

Compositor is a low cost application that supports editing of photographic images but it proclaims itself as “Image to Art Made Easy." That philosophy seems to be the guiding spirit of this application. The author has apparently designed it to fit his particular artistic expression and output. While it has all the controls necessary for applying the basic corrections that photographers need it is really more of a wild color and image manipulation tool. There are commands that shift colors and images in crazy (though sometimes really cool and interesting) ways scattered all over the program's interface. That arrangement of functions is one of my problems with this program. They seem disorganized as they seem to show up anywhere and everywhere.

The development seems to be on-going but a bit behind the curve for new Mac users. It has not been updated for Intel processors but feels quick enough despite that fact for the basic commands. Some of the filter effects take time of course and are probably slowernow than they will be when the application is updated. The interface is the typical array of light gray palettes for all the different functions; tools, tool controls, colors, actions etc. The Restore Positions option in the Windows menu puts most of them in a jumble in the upper right hand corner for some reason. Some of the positions and visibility of the palettes is remembered over launches and some is not. The icons are clear but not fancy. There is no help text when you hover over buttons and help system is not searchable though there are a few helpful "?" buttons scattered in the program which give welcome assistance.

It supports the basic set of necessary file formats (JPG, PSD, TIFF and others) but does not open my Nikon raw NEF files. When saving it defaults to QuickTime Image (QTF) which I find an odd choice, so you will want to watch that and change it (every time you save). There is no preference for default saving formats. Photographers should absolutely use PSD and TIFF for archives and JPGs for sharing.

Using the basic editing features of Levels, Curves, and Hue & Saturation is straight forward. The Levels dialog gives a nice histogram for reference but the Curves display does not. You can display a histogram from the Image Menu though it would seem that this is another misplaced command. It should be in the Window menu with the other palettes.. Curves has a "random" button that will send your colors and tones into psychedelic madness but it is fun. Try it on an image with a lot of contrast. Cropping is easy and there is a straighten tool hidden under the crop button but it doesn't seem to perform well. It lets you define the horizontal line but then just rotates the image to align with your decision but places the image skewed on a white background. You can try to guess the angle to rotate and then crop normally.

I found no way to combine images with layers or masks.

Compositor will certainly get the job done for photographers but I think it is as the author states, not designed for us but rather as a digital artist's tool. For $35 it would be hard to argue against if there were no other choices at the same price point. I can recommend it for those wanting to really experiment with changing their photographs in ways that transcend reality but for color corrections and as a stepping stone to the professional Adobe tools, I cannot.

You can download the demonstration copy from (http://www.artlythere.com/compositordl.shtml) and it try it out for either 30 or 35 days (both are mentioned on the site).

Requirements:
OS X 10.2.2 or higher
2 gigabytes free disk space must be available for History and Snapshots operation, beyond any system needs
QuickTime 6.0 or higher
Millions of Colors Monitor Display

Pixelmator v1.1.1 Review

There are a lot of digital photographers that just don't want to join the Photoshop Army. And why should they? It is expensive, hard to learn, often problematic technically and just way too much for the average everyday photographer that isn't a real computer enthusiast. So, I’m going to review some alternatives to Photoshop, Lightroom and Aperture for photographers that either don’t need all the complexity of those products or the cost. You will see reviews here soon of Pixelmator, Acorn, Compositor, GraphicConverter and any others I can find. Send me suggestions for others if you are interested.

I'm going to make some assumptions:

• that on the Macintosh platform you are happy using iPhoto for cataloging and organizing but that the editing feels like too little and you'd like to experience some growth in that area.
• that on the Windows platform you are happy using Google's Picasa for cataloging and organizing but that the editing feels like too little and you'd like to experience some growth in that area.
• that you'd like to spend less than $100 ( nice price!)
• that you'd like the product to create industry standard files that won't be "lost" in the future as technology progresses (necessary!)

---

Pixelmator, version 1.1.1
$59.00
pixelmator.com

Pixelmator is a low cost application that competes with Adobe’s Photoshop, Lightroom and Apple’s Aperture for adjusting and tweaking output of photographic images. It touts itself as “Image Editing for the Rest of Us” and it is an attractive alternative that I would place in the Photoshop “Lite” category but in some ways it isn’t light at all. It does much more than I expected at first glance! I would prefer it over iPhoto’s adjustment features since it has more power but it has no cataloging support for your images. It can access your iPhoto images and bring them into the program for editing but you will have to re-import any that you save out with different names. If you save the iPhoto image directly there appears to be an issue wherein the thumbnail does not update with your saved changes.

Pixelmator is a true Mac only program written in Cocoa taking advantage of Automator and Spotlight indexing. It feels peppy on a new iMac running Leopard 10.5.1 because it is apparently running through the Graphics Processing Unit GPU rather than through the computer's processor (CPU). We will probably see more programs that deal with images written this way. The display of palettes and image windows is mostly attractive, they are all bordered by a slightly transparent charcoal gray field the encompasses the title bar as well. The interface reminds me of Lightroom and Aperture. The exceptions are the Color and Font palettes which call the built in Macintosh light gray displays and that seems a bit out of place. Palette locations are remembered over launches of the program. The tool bar is fun to use as the selected tool grows out with an attractive effect and becomes more prominent but access to the brush size, zoom level, and a few other controls seem to be more work than necessary. Help text is displayed for most buttons and the help system is built on the standard Mac format so it is easy to find answers.


The image formats supported are impressive. It will export to just about anything (read: way more than you’ll need) and open them as well. PSD, TIFF, JPG, and PNG are of course no problem. It will save as Pixelmator documents that will keep all your tweaking and adjustments from losing any quality and retain any layers you create. A user of Pixelmator should be advised that archiving images in the TIFF or PSD format would be preferable since access would be universally supported and quality would be preserved. It saves the layers in PSDs but not TIFFs. None of the camera raw formats are listed as supported though it will open my Nikon NEF files. However, there is no “camera raw” processing built in and I suspect from reading the vendor’s help forums that the NEF support is coming from Apple’s Leopard operating system and not the program itself. It should be noted that 16 bit raw files when saved out are reduced to 8 bits of color depth so using Pixelmator for JPGs would be fine but if you want to shoot raw I suggest using either the pro-level tools or the software that came with the camera.

Nevertheless, you can adjust exposure, levels, hue and saturation, brightness and contrast and do most other color and tone corrections directly from the Image menu. Curves adjustments are oddly missing as is any way to remove color casts without resorting to tedious tweaking in the Channels palette. Metadata and printing controls are minimal. The basic controls and layers give plenty of control for your photos. Cropping normally is easy but to straighten a horizon you have to find the Rotate command under Transform then crop manually. The Crop tool's display shows a nice "rule of thirds" on your image which I appreciate.

The layers feature in the images ala Photoshop include opacity control, masks, and blending modes making it fun to combine shots and effects. Photoshop files that contain adjustment layers will open but the adjustments from those layers are ignored. However, I doubt that users of Pixelmator will be jumping back and forth from Photoshop, so this is really not an issue. There are also a huge number of filters but besides the blurs and sharpens I can’t speak to their quality as I don’t find most of these filters useful for photos. A few have a really interesting interface of setting a spot in the image with a cool animated “rope” that is attached to the dialog box. It is a cool effect and fun.

I can recommend Pixelmator as an economical choice for use with photographic images. Pixelmator is useful, attractive and relatively easy to use. It has some high level features that will be educational when you explore them. It seems to be a valid choice for photographers that cannot yet justify the expense of Photoshop. I only encountered one problem in testing though it was a big one. I experienced a full freeze of the computer when initiating a blur filter. I could not duplicate it so I’m assuming it was a one time event.

A demonstration copy of Pixelmator can be downloaded from pixelmator.com. It allows full use but places a watermark on images saved before it is registered. The PDF manual is not part of the download, get it at: pixelmator.com/support/manual/ and as always, read it!

Requirements:
• Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger or later
• Core Image supported graphics card (recommended)
• Some features require Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard and/or iLife
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Look for more reviews of applications of this type soon. Please let me know if you need any terms defined (what is a level anyway?) and I’ll add them to the comments for this post. I will rate the products reviewed in relation to each other after I've finished the set.

Photo Editor Reviews Coming

There are a lot of digital photographers that just don't want to join the Photoshop Army. And why should they? It is expensive, hard to learn, often problematic technically and just way too much for the average everyday photographer that isn't a real computer enthusiast. So, I’m going to review some alternatives to Photoshop, Lightroom and Aperture for photographers that either don’t need all the complexity of those products or the cost. You will see reviews here soon of Pixelmator, Acorn, Compositor, GraphicConverter and any others I can find. As I work through the programs I may amend the early reviews if I find features or functions in later ones that should be included. Send me suggestions for other programs if you are interested.

I'm going to make some assumptions:

• that on the Macintosh platform you are happy using iPhoto for cataloging and organizing but that the editing feels like too little and you'd like to experience some growth in that area.
• that on the Windows platform you are happy using Google's Picasa for cataloging and organizing but that the editing feels like too little and you'd like to experience some growth in that area.
• that you'd like to spend less than $100 ( nice price!)
• that you'd like the product to create industry standard files that won't be "lost" in the future as technology progresses (necessary!)