The Great Escape

Wednesday, May 26, 2010

Finally…

New life for Expression Media, as PhaseOne takes it over from Microsoft.  I don’t know quite when I suggested this might be a good idea, but it was a long time ago. Not that I’m claiming any great, unique insight, as it was so obvious.

Now the big question is what will they do with it ?  If they integrate it with CaptureOne - and without throwing out the support for non-digital workflow - it could be a serious challenger to Aperture & Lightroom. But I’m afraid it’s all too late.  The support for non-photographic media assets must open up some interesting crossovers for professional users though, for example managing client paperwork alongside shoots.

The search for that DAM solution

Tuesday, January 05, 2010

The quest for the perfect solution for managing (digital) photos never seems to end. Aperture and Lightroom have brought integrated organisation and non-destructive editing to us, which should be a big step forward from the multiple tool workflows using combinations of Photoshop, Adobe Bridge, iView Media Pro, Extensis Portfolio and others. But I’m not convinced that it is all beneficial.

I would like to keep track of all of my photo library in one place. And this includes photos taken on film, both old and new, as well as digital, more recently processed “non-destructively” with Aperture but previously export with baked-in adjustments from Camera Raw, Capture One or Iridient Raw Developer. Aperture is sort of able to do this, but frankly it isn’t ideal. Aperture’s - and Lightroom’s - promise of non-destructive editing has a downside, and this is that it doesn’t really cater for the idea of a “finished” image. Neither are particularly flexible when it comes to free-form labelling. Lightroom is a bit better in this respect, but not much. With Aperture you can use albums and smart albums, but then again with some limitations.  Neither have the subtle but extremely effective depth of support for cataloging found in iView Media Pro (sorry, I should say Microsoft Expression Media). But Expression Media is (a) apparently dead, acquired and smothered by fucking stupid Microsoft, and (b) doesn’t have any concept of linking different renditions of the same source.

Beyond the grave: iView Media Pro 3 still works fine in OS X 10.5

Ideally Aperture 3, if it ever appears, will extend cataloging functionality and add the concept of a “final master”, but I doubt it. And Aperture is never going to be anything other than a very clumsy way of dealing with scanned images. I could live with a solution where I feed masters from Aperture to Expression Media. In fact I could even imagine creating a “bridge” with AppleScript which would allow me to generate catalog numbers and save them in a database. But I have serious doubts about the continued existence of Expression Media.

So what alternatives are there ? One possibility has been AtomicView from AntZero. AtomicView looks good in theory, as an Expression Media for the future, and it’s even Swiss. But it is let down by a very debatable user interface, which seems to screaming for attention and badly detracts from using it in any kind of of serious photographic context. It also has a weird import and organisation process, and finally it is much, much slower than Expression Media. On the other hand it is the advantage of youth and enthusiasm.  But on balance, version 1 is so poorly conceived that I can’t see it will ever get significantly better.

Atomic View would be so much better without the juvenile non-standard GUI

Major issues with the Atomic View GUI include floating panels which are confined within the main window (see at the bottom right of the screenshot above) and a frankly hideous default colour scheme (look at the highlighting of the selected image) which doesn’t get much better even with full use of the limited customisation options. It’s a pity because all of this must have taken significant resources, which could have been devoted to core functionality if the standard UI Toolkit had been used.

A very interesting glimmer of hope presents itself in the new (beta) Mac version of the veteran Windows tool, ACDSee Pro. However, although it does seem to have some nice features, and a major opportunity to attract Expression media “orphans”, I’m afraid that despite the “Pro” tag it is going to end up trying to compete more at the consumer end of the market, and will spread itself too thin.

ACDSee Pro Mac Beta in “manage” mode

ACDSee does seem to be more of a competitor to Adobe Bridge. It does not import images or build catalogs like Expression Media, so it cannot be used in “offline” mode in the sense of a traditional Digital Asset Management tool. It is much slower at building thumbnails than Adobe Bridge, and so far it does not appear to be offering much beyond very basic metadata management. However, it is a Beta, so maybe there is still an opportunity to influence development. In any case, it is nice to see such an established Windows developer enter the Mac market.

So the search goes on. While there remains an outside chance that Expression Media will be saved I guess I will continue to use it (or rather iView Media Pro v3), but I’m concerned about investing a lot of effort in a tool that may soon stop working.

End of the roll

Wednesday, November 11, 2009

I thought that my next post would be about film cameras, in particular about using one of the ones I own.  Well, it is about film cameras, but not quite in the direction I imagined.

I enjoy using film cameras, and I like the quality of film. It isn’t better than digital, in any absolute sense, but it is different. To me the difference is a bit intangible. I know it exists, I can see it, but I can’t really describe it. There are photos I’ve taken on film which I would - or could - never have taken on digital, and indeed vice versa.

But this is about to end, because I’m planning on selling all my film cameras. There are two reasons for this: reason 1, I need the money. Reason 2, I have far too many cameras, and this is stifling my creativity.

The vast majority of my photography is done with the Olympus E-3 with either the 14-54mm or 50-200mm lens. I occasionally use the E-400 when I want to travel light, or be unobtrusive, or use the Lensbaby. I also use the Ricoh GRD quite a lot.  But I never use the Olympus E-1, and that’s already on eBay.

But the following are going to be looking for new homes too:

• My Hasselblad ArcBody, with 45mm Rodenstock lens and all the accessories, with an A12 back, a Polaroid 100 back, and the quite frankly weird Hasselblad ArcBody inverter mount.  And the whole lot neatly packed away in its custom Pelican case.
• My Hasselblad XPan (version 1) with 30mm, 45mm and 90mm lens, centre ND filters, 30mm finder / level, all packed in a nice Hasselblad leather shoulder bag.
• Fuji SW670II 6x7 rangefinder with fixed 90mm f4 lens - possibly the best lens I’ve ever used (and it’s got some stiff competition in this list)

I’m not sure if I will use eBay. It’s a bit scary.

Then I’ll see. Maybe getting back to basics will help me find some inspiration. Or maybe unloading all this stuff will turn my growing disaffection with the whole business into actually giving it up. I’m also planning on offloading some Olympus lenses, including the 8mm Fisheye, the 7-14mm zoom, the 11-22mm zoom, and probably the 50mm macro and extension tube. If I haven’t got a cupboard full of expensive toys making me feel guilty about not using them, then maybe I can finally get it out of my system, and just enjoy looking at others (considerably better) photography.

Silverfast Multisampling revisited

Friday, October 09, 2009

UPDATE, July 8 2010

In the past month I’ve been using Silverfast multi-exposure almost every day, in a re-archiving project, and it has worked flawlessly.  I also have to admit that my sometimes harsh comments about Lasersoft I always regret later. Sometimes they can be infuriating, but often as not I suspect that it is mainly language issues. They’re actually a great bunch of people doing a great job of keeping film scanning alive for mere mortals who can’t afford Hasselblad’s luxury good price tags.  Oh, and my comments about excessive pricing ? I’m wrong.

So for the sake of consistency, I’ll leave this article up, but take it with a VERY large pinch of salt

Lasersoft’s Silverfast has long been considered the best scanning software around, although fans of Ed Hamrick’s VueScan would disagree. I’ve had a love/hate relationship with it for about a decade. I love the results it is able to deliver (once you’ve got over the learning curve) but I really dislike the user interface, and I have little time for the company itself, with its cranky staff and very exaggerated prices. I don’t believe I’m alone in this.On the positive side I have to recognise their continued support for a large range of scanners, many obsolete and/or orphaned by their makers. They play an important role in keeping film alive. I also realise that it must be getting harder and harder to maintain their business, especially sales of their higher range products such as Silverfast AI Studio. Which leads me to the point of this article, revisiting a topic discussed some time back.Around about version 6.0 Silverfast was pretty much complete. There wasn’t really much to add, which is a problem for a software company. Nevertheless things were added, often hyped to the heavens but actually delivering very little. For example, the “Studio” version of 6.5 added things with clever sounding acronyms (e.g AACO, Auto Adaptive Contrast Optimisation) which actually didn’t seem to do anything useful, although they spent a long time doing it. Ever desperate for upgrade revenue, a more recent attempt was Multi Exposure. As opposed to Auto Adaptive Contrast Optimisation, Multi Exposure is supposed to, er, optimise contrast, auto-adaptively. It does this by making two scans, the first at normal exposure, and the second deliberately over exposing to pull out shadow detail. It then combines the two into a final image. Initially I seem to recall there was an option to make 4 exposures, but this seems to have been quietly dropped.

Some film scanners, like my Minolta Scan Dual Pro, have the ability to multisample, taking a number (between 2 and 16 in the Minolta’s case) of samples at each point and averaging them out to improve the signal to noise ratio, especially in the shadows. Many Silverfast users were puzzled about the difference between “Multi Exposure” and “Multi Sampling”, especially as they are mutually exclusive in Silverfast, even for scanners like the Minolta where the film doesn’t move. An interesting discussion took place here. The drawback of Multi Sampling is that scan times are increased by the same factor as the sample count. Lasersoft promised that Multi Exposure would not only be faster, but would deliver better results.

Well, Multi Exposure went through a few iterations, and the 4x option vanished.  My experience is that it does not offer any significant dynamic range advantage over multi-sampling, at least as far as scanning slides is concerned. It is quicker, slightly faster than 4x multisampling. However, it has a serious flaw, which others have noted: the results are considerably softer than standard or multi-sampling. This may be due to misalignment, or due to flare or bloom in the over-exposed scan. The result can clearly be seen in the 100% crops below:

Top: 4x Multi Sampling - Bottom: Multi Exposure

Sometimes Multi Exposure works fine, but it is just too unreliable to use routinely. In most cases I find that 4x multisampling gives excellent results, with diminishing improvements (if any) at 8x and 16x. And in extreme cases, you can make two multisample scans and different exposures and blend them in Photoshop. So, in conclusion, another pointless feature.

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: if Lasersoft really feel there is a future in this product, then they should concentrate on repackaging the technology in a completely new, modern user interface. Unfortunately, I would guess that the codebase is ancient, and I’ve never seen any evidence that Lasersoft have any interest in genuinely improving the Silverfast user experience. Since the competition is at best no better, and in general considerably worse, I suppose there’s little commercial incentive in doing anything.

Marketing strikes again

Wednesday, July 22, 2009

Marketing really puzzles me sometimes. I’ve just received an email from PhaseOne, telling me that since I did not respond to their emails (from back in Dec 2008) they’re going to delete my user account.

Leaving aside the fact that I have actually accessed my user account since December, to download CaptureOne 4.5 Pro, which doesn’t work correctly on my G5 Mac, what possible benefit can they derive by deleting my user account ? I may not be a big-bucks, buy a new camera every 5 minutes, the more expensive the better customer as far as they can tell, but I have been a registered user of CaptureOne Pro since 2004, and it wasn’t particularly cheap.

I guess they sent their marketing team to the same shoot-yourself-in-the-foot school as Lasersoft...