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07/27/2007 12:09:12 PM · #1 |
Inspired by this thread...
Ok, today we have Photoshop, Lightroom, the GIMP, and a slew of smaller players. But these tools are either expensive and feature bloated, or not really what photographic editors need.
What if there was a FREE editing tool that focused specifically on photographic editing? What are the features you REALLY need when editing photos?
Initial ideas:
- Crop, rotate
- The common adjustment layers (levels, curves, hue/sat, B/W, etc.)
- Sharpening (USM, maybe others) handled as an adjustment layer
- An extensible plug-in facility for more complex operations. Let users write and contribute these.
- - Maybe tone mapping
- - Maybe noise reduction
But the real kicker is that it must be fast, must be built with photographic editing in mind, should do everything with layers (even sharpening), and handle previews quickly.
Focus on the core of photographic editing, do those things very well, and make it free.
RouterGuy mentioned: (quite paraphrased)
- Photographic scaling
Jeff said:
- Crop is a layer just to help you visualize your final shot - data is not discarded. You can always change the crop later, and your other edits still apply.
What else?
Message edited by author 2007-07-27 13:53:55. |
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07/27/2007 12:34:00 PM · #2 |
That's a lot to ask for for FREE.
You get a lot if not all those features with Adobe PhotoShop Elements. You can pick that up for $70 or less on sale. |
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07/27/2007 12:44:30 PM · #3 |
| GIMP is actually free and Paint.net does much of that stuff. |
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07/27/2007 01:04:46 PM · #4 |
Excellent points.
I'll have have to check out the website editing tool, though paint.net takes me to some paint vendor's website.
I've never used Elements - perhaps they have a demo for download. I'll check it out...
The GIMP doesn't really fit this bill, IMO. I've used the GIMP a lot, and I used to like it better than Photoshop. But then I started using Photoshop, and the differences are subtle, but quite important for photographic usability.
- The GIMP's hue/sat tool is weak (selective by channel)
- I feel the program is geard (IMO) more toward graphic editors than photo editors.
- The preview mechanisms don't work well - some are slow, others (like USM) only show a small preview window. What's up with that?
- No adjustment layers. Huge nail in the coffin.
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07/27/2007 01:09:10 PM · #5 |
More feature ideas:
- Crop is a layer just to help you visualize your final shot - data is not discarded. You can always change the crop later, and your other edits still apply.
Message edited by author 2007-07-27 13:09:51. |
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07/27/2007 01:17:16 PM · #6 |
Here's the correct link for paint.NET.
paint.NET
I think this is a great idea and you can get a very good community backing for something like this as well. Are you trying to build this yourself? If you are then I would strongly suggest that you look around first for an existing project (ex: paint.NET) and get together with the developers there and work to extend an existing product that already is pretty good. I have worked on an open source project before and I have found that there are so many people who start up their own project only to have one or two extra features compared to other leading project out there. Why not collaborate with existing project and make it better instead of reinventing the wheel? I've not used paint.NET but from the site it looks like it has a lot of good features. If it's missing something then that's where you can lend a helping hand.
Just my $0.02. :) |
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07/27/2007 01:22:09 PM · #7 |
Originally posted by codezion:
Here's the correct link for paint.NET.
paint.NET
I think this is a great idea and you can get a very good community backing for something like this as well. Are you trying to build this yourself? If you are then I would strongly suggest that you look around first for an existing project (ex: paint.NET) and get together with the developers there and work to extend an existing product that already is pretty good. I have worked on an open source project before and I have found that there are so many people who start up their own project only to have one or two extra features compared to other leading project out there. Why not collaborate with existing project and make it better instead of reinventing the wheel? I've not used paint.NET but from the site it looks like it has a lot of good features. If it's missing something then that's where you can lend a helping hand.
Just my $0.02. :) |
For people who want to see alot of the dialogs, and main features. Here is my "write up" witha bunch of screen shots. I just put it up to introduce people to it that did not want to download it first.
Paint.NET - In Depth Look at the Free Photo Editor |
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07/27/2007 01:47:35 PM · #8 |
Originally posted by RainMotorsports:
For people who want to see alot of the dialogs, and main features. Here is my "write up" witha bunch of screen shots. I just put it up to introduce people to it that did not want to download it first.
Paint.NET - In Depth Look at the Free Photo Editor |
Nice review - I'll have to try it out and see what I think. But, from your thread, it looks like just another image editor - like Gimp with a better UI. (See my comments on the Gimp above)
 codezion - I know what you're saying. I'm not yet convinced that my vision has been done, or is even adaptable from an existing product. It's not the features that make it unique - the particular features are available in all the aforementioned tools. It's how they are presented and applied - in a way that makes the photographer's life easy. Like the cropping I mentioned above, and adjustment layers for almost everything.
I definitely understand that the audience may be small... Perhaps the nuances of such a tool would miss most folks. But anyone who has spent time post processing photos I'm sure would see the value. |
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07/27/2007 01:48:32 PM · #9 |
| Pain.NET is okay and is great for basic and some advanced editing. But without some mor eplugins it just doesnt have th overall power. |
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07/28/2007 12:05:58 AM · #10 |
Being a software developer, I'm not going to buy into the 'free' requirement - what's the point in asking for the world if you're not willing to give anything back? That's just trolling. :) But here's my wishlist for 'reasonably priced' software that is affordable for amateurs. :)
I use Picasa (non-destructive browser/editor, free and very good) and PaintShop Pro (amazing capability and very affordable)
Nobody has mentioned Picasa yet. This is my most used program, for browsing and cataloging my images, as well as enough non-destructive editing tools that is sufficient for 90% of my images. It is not quite my ultimate program, but it is 90% of the way there, and it is free. If Picasa could do a decent colour balance, with a slightly more complex curves adjustment, I'd be totally happy, and happy to pay $100 for it. Unfortunately, Lightroom is out of this price range.
Here's what I use most in Picasa -
1) Simple browsing
2) Crop/Rotate
3) Highlight/Fill-in levels
4) White balance adjust (Picasa has this, but a simple WB slider never achieves a good result. It has a grey-point marker, which sometimes works magic, but again, this can be difficult to get a good result with. I want RGB colour balance.)
5) Album tagging (very easy to create a "To-be-printed" album, and tag any good shots into there. When I'm going to the shops, I just export this album, with all the photo adjustments, onto a card, and take them for printing, and clear out the album, ready for next time.)
6) Saturation
So, my wish-list above what Picasa offers is...
1) Nicer colour balance/white balance adjustments
2) A little more flexibility in the levels adjustment - only offers shadow/highlight points and positive gamma. Contrast/compression and -ve gamma are also very important.
3) Simple vignetting would also be a very handy addition to their special-effect filters, or ideally, a plug-in method for these advanced filters.
Anything else, I'm happy to do in 'real' editing software. :)
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