25 May 2017

Hutch - new drawing


I have not been inspired to draw much lately. It feels stale to me for some reason and unless I get some really interesting shots of acrobats this summer I might put that project to bed for awhile. I did draw to dogs from the neighbourhood this week that I have wanted to do for a while. Hutch, this one I think is the one I like more as a drawing. I put a tiny bit of colour in the small flap of extra tissue under his right eye as it's something that makes Hutch, Hutch. 

11 May 2017

Picktorial - DAM and image editor


In my quest to rid myself of Adobe products I have discovered something I hope to replace Adobe Bridge with. I mostly use Bridge to look through my images (photos illustrations files etc) and not to edit them but this new software offers a nice range of editing tools so I might just try them out. 

The app is called Pictorial and I immediately liked the interface and speed the images loaded. I did notice a couple hick-ups for my workflow, however. 

Since I use Affinity Designer and Photo over Photoshop and Illustrator now, I noticed those files simply were not visible in the Pictorial window. A huge disappointment. Affinity is working on it's own DAM software, but when that will get released is anyone's guess, could be as far as a year off or more. I contacted Pictorial to ask if at least seeing the preview images was in the roadmap and it wasn't... until I asked. Within a day they sent me a test version with the ability to see small .aphoto previews in the viewer! That is service! They also explained clearly what the problems were in getting larger images and that seeing eps, illustrator and other files in the viewer would be possible but isn't immediately available and why that was. 

So while this isn't the perfect replacement for me, it's the one I am using exclusively on my laptop and more and more on my desktop. I don't think it will be long before it does everything I need.