photography: Vieux Port Montreal 13 Septembre 2023

 

Software desires for 2023

 I don’t actually expect much of this list to really happen anytime soon. But it’s good to make lists of things you need and see what happens over time, isn’t it? 

MAC OS

Bugs: Fix the really annoying I cloud terms and conditions bug! It keeps popping up at a warning 100 times a day and agreeing to the terms does nothing to stop that. 

The window to update the stuff on my iPod touch keeps popping up at random times during the day.

Both of these bugs stop my work to a halt when they happen and break my concentration and workflow. 

Bring back: Scheduling! And make it more robust! Let me schedule on a real calendar timetable not just open and close at certain times. Week days, vacations, interruptions and I have to reset the schedule… well when I could schedule! 

Podcasts: Why on planet earth is there no way to make a playlist yet? I use my iPod touch everyday and especially in summer when biking, walking long distances but I can’t make a play list. I have to stop after each podcast and pick another or it randomly picks one I already listened to or isn’t "Online" even though I only keep episodes I have downloaded and haven’t listened to on the device. It’s easy making a playlist for songs so what is going on? Why does the device say something is downloaded but when I get a certain distance from my house it suddenly not available because there is no internet connection? There shouldn’t need to be one! 

iPad IOS

Handle fonts like they are handled on the desktop! Now we can do page layout and professional design on an iPad, we need access to all the fonts we can for making decisions about projects. Allow plugins! Being able to use the NIK or Topaz plugins on Affinity Photo would be a game changer. 

Affinity products:

I haven’t had the crashes and issues I’ve read about online and many of those seem Windows related for now. That doesn’t mean I hope some improvements are not on the way.

Overall: When I hide a program and unhide it, the program opens but no windows do, I have select one from a list and then they all open. This should be automatic and is a known bug, I think. 

Publisher on iPad: I hope it gets all the features the desktop does soon. The Book function is of interest to me but the power duplication and grid feature would be nice as well. 

Designer: The long sought after vector trace feature. A spiral drawing tool would be cool.

Photo: I would love better compatibility with Topaz plugins - mainly to resize images. This is possible on photoshop and the programming in Photo restricts it. Better integration with NIK and DXO plugins would be nice as well. Overall they work great together but I would like the Viewport app/plugin to work in Photo and be able to send a series of bracketed photos directly to HDR Efex Pro. 

Affinity iPad Apps: being able to save export preferences for difference situations. I need different, specialized setups for different printers as an example and I to set them all from scratch when using the iPad. 

A "DAM" from Affinity: This is another long proposed app I would love to see implemented. Most other DAM (digital asset managers) do not show Affinity previews or allow for any actions to be taken like selecting series of bracketed photos and opening them as an HDR in Photo.

Topaz Labs 

An iPad version of Topaz photo AI! It would really make it more possible to do ALL the work on the iPad not have to go to the desktop to finish up when returning from a trip. 

Topaz Photo AI and DXO Photolab 6 (with DXO Viewpoint 4)

 Topaz Labs which makes the apps I use for denoising, sharpening and enlarging photos released a new product which, a nice surprise, was considered included with the apps I already had so I got to download it for free. It's basically a more automatic and less powerful version of the other apps rolled into one. 

I would say it's a great product, it's easy and does pretty much what you need for most photography issues that are not extreme in nature. You can quickly take away pixel noise, sharpen the image and enlarge it in one place instead of three apps. The other software isn 't useless, it's more powerful and when you have a very low light situation or and old photo that is too small to use or too blurry it can make them relevant again for print or other work. If you don't have the other products, this would be a good way to get the basic benefits of Topaz AI without spending a lot of money or taking up space on a laptop. 

DXO Photolab is my "Lightroom" replacement or to be honest, my Adobe Bridge replacement since I never used Lightroom. It's limited compared to the Adobe products in how many formats it can handle... basically just JPG, RAW and Tif and I think this new version has some ability to open video but I haven't looked into that yet. Version 6 sees an update the denoise function which was already maybe the best out there. I also added the DXO Viewpoint add-on which integrates itself  into the normal functions of Photolab and can be opened as a stand alone. The update price, in CAD, was 150$ and money not well spent. 

It's not the the software hasn't improved or that Viewpoint is't great to have integrated directly into the workflow. The problem is the updates are mostly minor and Viewpoint is pretty much identical to the NIK plugin that does the same thing, in the same way but only as a standalone app. I should have know better since the last couple of NIK updates were not worth the price either. 

If you don't have any of the DXO/NIK products I highly recommend them but the updates, while arriving often, are not anything to pay more for. The NIK plug-ins are just updated to the new interface, a fantastic interface, but you are paying for a full upgrade for only a couple of them and then again a year later for a couple more. That should have been done in one paid update to be worthwhile. 

IN USE all this stuff is great.The photo above was taken on my morning ride on my far from great iPod touch phone. I was able to improve it to the point it could have been taken with my DSLR, something ithtthat I do not always have with me on rides. 

NIK 4 Plugin suite by DXO

 I updated to suite 3 last year because it was more compatible with Affinity photo, despite the fact nothing else about the plugins had changed. This update does have more changes and some really welcome ones, but I would still question even the 60$ upgrade fee as only 2 plugins got any love while leaving the others behind. The installer app was updated and improved, it deleted the old versions and installed the new with no problems. Updaters are often overlooked so this was a nice surprise.

Silver Efex Pro and Viveza got a major interface overall and a couple new features along with better U-Point control which is the primary reason to get these plugins - in my opinion. I really like the new look. It's modern, easy to read and better organized. Viveza has needed some love for a long time and it is finally where it need to be. Silver Efex pro got the addition of Clearview, borrowed from DXO Photolab  which clears out haze and can really add drama to a dull photo. I already have that in DXO Photolab thought and adding more presets which was a large % of the update to me is cheating when listing new features. 

To make this worth the upgrade price, they really need to apply the new interface to all the plugins and maybe they will before NIK 5 is released. If not I won't be updating again as while the new look is great, they all work fine as it is and they would have to add really amazing new and unthought of functionality to make me spend more money. They update DXO Photolab quite a bit between paid iterations and I hope NIK will get some of that attention too. 

That said, if you don't have the NIK collection at all, it is well worth having and does amazing things. It integrates more completely with Photoshop and Lightroom but it works nicely with Affinity with the exception of Perspective Efex which you have to run as a stand alone. HDR Efex is my favourite HDR processor but to use it with more than one photo, which is what HDR is really all about, you have to either do the initial processing in Affinity and then open HDR Efex or open is as a standalone to import a series of bracketed pictures at once which is what I would recommend. 

DXO Photo lab 4 and Nik Plugins 3 (review)

I recently decided to update my NIK collection of plugins to V3 to keep them up to date with my system and also I noticed the installer I had for version 2.5 didn't work anymore with Big Sur the new Mac OS. The update was on sale and also on sale was an update for DXO Photolab, an app I got for free when I last updated the Nik suite. I hadn't really used it much but I did find a few things about it impressive, mostly the noise reductions, but I never ended up making it part of my photo workflow. 

Photolab 4 is a pretty big update. The interface was overhauled for the better and the addition of new features like batch re-naming and tight integration with the Nik plugins made me want to give it a second try and I'm glad I did. I have been looking for anAdobe Bridge replacement for years and this is pretty close to what I want, though it does have limitations I'm still not happy with. It only"sees" RAW, JPG and TIFF files as they are the only formats it can edit. I can see why, but it would be much more useful if it could expand a bit into other formats. I do like that it doesn't make copies of your when you open a p=file but instead gives access to your folders on your hard drive which I have organized in a way I really find the best for me. They added a new, improved de-noiser and I have to say - it is impressive. Sometimes a de-noiser will leave the cage looking smudged or blurring but this actually brings back details and colours. It's amazing. You can open the NIK plugins directly from the workspace, though doing that will create a tiff file for them to work from, so you need to start your work in Photolab and then move on to the plugins to get a finished product. 

Speaking of the plugins... if you already have them and they work you don't need to update. Nothing much has changed except some new presets and one new plugin that does a great job of fixing perspective issues caused by the lens and the angles you might have shot from.  It's really useful but doesn't work inside Affinity Photo like the others do. The plugins have had additional integration into Photoshop and work great there including "Perspective Effects". Luckily each plugin can also be opened as a stand alone program or inside Photolab. They sell another program for Photolab that is pretty much exactly "Perspective Effects" under another name except it might work on files other than tiffs. I don't know as I wasn't about to shell out more money just to find out. If you have the NIK suite, you don't need it. I would still say if you don't have them, get them. They haven't been updated much but they did not need to be. The way you make selections is still quite unique and really makes adjustments that look natural in a photo. I mostly use HDR Pro, Colour Efex pro, Viveza and Silver Efex Pro but occasionally will use Dfine. If I ever need to make sketching look like an old film camera, Analog Efex is really good for that but it's not something I do all that often. Fun to have, though. 

So I recommend both products from DXO with the caveat that NIK Plugins 3 isn't a great deal if you have 2.5 already.