Photosho alternative

[David Milisock]

Has anyone tried Photoline? It's a German product, color managed, no N color or LAB.

 

[gordo]

Has anyone tried Photoline? It's a German product, color managed, no N color or LAB.

I found the UI to be difficult to work with. I prefer Affinity Photo as the alternative to PShop.

 

[David Milisock]

I found the UI to be difficult to work with. I prefer Affinity Photo as the alternative to PShop.

​I don't disagee the color management is document oriented and useful but you'd better know you stuff, it's not like running Corel or Adobe. With that said for $100 a decent buy.
I'll download Affinity and give it a test drive.

 

[David Milisock]

Sorry Gordo I do signs, vehicle wraps and large/grand format work, there are almost no MACs in that world and I won't be adding one, looks like 2016 they may have a Windows version so I'll wait and give it a spin.

I currently use Photo-PAINT X7 for all my high end color corrections, I have Photoshop, Painter, Paintshop Pro X8 and Aftershot Pro 2 color calibrated with Profile Maker Pro. I have no shortage color managed editors I'm just always looking to keep up so I can recommend things and find a useful tool. The weird thing is that even from the supposed professional we get awful phone images to use and Paintshop Pro has great idiot filters to fix then up an Photo-PAINT has the Photozoom Pro plugin to res them up, still makes crap work but the designers are not smart enough to expect better and too cheap to pay for a real photo.

 

[Slammer]

Going to try the photoline, but at the moment I am in love with GIMP because it´s free and it is almost but not quite entirely unlike photoshop.

 

[Chasfinch]

sorry to hear you dont us MACs We have large and grand format and our prepress is all MACs as well as a friends sign shop. Only PCs are the RIPs that do not have a MAC version that comes with the printers.

 

[David Milisock]

sorry to hear you dont us MACs We have large and grand format and our prepress is all MACs as well as a friends sign shop. Only PCs are the RIPs that do not have a MAC version that comes with the printers.

Don't be sorry I'm happy with an I7 quad core, 8 tread, 32 GB ram, 2 gb video, a 512 SSD and 2 - 2TB WD drives, 3 USB 3 ports, DVD all in one drive, and an SD multi-reader for $1185 hard not to be.

 

[David Milisock]

I found the UI to be difficult to work with. I prefer Affinity Photo as the alternative to PShop.

Gordo I tried the Affinity PC BETA, crashed a lot (it was BETA) also was WAAAY too much like an Adobe/MAC product for me I just can't think like that. I did try Capture One Pro 9, a decent program a lot for the money but $400 for a RAW /Image editor with an end result that was not any better then programs under $100. Looked and felt MAC to me also.

 

[namelessentity]

Don't be sorry I'm happy with an I7 quad core, 8 tread, 32 GB ram, 2 gb video, a 512 SSD and 2 - 2TB WD drives, 3 USB 3 ports, DVD all in one drive, and an SD multi-reader for $1185 hard not to be.

Seriously, I really don't understand why all the design is done on Mac. Half the time the print drivers for Mac are complete afterthoughts. The printing is all done on PCS, so why isn't everything done on one platform? It's so much more cost effective anyway.

 

[PricelineNegotiator]

Seriously, I really don't understand why all the design is done on Mac. Half the time the print drivers for Mac are complete afterthoughts. The printing is all done on PCS, so why isn't everything done on one platform? It's so much more cost effective anyway.

Because you aren't cool if you don't use a Mac. /thread

 

[gordo]

Because you aren't cool if you don't use a Mac. /thread

Here's a clue. When I worked at creo there were about 2,000 engineers in my location. About 40% had MACs while the rest had PCs (some had both due to the type of work they did). Our IT dept had a full time staff of 7 to support the PCs and one part time fellow to support the MACs.

 

[David Milisock]

Seriously, I really don't understand why all the design is done on Mac. Half the time the print drivers for Mac are complete afterthoughts. The printing is all done on PCS, so why isn't everything done on one platform? It's so much more cost effective anyway.

I started using Pc's in 1990, now so much of my work is 250" to 125' and CorelDraw allows me to work at 100% size for that work. CorelDraw also allows second to none quality in all print except long documents. If you do allot of 40+ page work CorelDraw is not the best choice. Photo-PAINT is awesome for color correction, I do all my clients work there. Just calibrate your display and set up color management and away you go.

As I've been going to graphic trade shows since the mid 1970's the biggest change I've seen the last several years is at the shows no MAC or Adobe presence. At the last Baltimore show CorelDraw from X5 to X8 was being used on nearly every device demonstration.

 

[David Milisock]

Here's a clue. When I worked at creo there were about 2,000 engineers in my location. About 40% had MACs while the rest had PCs (some had both due to the type of work they did). Our IT dept had a full time staff of 7 to support the PCs and one part time fellow to support the MACs.

Today that's not how it is, my largest CorelDraw client has over 200 employees and 1 IT guy, no MACs in the building. When did you last work at Creo? I also bet all the secure data was on the server.

I currently personally own 12 machines all my production systems are 64 bit Windows 10, my tablet is Windows RT and my phone is Windows 10. The sign company has 6 Windows systems and 1 Mac, 3 of the Windows systems are production systems, I maintain all my own and all the sign companies systems.

The worst system to take care of is the system my wife uses because she's on the web constantly looking at stupid crap that gets posted and even with that she hasn't had a virus in years, I just clean up the crap ware once a month.

 

[gordo]

Today that's not how it is, my largest CorelDraw client has over 200 employees and 1 IT guy, no MACs in the building.

Perhaps you aren't a typical user? I see a great deal more of this type of experience with PCs https://www.dpreview.com/forums/post/58241348

 

[Chasfinch]

LOL I have started promoting the MAC MINI. it is by far at a good price point vs value. I dont really care one way or the other. I used to build PCs for gaming. But I have always had a MAC. My latest mac mini has been around for over 4 years still runs like a champ. The PCs here at work have a 4 to 6 year life expectancy we just upgraded an 8 year old mac to a mac mini we still have an old mac pro running as a work station. The core operating system by far is more stable IMO using both since I was a teenager.

Have a great weekend!

 

[David Milisock]

Perhaps you aren't a typical user? I see a great deal more of this type of experience with PCs https://www.dpreview.com/forums/post/58241348

Of course I'm not a typical user, my wife is a typical PC user, Jane and Joe the office person is a typical user, most likely 150 million of them, we in graphics should be professionals. If you can't make a modern Windows 10 64 bit Pro system run like a race car you may not want to use a computer.

 

[gordo]

Of course I'm not a typical user, my wife is a typical PC user, Jane and Joe the office person is a typical user, most likely 150 million of them, we in graphics should be professionals. If you can't make a modern Windows 10 64 bit Pro system run like a race car you may not want to use a computer.

Perhaps the graphic designers are more interested in coming up with creative solutions to solve their customer's marketing/communications issues than in futzing around with a Windows box to make it run.

 

[David Milisock]

>we just upgraded an 8 year old mac to a mac mini we still have an old mac pro running as a work station

First your MAC is jut a PC with a different operating system, if your PC's don't last there can be a couple reasons, 1, they get used more, 2, you bought inferior components. I make sure my systems are manufactured with the best of components, I just has a 13 year old laptop take a dump on me, who cares it started life as my office system, moved on to another staff member then ended the last 7 years of it's life as a web surfer for my wife. My old file server was retired to support positon after 5 years and died when it was 9. My graphic work stations are rotated to office support in 3 years.

With that said an 8 year old work station cost more in slow performance then the replacement cost, big problem in the graphics industry. I go to interview a new print vendor who states they are state of the art and I find their process 5 to 8 years old. I understand the print industry is not flush with money but you cant race 1950's cars against 21st century cars.

Lets face it if you do nothing doing it slower makes no difference, but if you're processing many files in the 500mb to 1.5gb range only those not interested in profits don't upgrade.

 

[David Milisock]

Now back on to photoshop alternatives, I've updated to PaintShop Pro X9, now to be clear the almost exclusive reason I use PS is to RIP lousy Adobe PDF files to a Raster and it appears the PaintShop Pro X9 may work out. Doing so from Acrobat is way too slow. I need more testing.

I'm currently Corel Photo-PAINT X8 for all CMYK, LAB and N color image work. All high color editing is finalized there. I've been handling RAW conversions with Aftershot Pro 3, RGB image with Paintshop Pro (especially phone camera images due to the nice feature set) and Photo-PAINT X8 for high end output.

 

[PricelineNegotiator]

I just bought an M.2 SSD for my desktop at work. Been using 2 SSDs in RAID 0 at home for quite a while, figured it was finally time!