No go Zoner

This was originally intended to be a review. Unfortunately it has now turned into a bit of a rant

Sorry about that

For the last few years I have been using Zoner photo studio as my primary  photograph editing tools.

It provides 90% of what I need on one package including a RAW development package (based on Adobe RAW), some good editing tools and best of all for me, access to the NIK Efex collection.

There were weaknesses, but nothing that I could not live without or could not replace with other tools. The biggest weakness was probably it lack of decent layer support, so I was quite excited to see a new version announced, Zoner X, which included layer support.

Zoner have been very good over the years in providing upgrade discounts, and I went to the main page where it suggested I could get the upgrade for $50 (a discount of 50%). Fair enough I thought, for the increased functionality $50 seemed reasonable. I was just about to commit when I noticed something else.

This was not $50 one off payment. This was $50 a year. Zoner had decided to move to a subscription model like Photoshop CC. Also the $50 was only for two years. After that the subscription would increase to the full $96 a year.

Now don't get me wrong I understand the attractions of the subscription model.

The idea is that you pay a monthly fee, and get upgrades for life. The development company get a guaranteed steady income which in theory allows them to plan there releases better.

However subscription for software makes most sense when the software is rapidly evolving or requires expert support. For example Tax software, which requires changes every year, is a great example of where subscription is a good model. An even better example is anti-virus software which is rapidly being modified to meet risks.

With other software the advantages are less clear cut

The best analogy I can come up with is TV rental. When colour TV's came out in the 70's they were mostly rented. The TV's were expensive, the technology were rapidly evolving and improving and their reliability was patchy requiring expert repair and support.

My TV at home at present is about 5 years old. It has shown no sign of breaking down, and has all the feature I want. New features such as 3D TV(remember that) are either feature I have no interest in or things like access via the internet can be extended via 3rd party plug-ins.

Photo editing software is a bit like that. It is harder to make the case that there will be added any significant features onto basically a mature product.

Of course there is always the chance that it will happen. In that case you have to look at the cost differences between purchase and subscription.

The last photoshop you could buy would set you back about £500. (I won't go into whether it was actually worth that much). Add lightroom and you are talking £600. Now at present subscription rates it will take you about 5 years before the subscription cost overtakes what would of been the purchase costs.

So you have to judge that within that period would you have updated your software? If the answer is yes, then you are at least breaking even with the purchase price. Put like that Photoshop is not a terrible deal.

Zoner on the other hand are basically charging the full cost price every year. There is little if any discount and the chances of getting a "must have" feature within that period is greatly reduced.

In truth it seems like the owners of Zoner have looked at Adobe's business model and decided we want some of that. However Adobe are a special case, being by far the  product leader. It is also a high end professional tool. Businesses are generally happy to pay subscriptions. Zoner is not in that league, plus their pricing takes them very close to what it would cost to subscribe to Photoshop CC.

The fact is, when you subscribe to software you are in fact entering a Faustian pact with the software manufacturer

Yes, initially you will get a discount on what you would normally pay out front, but that is eroded as time goes on. If the software producer fails to improve there product rapidly, you may find yourself paying a lot more for features you do not need or basically having the same software you had before but for a much greater cost.

Like all Faustian pacts, it is also important to read the small print.

One clause many forget is that once you stop paying, like a repo man coming for your TV, the software stops working. It does not matter if you have spent thousands on the product, it is not yours and can be electronically yanked back  at any point.

This for me is the kicker about subscription software and it is why I will not be updating my version of Zoner and will looking around to see what non-subscription alternatives there are.

It will be interesting to see how this works out for Zoner. Personally I don't see how they will encourage present users to move to the  subscription model or even get new users at this price point. They would of been better of offering both a subscription and a purchase model. with a price advantage for the former.

The irony is, without this subscription model I would be now handing over the equivalent yearly subscription cost to Zoner. In a years time I would probably be persuaded to do so again., but at least it would of been my choice when I upgraded.

The way I see it - Gerry Coles

We had an excellent talk last night at the MPS from Gerry Coles.

What impressed me most was that he got very high quality results from quite simple photographic and photoshop techniques. He also gave the great advice that the best way to improve in photography is just to try things and the need to make your photos stand out by adding something different. At the same time ignore what the judges say and follow your instinct.

It was interesting that a lot of his techniques were derived from his film and developing days. It makes me wonder that when we reach the point when there are no more people who have come from that route whether we will lose some of that useful experience.

It is always instructive to watch someone comfortable with themselves show their creative process, and while I am sure that it is harder than it looks, it gave me a lot of inspiration to try some similar techniques.

My only real critic is that some of his photos crossed the line between photography and graphic art, but that is another argument for another day....

All in all however an excellent night.

A different viewpoint

Not a photo taken with film..

One of the things I enjoy about being a member of a photography club is the talks from guest photographers.

Whatever you may think of the guests actual photographs, I find I always pick up something new from the talks, whether it be a new viewpoint on taking photographs, new techniques or just a different philosophic take on photography.

In the last couple of weeks at Melbourne photographic club we have had two talks which very much represent the different ends of the photographic spectrum.

First in the blue corner was Barry Payling. He is a photographer from Rotherham, Yorkshire and and  it would not take you long to work it out. Barry very much represents the purist view of photography.

Mr Payling eschews all modern photographic aids. He uses a old Hasselblad medium format camera, slide film and does no post processing on his photographs, He doesn't even use filters on his cameras or a light meter to gauge exposure, relying on his experience to get the best photos. Even his presentations are even done using a monster of a slide projector that clanks like some mechanical beast when switching slides, resulting in a bit of a shock to audiences used to digital projectors.

Barry's attitude is that modern technology is a unnecessary complication to the art of photography. He contends that while digital cameras can fail, the purely mechanical Hasselblad is virtually bullet proof, being immune to the damp, easily dis-assembled and most parts replaced or repairable. Also by not using modern post processing you concentrate more on scene and composition and learn how to make better use of the available light.

He also believes that despite the advances in digital cameras, you simply cannot get the same quality of images than you can on film, especially images of reflections on chrome (I must admit that I have some doubts hers since digital technology is a moving target and some of the high end full-frame cameras such as the Sony A7 have been favorable compared to the medium format analog versions). However the quality of his images were excellent, and I can see the merits of stripping photography back to basics

In the red corner were a pair of photographers from Worcester called Chris Haynes and Martin Addison, who very much represent the opposite end of the spectrum.

While Barry Payling's show was something that would not be out of place from the 1970's, Chris and Martin's was bang up to date using all today's modern technology including digital projectors, audio visual presentations and even 3D images.

Their attitude was very much anything goes when it comes into photography. While most of Barry's photographs would have a landscape photo judges purring, some of Chris's and Martin's would leave many judges confused. Chris' philosophy is that if a judge does not like the way you have processed your photo, then they are at fault for being behind the photographic curve. Rather than you change, your ways, you should just wait for them to catch up!

That said some of Chris's photo were abstract in the extreme, to the point where it was not possible to actually see the original image in the final processed artefact. He had one sequence where he had a number of images which he said they looked like images of various imaginary deities, created from the heavy processing of an old boiler. Another were where he could see images of stars and alien suns from images of flower pots. While entertaining, this is not a man to serve breakfast too, in case he starts seeing images of Elvis in his toast :)

So two very different phiosophies, with all the photographers being masters of their craft and ending up producing stunning images.

The question is then, which one did I relate to most.

Firstly I have to state that I greatly appreciate the uncompromising purists in this world. They provide a bench mark in which you can compare yourself with. However I don't think I would like to follow their lead. Eschewing technology for technology sake is too much like wearing a hair shirt, so that people are impressed by your dedication.

Technology is there to help us achieve things easily that in the past were hard. Unless there is a good reason why the old ways was better, it should never be dismissed just because it is new. If you do go down that route, where do you stop? Mr Payling chose to use slide film, but why not use photographic wet plates or the Daguerrotype process. Also why travel by car, use a mobile phone,  have a website. Barry would probably reply that he still feels slide film still provides better images, but the truth is slides produce different types of images. It is a bit like saying that music today is not as good as in my youth (which is true, but lets move on).

Today there are photographers who have never taken a film photo. I still remember my days of film photography and that disheartening feeling, when after a day out with your camera, you send a film off to be developed with high hopes, and 2 weeks (and £5) later you get rubbish back. Of course by that time the moment has passed, meaning you lost that ability to learn from your mistakes.

This is why I like digital. I can play with it to my hearts content, knowing that all I am wasting is my time. Not a cheap commodity, but better than spending money.

For one thing I would of liked to have known what Barry's reject rate was. The truth is I would only ever consider going back to film once I was sure that at least 50% of my photo's had some merit. But by then, there would not be much point because I would be wedded to digital.

That is not to say I did not learn some things that I will want to incorporate into my own photography.

One thing that particularly stood out, was the way that he chose his lighting reference point when composing the photo and set the camera exposure to that level(remember he has no light meter, so this is done by guess work and experience)

So what about Chris And Martin. Well my problem here is something I have grappled with for a time and that is, when does a photograph stop being a photograph and become a purely artificial creation?

Some of the images, while visually stunning, had been processed so much that it was impossible to discern the original photograph that it was formed from. I remember making similar images in the past using computer programs, the difference being that this required no photography element at all.

For me a photo has to retain the essence of the original image to be a photo, otherwise we might as well sell our cameras and just spend all day hacking on our computers. That does not mean however none of the techniques they use are without merit. Chris's photos of the Indian dances where he swirled the back ground to produce a photo of high energy, while retaining the essence of the subject stood out. As he said, before he did this the photo contained a boring background, but the techniques added new life to an otherwise ordinary image. Similarly the process of taking multiple shots and combining them in-camera, produced some great dynamic images of otherwise static structures.

Again I got some great ideas for taking different images  which hopefully I can add to my war chest of possible techniques, ready to use when the need arises.

The truth is all 3 are great photographers, who have learned there craft and trade. The difference for me is that Barry's photographic journey takes him to places well visited, and how ever well driven he will always end up at the same destination. Chris and Martin journey however is a mystery tour. Most days you will end up no where interesting, but with luck you may end up in somewhere wonderful that no one else has ever seen before.

In the meantime I would gladly pay to see all 3 photographers in a debating chamber. That would be true entertainment :)

P.S.

One of the techniques Chris and Martin use is multiple exposures while putting the cameras at different angles. For example, taking one photo and then moving the camera 180 degrees and taking a photo of the same scene. The effect is very much akin to taking a photo of something with a reflection.

Unfortunately my camera does not support multiple exposure functionality. However I thought I could do the same thing in Photoshop.

Basically you duplicate the layer, flip it vertically(do not rotate 180 degrees since we want a mirror image). Move the  new layer  where you want and then set the Layer mode to exclusion.

It is possible you may want to remove some of the bottom layer and new layer to get rid of artifacts but the result is a picture looking like you have taken over a flat calm lake or  sea, which in reality does not exist.

Here's an example of the result

All souled out - Which photographic manipulation software to use

Long gone are the days when taking a photo ended with the shutter being pressed. Now that is just half the job, the rest being taken up with tweaking and manipulating the photo via photo manipulation software. The question is however, for a photographer on a budget, what software do we use use?

There is no doubt the king of hill, top of the heap is Photoshop. No other photograph manipulation package comes close in terms of popularity by professional photographers, nor do any others touch it in terms of the number of extensions, tutorials and other resources associated with it.

One slight problem however.

You cannot actually buy Photoshop. Instead the makers, Adobe, have moved to a model where you "lease" it. Basically you pay Adobe £9 a month in perpetuity and they very kindly let you use their software. Also don't think you can pay for a few months then stop. Once those cheques stop hitting the Adobe server the software will stop working and any files saved in the propriety Photoshop format will be inaccessible(I read one review that indicated that because renting Photoshop cost the same as a netflix subscription it was a good deal. This is the kind of review that makes you want to point out the reviewers faults by banging their head repeatedly against a brick wall).

Now to be fair to Adobe (and I really, really don't want to), for that price you do get a version of their RAW editing package, Lightroom, included with that subscription, and free upgrades for as long as you continue paying. But you have to balance this with the fact you have just made a lifetime contract to give Adobe cash, compared with the old model where you paid them once and probably never again because the old product did basically what you wanted. There is also the issue that if your software does not phone home on a certain date, it will stop working. Not great if you want to take your laptop to some remote location and do some photo editing on the move.

To be honest, if your profession is photography, this may not be the worst deal in the world, but for the rest of us, it sucks big time. Such is the state of the photograph manipulation software it is unlikely there will be any major changes and you will be locked into paying money that could go more usefully somewhere else.

Of course the reason that Adobe can do this, is that the photographic world is so addicted to Photoshop, it is almost impossible for a competitor to get a look in. In a normal situation such a power grab would result in a plethora of competing products and customers voting with their feet. The fact this has not happened shows that the market is so skewed, that Adobe could request the 1st child of all purchasers and would probably get away with it.

OK, so we cannot purchase Photoshop and we don't want to sell our soul to Adobe for life. What can we do?

Well there are alternatives.

For a start, Adobe would counter my criticism by pointing out that you can purchase Photoshop elements for £70 and that does most of what the full blown Photoshop does. However if you believe that Adobe is selling an almost complete Photoshop replacement for £70, compared to an annual subscription of £110, I have a bridge you might be interested in buying. Yes, Elements has a lot of the same features and the same look and feel, but it is also missing a number of important tools (See here is a quick comparison) . Now it is possible that you do not need any of those features and admittedly many only apply to high end print shops. If so, buy a copy,  but it is likely that some tools some like curve adjustment layer will be needed  in the long term.

There are similar priced alternatives to Photoshop elements such as Corel Paint Shop Pro or Serif Photoplus and while they are perfectly good products which provide a number of advanced features without the large price tag, you will eventually find a problem. The issue is that getting good at any photo manipulation task beyond cropping and resizing is a big learning curve. There is tons of good learning material out there, but they all assume you are using Photoshop. Translating these to other packages can be very difficult.

For a long time I used Paint Shop Pro. The truth is I had tried Photoshop and compared to the slick features of the Corel product I struggled to see it's Photoshop's advantages. However this was before YouTube(yes younger readers, there really was a time before YouTube) and I watched professionals use Photoshop to the enhance photographs to the maximum. It was  through sites like phlearn that I learnt the real power of Photoshop is hidden out of view and until you learn the short cuts and hidden features it is not possible to fully understand the process of getting the best of your photos.

Another even cheaper alternative is Gimp. Gimp is an open source, multi-platform software which costs the very reasonable price of £0. I love the idea of Gimp, I love it's potential power, unfortunately however hard I try I can never get the hang of it. Part of the problem was the user interface used to be idiosyncratic and difficult to get your head around. That has improved now, but it is still a difficult beast to get the best out of unless you know exactly what you want to do. If you look up a task the internet will almost certainly result in sending you to a Photoshop tutorial, which is not a lot of help. Still at the Gimp's price there is no risk in installing it and giving it a go.

There are other free alternatives. Programs like Paint.Net provide some Photoshop functionality, but quickly runs out of power. One I always forget about is Google's Picassa. I use Picassa as a very good photo managing tool. Being from Google it is good at search and ties in nicely with the cloud. However it also has some very powerful, easy to use photo manipulation tools. Things like adding a vignette to a photo is a one click affair. Ok, it is only suitable for basic manipulation but it is free, so what's to lose?

One intriguing alternative and maybe the way of the future is Pixlr.com . This is a purely online tool, but has some advanced features and a Photoshop look and feel. It is certainly worth keeping in mind if nothing else is available.

But all these suffer from the fact they are not Photoshop. So what to do? Well there is a alternative to Photoshop which has 90% of the power of the latest version and is totally free. Strangely enough it is called Photoshop.

Some months ago Adobe announced that due to registration server changes, Photoshop CS2 would be installable without the need for a product key. In effect, it was saying that Photoshop CS2 is open to all. Now legally this is only really supposed to be for people who bought CS2 in the first place. But in practice there is nothing to stop anyone downloading it and installing it.

But how does a 9 year old piece of software help us here? Surely it would be like running Windows 3.1 when you want Windows 7.

Actually no.

If you follow the tutorials you will find 90% of the functionality just the same between CS2 and CS6. There are a few missing items, but the majority of the good stuff is there. OK, there have been some major user interface tweaks in that time, but these only make the job slightly easier. It is a great way to make use of the mass of tutorial material on photo manipulation using a familiar interface. Hopefully once mastered, these can be easily applied to other packages such as Gimp.

There are 2 caveats however. Firstly if you have a modern camera it is unlikely you will be able to edit the RAW files. This is because the version of the code that Photoshop uses to handle RAW files has not been updated to include the more modern formats.  So you will need to convert your RAW files to jpeg's or TIFF's first. Secondly the more modern 3rd party extensions are not likely to work either.

If you shoot in RAW format(and you really should) you may think this is a pain. However there is a solution. Unfortunately it may involve giving Adobe money(but not as much as a subscription).

There are a number of good packages out there for editing RAW files. Unlike Photoshop there is more competition in this area. I have Zoner Photo Version 15 which I got free as an offer. Dx0 similarly is an excellent package to do the same. However because Adobe is so big in the photo manipulation area, it is difficult to look past their RAW editing package, Lightroom.

Lightroom cost about £100, which is not pocket change, but affordable. Like Photoshop, it takes a while to get the best out of it, but like Photoshop there are a lot of tutorials to help you. Additionally there are a lot of great extensions. The Nik collection is especially good and integrates nicely into Lightroom. OK, it adds another £100 to the bill, but the result is that you get a set of state of the art set of tools that you can do the majority of your photo correction work in. If you need to do any more, you can convert them to a file format of your choice and continue in Photoshop CS2.

All without paying Adobe another cent, which sounds like a good deal to me. As a bonus you also get to keep your soul.

The art of selection

Having spent the last few days going through the photos I took at Mallory park I have faced one of the problems that occurs when you do an event like that is, namely how do you go about reducing the mass of photos to the few pictures that you wish to share?

In total I took 625 photos in a mad 3 hours at Mallory. It would be wonderful to believe that each one was a gem of photographic perfection that should be cherished and celebrated, but that is never going to happen. Instead I have 625 photos of varying quality each which need to be ranked and in most cases simply deleted.

The easy job is getting rid of the ones which are just plain bad, such as they are out of focus or have the wrong exposure. Others are just badly composed with faults like chopping part of the subject off or a similar composition faux pas. These are the easy ones to find and once these have been removed you are left with about half the photos you started with.

There are also the duplicates; photos taken in quick succession but basically show the same scene. These can also be whittled down to just one photo (I used to save all the photos even the bad ones. This was a hang over to the days of film, since after paying for them to be developed you felt beholden to retain them. I also used to believe that even bad photos could perhaps be saved in the future. But now I realise they just take up valuable disk space and need to be exiled to digital hell),

After this process you are left with a core set  of photos without any discernible technical faults. Then starts the next challenge. You need to go through them again and judge whether there is a decent photo trying to escape. If you are lucky you will find some flawless gems which stand by their own merits,but more likely you will find photos which don't quite make the grade. This is where you start up the photo editing software

In the old days of film (unless you owned a developing studio) photography was a strictly WYTIWYG affair (What You Took Is What You Got). Nowadays unless you are very skillful (or in my case, lucky)  this is just the start of the process. Virtually without exception, all photos can be improved by some tweaking in Photoshop and the like, but some need more major rework. The next stage is to see what can be done to take a photo to that next level.

The things you can do to a photo are only limited by your time and your skill levels. It could be anything from playing around with the white balance(if taken in RAW mode), changing the levels, tweaking the color curve, converting it to black and white or just cropping it to produce a different viewpoint. On top of that there are numerous effects you can play with such as filters or just removing annoying distractions via clone stamping. The list is endless.

These range from the easy to the difficult and of course there is a philosophical debate to be had about when a photo stops being a photo and becomes a Photoshop construct. To me it is when the photo becomes something that could not have been achieved through the camera alone, however leaving that to one side for now, generally you start with the changes that have the maximum impact for minimum work.

Cropping is always a good place to start. In some ways it is the simplest one to achieve, but the most difficult to master. A good crop can add enormously to the photo, but the issue is what to crop and how much. This is an artistic call rather than something that can be legislated

Original

Cropped, possibly cropping more would work????

Converting the photo to black and white is also simple to do and can sometimes have a huge impact. It is a strange thing that removing the colors can improve a photo, but the colors can sometimes prove a distraction from the subject. By removing them you end of with the subject coming to the fore, which is why portraits are so often better in black and white.

Original

In black and white. Now the intense expression on the lead rider comes to the fore

Once you have picked out those photos that can benefit from extra processing and retained those lucky ones that need no or little enhancement, the rest can be deemed unworthy and can be relegated to the also ran pile (although still retained waiting for that unlikely day when maybe your Photoshop technique has advanced enough or a different requirement makes them useful again). The rest are to be cropped, clone stamped or otherwise digitally manipulated.

You may now be left with 5% of your original photos and hopefully those left are worthy of extra critical attention. In my case this was still 20 or 30 photos. Of course you could stop here, kick your feet up and have a cup of tea, but since we are in a never ending quest for perfection we need to continue our search for excellence. What we are looking for now are those few photos you would be happy to share to your peers and the world.

Here is where the real challenge begins...

So you have 30 photos. The obvious defects have been removed. They have been buffed up with Photoshop to the best of your ability and you wish to pick those most likely to propel you to glory. Unfortunately this is a bit like choosing which of your children you like the most.

The question then is how do you subjectively judge a photo? The truth is there is no easy way. Like art, ones persons Picasso is another persons set of pointless squiggles on a canvas. In a few precious instances a photo just leaps out from the screen, but mostly we need to be more subjective.

In order to do this I tend to use 3 criteria.

Criteria 1 is whether it add a new angle to the subject? So many photos put on sites such as 500px are of the same scene, taken in the same way. This to me is not photography, just advanced copying. To me a good photo does something different, an unusual angle, a different shutter or aperture setting. The list is endless which is why it is hard to understand why so many photos end up just as clones of earlier work.

Criteria 2 is whether the photo tells a story to me.  Especially with  photos involving people, a good photo is one that captures a moment in time and tells the narrative of that quantum second. A look on someones face, the body language, something that indicates what was going on at that never to be repeated moment in time. The problem is however expressing that story to the person who sees the photo in a unambiguous way. As in all art, its quality can often be down to how well the photo connects with it's audience.

This lad turned up in a few photos and I wanted an image of him watching the cycling, with his bike. In my mind he is thinking of the glory days ahead when he is old enough to race

Same lad on the way out. I thought it was a nice way to end the day

Even after applying these criteria there is still room for doubt. There are photos which you think may have merit but others dislike making you doubt your photographic sanity. Are they good in your head only? Will releasing them show your artistic judgement is fatally flawed?

These are difficult dilemmas and at the end of the day while getting the opinion of others can be a useful exercise it is your photo and if you like it you should be willing to stand up to your convictions. Sometime the rest of the world is just wrong.

So the 3rd Criteria is that you like it and at the end of the day that is the most important test of all.

I am not sure about this photo. In some ways it is a mistake, but i like the energy and movement

Similar here. This was more by accident than design but I like the feeling of movement. But is it a good photo?  I don't know, but I like it

Playing with photoshop

One of my challenges is to get better with Photoshop.

On of the best tutorial sites is phlearn.com. If you can get beyond the very american type presentation, it introduces a lot of really powerful techniques which are not instantly obvious from the rather austere photoshop front end

Anyway work in progress based on this tutorial

Before

After