dSLR thread

Tea

Storage? I am Storage!
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Jan 15, 2002
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Cheers Merc. I bought all the Topaz stuff a few years back but soon found that I wasn't using it. For the things I do (mostly wildlife and natural landscapes, both done in a naturalistic style) Topaz was doing way too much - over-saturating, over-sharpening, over-everything. Sure, you can dial all that stuff back manually, but I prefer working with useful presets which are fairly close to what I actually want to use. *Real* PP people just do everything manually starting from scratch. I mostly start with some sort of canned recipe and adjust from there. I've been using the Nik Collection for about 15 years, originally as a Photoshop plug-in, more recently stand-alone.

I finally cancelled my Adobe subscriptions about a year ago. I never liked Lightroom and mostly only kept Photoshop for the once-excellent ACR raw developer. One day maybe two or three years ago they threw away the well-established ACR UI and moved everything around so that it was difficult to find and unpleasant to use. Seeing as I had to learn a new UI anyway, I figured I might as well make a clean break and get rid of Adobe completely.

I can't remember now how I ended up with the DXO package. I vaguely remember trying a few so maybe I started with a 30-day trial version and went from there. It has bugs but nothing I can't live with. It is much faster than Adobe stuff ever is and much easier to use from the point of view of achieving a look I like without a lot of fiddling. The structure (PhotoLab + individual Nik add-ins) is weird and some of the add-ins are a bit broken. Nik Sharpener muddles your EXIF information if you save a TIFF file, for example. But that doesn't really matter: I mostly use Color FX, occasionally Silver FX or Viveza, and those three mainstream apps work just fine. I look afresh at Topaz just this week with a particular job to do and the Black Friday sales on, but they didn't seem to be offering anything I didn't already have.

The only other app I use at all regularly is Affinity Photo. I'm sure it does a heap of other stuff but the only thing I use it for is dodge and burn (which DXO doesn't do, instead you use control points which are far more flexible, but sometimes and old-fashioned dodge and burn is exactly what I need).

I believe that Capture One is very good. It certainly seems to get good reviews.
 

Mercutio

Fatwah on Western Digital
Joined
Jan 17, 2002
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I am omnipresent
My quasi-SO is an Adobe adherent. She's been going to school for graphic design on and off for some time, and she has the $10/month everything for students package. And here's the thing: in the last 18 months, I've become aware of some of the crazy, crazy advancements that have been added to Lightroom Classic and Photoshop in particular.

As an example, Photoshop has some AI tools now that can apply the makeup or hairstyle from one face to another. And it WORKS. Both can also pick out, mask and copy adjustments across distinct subjects in images, which can be crazy useful for, say, fixing flyaway hair or skin retouching. You and Lunar would never use such things, but passing a run of TIFFs through Lightroom to digitally erase whatever portion of a tattoo might be visible across 150 images is crazy useful.

I hate Adobe with a passion but I can't argue that it's not doing anything for that subscription money, even if I resent the idea of renting software forever or the concept of Adobe having money in general.

Because I do work with models, one of the big arguments for Capture One has been its utility for tethered shooting, so my model can see what I'm doing. Lately, I've discovered that I can add a USB capture device in-line with my HDMI out and set my phone on a shoe adapter and get the same thing with nothing more than 100g of wires and plastic. This is crazy useful, but it also means that Capture One's main advantage isn't so important for me now.
 

LunarMist

I can't believe I'm a Fixture
Joined
Feb 1, 2003
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16,624
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USA
The EF glass still works great though. I was just using the 500/4 IS II w/1.4x III on the R5 this week and IQ is excellent without need for corrections, even near the edge and without visible CA. The ability to use slow shutter speeds in ES without vibrations and the high-ISO noise characteristics make a huge difference over the old 5DsR.
 

LunarMist

I can't believe I'm a Fixture
Joined
Feb 1, 2003
Messages
16,624
Location
USA
I'm cautioulsy optimistic, but history has shown that failed businesses are rarely saved in current form.
 
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