Has your memory card ever worn out?

Eric Stevens wrote:
I was prepared to pay the 'ten times higher' price for Photoshop if I
could determine that it was necessary for what I wanted to do. The
trouble was I couldn't easily determine what Elements could/couldn't
do in comparison with Photoshop without making a major research
project out of it.

I did try: I still have several books on the software tucked away
somewhere. But it was all too hard for someone who knew nothing about
the products. In the end I bought Photo Paint for less than I would
have paid for Elements. Adobe's loss, my gain.

Then, you arrived at the right conclusion, not only for yourself, but for
others with your level of exposure to such apps, because if PhotoPaint does
what you need, PhotoShop is serious overkill. So, I'd say that Adobe gains
by retaining good will among those who do need their products and not having
to spend resources on tech support for those who don't.

--
best regards,

Neil

Neil Gould wrote:
Les Cargill wrote:
Neil Gould wrote:
William Sommerwerck wrote:
Interesting that only you amateur users seem to feel that way.
Perhaps you can explain the reason that such a "failure" resulted
in the market position for those products (#1), and how they can
somehow do better by wasting their resources explaining those
products to folks that are unlikely to need or buy them?

It's never a waste of resources to make an effort to capture a new
customer. Just because a product sells well, doesn't mean its
manufacturer knows how to best market it.

Adobe's efforts to "capture a new customer" appears to be their
support of educational facilities that train those potential new
customers on their product. It seems to be sufficient.

Adobe's market position has little to do with the way Photoshop has
been promoted.

That is patently absurd, William! You don't get to #1 by accident in
a market that is *still* occupied by dozens of other competing
products.


No, you do it by capturing rents from having educational institutions
doing your sales for you. Same for much other software
as well... the schools should charge 'em for the privilege.

I agree that this is a proven methodology, but would go further in a
critique to say that a school that teaches a profession based on an
application, rather than the underlying principles of the field and issues
that are being addressed by an application is ripping off the student by
preparing them for a relatively short-term employment and doing harm to the
industry by stifling the innovative ways that those issues more efficiently.


Welcome to the United States.

--
Les Cargill

"William Sommerwerck" wrote in message
...
Adobe does not, because it has no understanding
of how to sell merchandise.

What an amazing disconnect from reality!

Glad you agree with me.

READ WHAT I WROTE, DICKHEAD!

"None" seems to be an apt assessment of your wit and sense of humor.

Have you ever considered growing a sense of humour?

more self-serving rambling deleted out of mercy

READ WHAT I WROTE!

Eric Stevens wrote:
On Mon, 30 Jul 2012 09:30:23 -0400, "Neil Gould"
wrote:

William Sommerwerck wrote:
And, how many *non-Adobe* image editing apps did they learn in
school? Just the fact that those apps are being taught in schools
that are training designers, photographers, etc. says about all
that needs to be said. Non-pros have little to no need to know,
since they are not the target users of those products.

That may be the reason the improving amateur cannot get sufficient
information to enable them to decide which of four different Adobe
products they really need.

They already have the information they need; most Adobe products
are not aimed at amatuers, regardless of their status!

And that means that all Adobe products should be bought and used by
all professionals?

Do you not recognize a significant technical difference between
"most Adobe products" and "...all Adobe products..."?!?

That is not an excuse for failing to provide adequate pre-sales
support.

Interesting that only you amatuer users seem to feel that way.
Perhaps you can explain the reason that such a "failure" resulted in
the market position for those products (#1), and how they can
somehow do better by wasting their resources explaining those
products to folks that are unlikely to need or buy them?

They seem to be starting to provide that kind of information now. You
had better write to them and tell them how they are wasting their time
and money. I'm sure they will be grateful.

It seems to have been sufficiently uninformative to drive you to PhotoPaint,
and Corel is more than happy to let you fend for yourself.

--
best regards,

Neil

On Mon, 30 Jul 2012 12:41:32 -0400, tony cooper
wrote:

On Mon, 30 Jul 2012 20:57:08 +1200, Eric Stevens
wrote:

My wife is in the market for a new car. The other day we went along to
the presentation of the new Honda Euro Civic. The spec sheet listed
each model in a series of parallel columns with a row for each set of
features. If a feature applied to a particular model a there was a
large dot in a particular column. A would-be car buyer would be
shocked at the suggestion that they should go on line to separately
dig out the features of each model and then construct a chart to
enable the features to be compared. Why should be the would-be buyer
of Mr Adobe's fine products be treated any differently?


You want to use cars as an analogy? OK.

Where's the Honda site that tells you that it has things on the floor
that, when pressed, make the car go or stop? Where does it tell you
that the round thing in front of the driver is used to alter the
direction of the moving vehicle?

Honda, like Adobe, thinks that the overwhelming majority of potential
buyers already have some familiarity with motorized vehicles. They
don't gear their website to the lapsed Mennonite who has previously
driven only a horse and buggy.

Adobe, like Honda, provides dot charts that enable potential buyers to
make choices.

http://www.adobe.com/products/photos...ing-guide.html

Dated 2012 - 06 - 01. Brand new

and, more extensively,
http://www.adobe.com/products/photos...omparison.html

Dated 2012 - 06 - 01. Brand new. Adobe is obviously changing their
ways.


The difference is that Adobe feels that potential user of Photoshop is
not interested in a dot chart comparison to Elements. They feel that
this buyer is willing to do a simple search and turn up something like
this:

http://graphicssoft.about.com/cs/pho...ntscompare.htm

This is dated Nov 08, 2010. It's very helpful but it probably appeared
just after I made my decision. Had I seen it I would probably have
bought CS5 (or was CS6 already on the horizon?). Note that this is not
an Adobe description.


For example I have no need for the 3D features of CS6/5 extended, so I
didn't buy it.
When CS5 was released I liked the ideal of content aware fill and a few
other new features that came with it. So I upgraded to CS5. I haven't
seen any new features in CS6 which would entice me to upgrade.

But you were originally familiar with the product. There are many
people like William and I who have to learn the capabilities of each
product from the ground up.


Lightroom works as a stand alone image editor and more, as it gives you
a very good catalogue system, and it can integrate with Photoshop, or
any other editor.

Elements gives you many of the editing features of full versions of
Photoshop, but if you are familiar with the full version you could find
it odd to work with.

I believe that you would find Lightroom more than adequate for most of
your needs. There are also some interesting free plugins available for
Lightroom, and many of the well known plugin houses such as NIK have
their offerings installable Photoshop, Lightroom, Elements, and
function as stand-alone modules.

Nope. I'm in the Corel camp for at least the time being.
--

Regards,

Eric Stevens

On Mon, 30 Jul 2012 11:01:28 -0400, nospam
wrote:

In article , William Sommerwerck
wrote:

In Adobe's case, Photoshop was (as far as I know) the first major paint
software * designed primarily for the special needs of photographic images.
Its rapid adoption doubtless reduced interest in other products. It didn't
hurt that it wasn't cheap, as Americans tend to associate price with
quality. And once you've invested in something expensive, you're unlikely to
pay more money to switch.

wrong. there is no lock-in to photoshop. if something better came along
and was able to read photoshop format files (and the format is
documented so this is easily done), it would be very easy to switch.

there are competing products that can read photoshop files, yet not too
many people switched. why? because none were as good as photoshop.

The cost of climbing the learning curve is always a barrier.

Photoshop sells well because it's "the standard" and it's expensive -- not
because it's the best choice among competitive products.

actually, it is the best choice among competing products.

Of which there are
few. Adobe needs to act as if it had serious competition, and market
Photoshop accordingly. A well-designed clone from a major software company
could do significant damage.

and in 20 years, none have managed to do that.
--

Regards,

Eric Stevens

On Mon, 30 Jul 2012 11:01:22 -0400, nospam
wrote:

In article , Eric Stevens
wrote:

I don't know whether or not the complaint is valid now (I suspect it
may not be) but it certainly was two or three years ago.

no it wasn't. the information was there, just like it is now, but about
older products.

"Compare" is the operative word.
--

Regards,

Eric Stevens

On Mon, 30 Jul 2012 11:01:22 -0400, nospam
wrote:

In article , Eric Stevens
wrote:

here are many videos about cs5. it's probably too soon for a set of cs6
videos. i'd call these very comprehensive.

http://tv.adobe.com/watch/photoshop-...p-cs5-overview
/

How many hours of this sort of stuff do you have to live through
before you can draw up a table of comparisons?

about 0.00028 hours.

the following link loads in about 1 second for me:
http://www.adobe.com/products/photoshopfamily/buying-guide-version-comparison.html

the point is that there is a *lot* of information at adobe's site, from
simple overviews to extensive demos and tutorials for those who want a
lot more than just a checklist.

And what about those whose starting point is what you describe as a
'check list'? There seems to be something there now but I'm not
looking now.
--

Regards,

Eric Stevens

Eric Stevens wrote:
On Mon, 30 Jul 2012 11:24:52 -0400, "Neil Gould"
wrote:

--- snip ---

There are several competing products, some functionally better than
PhotoShop (or CorelPaint). But, in order to know that, one would
need to know *all* of those products well enough to compare them,
which most likely, only a pro would be able to do. Amatuers need not
apply.

And there you spell out the problem I encountered when trying to
evaluate my choices of Adobe software.

I don't know that I'm entirely an amatuer. I've been writing complex
technical reports illustrated with photographs since about 1989. Most
of the photographs have required editing or processing of one kind or
another.

Everyone is an amatuer at something... I'm an amatuer at a number of things,
and it's not meant as a slight. If you were a professional photographer, you
might have to supply "native" files to clients or agencies of clients, and
at that point the ubiquitious use of PhotoShop is very similar to ProTools
in the audio field. You might also have to manage thousands or tens of
thousands of images for a project (digital photographers shoot too much!),
and at that point, Lightroom becomes pretty attractive compared to the less
powerful "albums" included with other programs.

I wasn't ignorant of image processing at the time I was making my
enquiries (two or three years ago?). For historical reasons I had been
using Photo Paint for most of the time. It was just that I didn't know
my way around Adobe.

One of the primary strengths of Adobe's product line is the integration. For
example, InDesign, PhotoShop, Illustrator and some of their other apps read
"native" file formats and use the same keyboard shortcuts for common
functions, making the workflow more efficient than trying to use a number of
products from other companies. But, consider how long it takes to become
familiar enough with a program to prefer keyboard shortcuts over mousing
through menus, and ask yourself, "will I be using the app THAT much?"

--
best regards,

Neil

On Mon, 30 Jul 2012 12:01:28 -0400, tony cooper
wrote:

On Mon, 30 Jul 2012 21:15:29 +1200, Eric Stevens
wrote:

There are many, many ways to get comprehensive information about PS's
features. They just aren't on Adobe's website. Nor, in my opinion,
need they be.

Getting comprehensive information about PS's features was not the
problem that William Sommerwerck and I were complaining about. Please
make sure you understand the problem before you describe the
complainant as 'whining'.

Frankly, Eric, you're all over the place in describing what you want
and expect. In one post you say you want to be able to draw up chart
of comparisons by feature. In another post you say that you want to
know what all the features are and what they are used for. In another
post you say not having comprehensive information is not the problem.

I don't want to draw up a chart of comparisons by feature. I want to
find a chart of comparisons by feature drawn up by Adobe.

Of course I want to know what the features are and what they are used
for.

Comprehensive information is not sufficient on its own unless the
various features are described in sufficient detail and in such a way
that they can be compared across parallel products.


What is "comprehensive information" if not the very thing you find
lacking?

Perhaps I don't understand the problem completely, but perhaps you are
not articulating the problem understandably.

The problem you have - as I understand it - is not one that most
people have. Most people purchasing Photoshop (full version) ease
into it. They have prior exposure from a class, from work, or from
other people. They have used a program like Elements and have hit the
point where they need or want more features. Or, like me, have been
using the program since the earliest versions and are interested only
in information about the changes and additions.

Or, like me, they have been using something else entirely and are
trying to establish where they should enter the Adobe product stream.

Most people don't find that going to other sites and getting a more
comprehensive understanding that way to be as onerous as you seem to.
In fact, they would no matter what Adobe includes on the Adobe
website.

I had hoped that Adobe would have made the comparison they way they
now seem to be doing.

When I say "most", I'm not talking about 51%. I'm talking about a
figure in the high 90s.

So, Adobe is gearing their website to most of their potential market,
not the few exceptions.

As to the whining, Sommerwerk does come across to me as a whiner.
He's not complaining that the information is not available; he's
complaining that the information is not available where *he* wants it.
Your posts don't seem to be whining, but you do seem to be a person
who is more concerned about the lack of information where you want it
to be than a person who is concerned about the lack of information at
all.

I don't see William as a whiner at all. He, like me,seems to be
disconcerted at Adobe's failure to facilitate new would-be buyers
decision making process about which Adobe product to buy.


Many of the book-length books on Photoshop cover only a limited number
of subjects. Scott Kelby is famous for this. I have many of his
books, but no one book of his covers all, most, or even a significant
number of the coverable topics.

And then you have to buy an an incomplete book on CS*, another on
PhotoShop Elements, another on Lightroom - No, that's not the way to
go.

I hate to sound like "nospam" the nohelp, but that's old school. With
the plethora of online tutorials available, buying a book is no longer
a "must". I own my share of (now out-dated) books, but I no longer
buy them. I have two monitors, and put a tutorial up on one screen
and open Photoshop on the other. I can follow that just as easy as a
printed page, and I have more options to include other methods.

My second monitor cost me about the amount that each book now sells
for.

It sounds a good way to go, but you've already made up your mind about
which Adobe product you want.
--

Regards,

Eric Stevens