Has your memory card ever worn out?

William Sommerwerck wrote:
Adobe's arrogance doesn't help. The last time I visited its site,
I was amazed at how it failed to explain exactly what each of
its products did (or didn't) do, and why you might purchase it
(or not). When I complained about this, I received pretty much
a "we're Adobe -- we don't give a damn" response.

Since professionals have used many similar products for extended
periods of time, Adobe's explanations of what their products do are
adequate to provide a basic understanding of them.

And what of those who haven't used them? There are hundreds of new
potential customers every day who are ignorant of such things. What
do you do... ignore them?

There are a couple of levels of answers to this. To those with general
knowledge of image editing and image eding apps that somehow haven't
experienced PhotoShop, they can download the reference manual, per another
response. To the novice, there are numerous PhotoShop courses available,
both in person and on-line.

For example... What is the relationship between Lightroom and
Photoshop? Lightroom apparently does some things Photoshop also does.
Why would I use one and not the other? Or both? How do these products
interact (or not). What are the advantages and tradeoffs?

The relationship and differences should be obvious to experienced image
editors or photographers. Those who fall in neither category can probably
avoid both apps without consequence, and go with Gimp or some other
lower-end solution.

One of the best sales tools is to clearly explain what your product
can and can't do, and how its features work with the features of
other products in your line.

Selling it to... whom, exactly? Those who became "professionals" within the
last decade or two probably don't need such explanations. Like I said
earlier, PhotoShop is to image editing as ProTools is to pro audio.

--
best regards,

Neil

In article , William Sommerwerck
wrote:

Photoshop never seemed expensive to me.

Not if you're a professional photographer. But for someone who doesn't earn
their living doing graphics work, the price is several times beyond
outrageous.

for someone who doesn't earn their living doing graphics work, they can
get photoshop elements which is typically $50. that's nowhere near
outrageous, let alone several times beyond.

not only that, but it's often bundled for free with various hardware.
you may even have a copy already.

Adobe's arrogance doesn't help. The last time I visited its site, I was
amazed at how it failed to explain exactly what each of its products did (or
didn't) do, and why you might purchase it (or not). When I complained about
this, I received pretty much a "we're Adobe -- we don't give a damn"
response.

you didn't look very hard. they explain their products in detail,
including comparing photoshop elements with the full photoshop.

In article , Mxsmanic
wrote:

Legacy applications that run only on MS-DOS. Maybe their favorite game is The
Seventh Guest, which would probably fly like the wind on modern hardware.

few people care about old legacy software.

There are a lot of enterprises that need to run old software (sometimes very
old software).

not very many.

MS-DOS can be used as a server, and some companies are still using it that way
for legacy applications.

a lot of things 'can' be used as a server. that doesn't mean it's a
good choice, especially when there are *much* better options available.

some will, some won't. you'll be long dead by the time it stops
increasing.

I think not. Problems are already arising.

there are always problems arising. we do not live in a perfect world.

plus, some software vendor business models collapse long before it
might stop increasing. just look at microsoft today versus 15 years
ago. they've had failure after failure and it looks like that's going
to continue.

Microsoft is past its prime, but it will be around for quite a while.

but nowhere as dominant as they once were.

gpus are dramatically advancing, ssd leaves hard drives in
the dust and displays are becoming very high resolution, aka 'retina
quality'.

That doesn't help.

oh yes it most certainly does.

SSD is still orders of magnitude slower than RAM,

so what? it replaces the hard drive and is orders of magnitude faster.

and RAM
is extremely slow compared to CPU cache,

that's why there's both.

and CPU cache still makes the
processor wait.

not as long as ram would.

And this is getting worse, not better.

it's getting much better. computers are *significantly* faster than
ever before.

Plus, network delays
are now also a key impediment to improved performance.

networks are also getting faster.

In modern systems, if
you're not waiting for the disk, you're waiting for the network.

or the cpu, or even the user. it depends on the particular task.

most do not. it might generate a lot of revenue quickly, but
users catch on to that bull**** and it doesn't last for very long. it's
a very bad long term business model.

They've been conditioned to fall for it for years now.

nonsense.

many developers take pride in their work and don't release ****.

Most developers today are either immature kids or people trying to make lots
of money or both.

nonsense.

then it's a perfect opportunity for someone else to do a good job and
own the market for that product.

It's difficult to break into a market.

not if you have a killer product.

just look at smartphones today. before the iphone, apple had *zero*
experience in making cellphones. they introduced the iphone which
competed against market leaders such as nokia and rim, both of which
who had significant market share. google also had *zero* experience in
cellphones, and then they released android.

now look what happened. apple and google together went from 0% market
share to over 90% market share of the world's smartphones. nokia and
rim are close to bankrupt and microsoft windows phone is struggling.

That's why Windows is the leading
desktop OS and is likely to remain so for the foreseeable future, even if
Microsoft does nothing to promote it. Even if Microsoft makes mistakes, in
fact, as it has done constantly in recent years.

except that desktops are rapidly becoming niche and microsoft's mobile
strategy is pathetic.

the new world is apple and google being dominant. microsoft will end up
with a tiny fraction of the market, which is actually rather amusing.
all those microsoft fanbois must be in pain.

In article , William Sommerwerck
wrote:

Adobe's arrogance doesn't help. The last time I visited its site,
I was amazed at how it failed to explain exactly what each of
its products did (or didn't) do, and why you might purchase it
(or not). When I complained about this, I received pretty much
a "we're Adobe -- we don't give a damn" response.

Since professionals have used many similar products for extended
periods of time, Adobe's explanations of what their products do are
adequate to provide a basic understanding of them.

And what of those who haven't used them? There are hundreds of new potential
customers every day who are ignorant of such things. What do you do...
ignore them?

the explanations are on their website as well as other websites. a
quick google search brings up many, many websites that explain the
products, including videos.

http://www.adobe.com/products/photos...e-version-comp
arison.html

Compare products
Find the Photoshop product that's right for you.

For example... What is the relationship between Lightroom and Photoshop?
Lightroom apparently does some things Photoshop also does. Why would I use
one and not the other? Or both? How do these products interact (or not).
What are the advantages and tradeoffs?

lightroom is mainly an asset management app that can process raws,
modify the images (exposure, colour balance, etc.) and do some
retouching. it can also create books, websites, slide shows and prints
from your photos. everything in lightroom is non-destructive, including
cropping.

photoshop is a comprehensive photo retouching and image editing app,
however it doesn't do asset management nor can it make websites, etc.
although it's retouching capabilities are well beyond what lightroom
can do, 99% of the time you won't ever need any of it. most of the
time, photoshop is destructive but you can (with quite a bit of effort)
do it non-destructively.

usually all that people do is adjust the exposure, contrast, colour
balance, etc., which is well within what lightroom can do. on the rare
occasion that you need more sophisticated editing tools, lightroom can
easily roundtrip an image to photoshop.

One of the best sales tools is to clearly explain what your product can and
can't do, and how its features work with the features of other products in
your line. The goal is to get a "I like that -- I'll buy it!" reaction.
Adobe doesn't give a damn, probably because it has de facto monopoly on
image editing.

they explain what the apps can do and adobe products are popular
because many of them are extremely good. adobe camera raw is one of the
best raw processing engines around.

In article , David Ruether
wrote:

And, for those interested in
just a good photo editor (but without some of the specialty
functions of PhotoShop that most users don't need), there is
the free Gimp 2.

the gimp is roughly where photoshop was ten years ago.

photoshop elements is dirt cheap and does much more than what most
non-pros need.

In article , tony cooper
wrote:

Adobe's arrogance doesn't help. The last time I visited its site, I was
amazed at how it failed to explain exactly what each of its products did (or
didn't) do, and why you might purchase it (or not). When I complained about
this, I received pretty much a "we're Adobe -- we don't give a damn"
response.

Adobe, like most software of this type of application, offers trial
downloads. A comprehensive description of the features of Photoshop
would have to be book-like in length.

nonsense. they have descriptions on their web site, including demo
videos, and many third parties write about it too. none are book-like
in length.

In article , tony cooper
wrote:

Photoshop is not an impulse purchase item. Buyers of the full version
are generally informed to some degree by exposure from some other
source. I can't imagine any buyer that made the decision to buy a
product of this cost based solely on what the primary website
describes.

why do non-pro users fixate on the full version of photoshop? it's
*well* beyond anything they need.

all they need is photoshop elements, which is usually around $50 and is
well within 'impulse buy' territory. sometimes it's even bundled for
free with hardware so they don't even need to act on an impulse. they
already have it.

meanwhile, pros will not think twice about buying the full photoshop
because they know that it's the only thing that will do what they need.
you could call that an impulse buy.

On 2012-07-29 09:43:50 -0700, "William Sommerwerck"
said:

Since then however, cost cutting seems to have excluded
the inclusion of a manual of any type, and leaving the user
to find advice in the Adobe help files, forums, or some of
the details found in the Photoshop User, or NAPP Podcasts.

This has, unfortunately, has become pretty much the standard for almost all
software. It wouldn't be so bad if the documentation were of consistently
high quality -- but it isn't.

Regardless, what I was talking was things that are not necessarily answered
in a user manual. And if they are, they should be pulled out and displayed
on the Website.

Time for you to be specific.
What is the problem you need solved, and with which Adobe product?
While there are quite a number of Photoshop users in the photo groups
not all use it. You should consider posting your Photoshop gripe and
question where it would be more appropriate, alt.graphics.photoshop, or
comp.graphics.apps.photoshop.

As for the Adobe video products I can offer no solution as I am locked
into still photography, with little interest in video.

I would also recommend some of the Kelby publications and checking some
of their online offerings.

--
Regards,

Savageduck

"nospam" wrote in message news:
:
In article , David Ruether
wrote:

And, for those interested in
just a good photo editor (but without some of the specialty
functions of PhotoShop that most users don't need), there is
the free Gimp 2.

the gimp is roughly where photoshop was ten years ago.

photoshop elements is dirt cheap and does much more than what most
non-pros need.

Gimp *2* is a very good program (better than my earlier
Elements), and it is free (and the current Elements is
"infinitely" more expensive, and not all that cheap - and
it is also full of a lot of VERY amateur-level crap, which
I prefer not to have in a "serious" editor...;-).
--DR

Let's just say that the last time I looked at the Adobe site, it was a mess.
It doesn't explain //anything//.