Thoughts on Picture Window Pro?

[Don Day]

This product by Digital Light and Color (http://www.dl-c.com) is not mentioned in articles or forums as much as Adobe's Photoshop, yet it seems to have a lot of features aimed pretty squarely at the most common needs of digital photographers, whereas Photoshop seems to be turning top-heavy in functionality that one might use little or never. What are your impressions about PW Pro vs Photoshop for bread-and-butter digital photo tweaking--the things you do often?  One of my common needs is to tweak the contrast on an irregular area. And I often need to dig detail out of scanned highlights.  Which product makes those kinds of operations easier?  I am getting by right now on Adobe Photoshop Elements 5, and feel like I'm still being kept from "the keys to the kingdom" in terms of easy fixup of those common problems, and I'm ready to upgrade.

[GeneW]

Don, Picture Window Pro is a great program. Small and fast and with deep functionality.

Having said that, I quit using my copy in favour of full version Photoshop. PWP works by creating a 'new' image every time you make an alteration, so you can compare the two. I prefer working with layers, which PWP doesn't have. It's just a different paradigm, but I'm a layers person. I liked PWP -- just couldn't quite adjust to its way of working.

Gene

[Don Day]

Then let me ask, how does Silverfast AI compare with PWP and Photoshop? I have used the Silverfast SE edition, but I did not find the workflow wizard very helpful, and the choice of film profiles matched nothing that I actually use. Indeed, most of the profiles belonged to now-extinct films, indicating perhaps the age of the bundled software. I did get some fine results from the HDR function, which is one of the reasons I am interested in upgrading to something that offers better dynamic range and zonal correction tools.

[PentaxKman]

I use PWP as my main editing software.  I spwnt the $90 for the full version, and I haven't regretted it.  I actually prefer, in my limited experience, the way they create a new image everytime vs. photoshops layers.  However, that being said, I haven't used PS much, and the little bit I have the layers were quite confusing to me.  Although I do find that the multiple images that PWP creates can be a little cumbersome after a bit.

Overall I find that it does most everything that I need to do right now for editing, although I think I will get PS CS2 when I can afford it.  That's my $.02...

[Don Day]

Thanks for that input--it does help in comparing features vs usability (which most companies seem to be forgetting about in their mad scramble for feature competitiveness).

[Alan Gage]

There's always Paint Shop Pro too, which last I knew sold for around $100. Pretty powerful program and well liked by many. I'm pretty sure it does layers and many other things Photoshop does.

Alan

[ImageMaker]

Or, even more alternately, there's 100% free GIMP, which I know for certain does layers, beziers, gradients -- in fact, pretty much everything you can do with PS except save an operation for application to multiple images (there may be a way to do that, too -- I haven't looked that hard).

I use GIMP for anything that requires real editing...

[P C Headland]

.... except save an operation for application to multiple images (there may be a way to do that, too -- I haven't looked that hard).

...

I think Script-Fu is your answer.  Not gone into it myself, but you can do pretty much anything with it.

[ImageMaker]

Probably so, Paul, but last time I tried to look at it, script-fu was *very* poorly documented -- like not at all.  The documentation for GIMP has improved mightily in the last couple years, though, so I might have to look for more information on that; it could be useful for things like automatically applying the curves/levels work to "save" extremely thin negs and similar stuff that's otherwise very labor intensive...