Basic image manipulation

[Andrew MacKay]

Right at the moment I'm using both lightroom and PM in my workflow... The only reasion for this is the realy great basic image tweeks I can do in lightroom (Straighten crop, curves tweaks etc) but find this workflow very cumbersom... Kirk, any clues when we might see some of these features in PM ... I'm holding off renewing my licence and upgrading to 4.5 for this reasion ....

[Kirk Baker]

Andrew,

Right at the moment I'm using both lightroom and PM in my workflow... The only reasion for this is the realy great basic image tweeks I can do in lightroom (Straighten crop, curves tweaks etc) but find this workflow very cumbersom... Kirk, any clues when we might see some of these features in PM ... I'm holding off renewing my licence and upgrading to 4.5 for this reasion ....

Those features won't be added as a point release to 4.5.

It would help if you would fill me in on what the "etc" part is...

-Kirk

[vAfotoriporter]

I would also welcome an all in one, clever enough image editing tool. PM is great for sorting, IPTC editing, selecting, sending, and so on. What I miss from PM....do I really miss them? should PM know tehese things? I'm not sure maybe it would be another kind of program not PM like)....what I use other programs is to edit the image. Cropping is great but I often produce images not print ready. They need white balance and exposure correction, some straightening, rarely some crop. I am looking for my best workflow. At the moment I use PM and Phase One C1 Pro. I don't like PhotoShop because it is not so productive on hundreds of images as C1 Pro. Aperture seems to be quite interresting (also because IPTC, rating, keywording and so on is included) but I don't own a Mac yet. That leaves Lightroom, that I am only getting familiar with. It seems a bit slow on its own without adding large amount of images to it. So I seem to stay with C1 pro.

If PM or merely a more extended PM could offer WB and exposure correction with rotationg besides the allready existing ability to crop the images, maybe I wouldn't even use any other software on the most part. I really don't usually need other editing.

I am VERY curious about your full featured database plans, as I am currently working on building my archive on a database. I don't know if you would like to launch a new software for it (presumably compatible with PM) or simpli include it in PM but I really can't wait to see what will it offer.

[robok]

I agree on the basic adjustments -- for me it would be for seeing if any bad shots even have the possibility to be saved in a Raw converter.  I think Exposure and a fill light for me.  This would not be a final edit, just a quick test to see if it is worth going forward.

[Andrew MacKay]

If and when you have a chance Kirk have a look at Lightrooms Develop module, If you could manage to implement 80% of what that does I'd be one happy camper

Crop with rotation (with that nice grid that both lightroom and picassa have)
White blance picker - and the ability to store a preset
Exposure correction (upto say 1 stop either side)
Some highlight recovery
Some Fill light recovery

Like robok, I'm looking to see if the image is worth saving ... OR have ten minutes to Ingest, Select, Caption, Tweek and FTP 4-5 shots from the 1st half of a game before the second half starts. If I didn't have to switch into Photoshop or more recently Lightroom to do the necessary little tweeks life would be a lot easier.

PM or Email me if I can help further.

Andrew

[dsidaway]

I have to agree with Andrew MacKay, for those of us who work in the "needed it 5 minutes ago" world, not having to enter Photoshop at all when working from the stands between periods could help speed things up... particularily a rotate with crop. Those of us in the newspaper world probably have a department at the paper who can tweek the rest.

Dave

[FVlcek]

Hi Kirk, if I may add to this, I would love to see some basic image controls integrated into PM.

Levels with eyedroppers for single click setting of white/black/gray point (and of course levels for R/G/B individually)
Autolevels (with adjustable percent for clipped highlights/shadows, like in PS)
USM

These three are essential in my opinion. I can leave the major adjustments for the picturedesk with their calibrated monitors, not my little laptop under some god-knows-what lighting.

Dodge/Burn would help too, but I can always run PS for that occassional photo that needs it.
Curves wouldn't be bad, but what can't be done with levels shouldn't be done on a news photo anyway... If it needs major manipulation, I should have shot it better, or fire up photoshop to do it...

Anyway, especially with new Reuters guidelines on photo adjustments, more is not needed. I don't want PM to become another slow program like Lightroom

And even better, if you could figure out a way to save these settings in the XMP data, and apply them to the file just at saving/FTPing/... time, that could work well too.

Frantisek

[FVlcek]

Oops, forgot to add, Rotatable crop.

[Tony Hall]

I'd like to add a very unoriginal "Me Too"!

For me, basic image manipulation is all that I'm missing from PM - for those all too frequent..."Where are your pictures? We're off-stone in 2 minutes!" moments. 

While I appreciate there's been some major improvements with 4.5, sadly there was nothing, for me, that warranted upgrading. Altho' the enlargeable previews in the stationary pad, ability to arbitrarily rearrange thumbnails, browser tabs (Mac) and UI improvements would be nice - but not enough, you did such a nice job on 4.4 that I'm happy to stick with it. However, I'll eagerly look forward to see what will be added for 4.6.

Cheers,
Tony

[Wolvie]

A similar thread was started awhile back:
http://forums.camerabits.com/index.php?topic=355.msg2106#msg2106

I love PM the way it is now, don't get me wrong, but adding two basic editing tools, even if I had to pay $40 or $50 more would be worth it!  Working on a deadline basis, I, too, would really like to see basic tools like tone control (H,M,S) or level control (no auto please) and rotation.    Switching back and forth waiting for images to load in te editing program eats away at valuable time on deadline.

May be there could be a PJ version (PM-rush!) in the future???  Swap out the web page creation stuff for editing tools like the two above and may be a couple of more. 

[k_bennett]

I'm not so sure I want PM to be an image editing program -- it's already the best image browser out there for the Mac platform, and I don't want to see it turn into bloatware.

That said, it is very easy to integrate PM and Photoshop's Adobe Raw Converter in such a way as to mostly automate your workflow. By selecting the raw images you'd like to process, and then Image>Edit Photos, you'll open the ACR window with all of your selected photos. It's easy to make the needed adjustments in ACR, then either 1) save out your final images, or 2) go back to Photo Mechanic and use the Image>Send to Droplet command to send your selections to a Photoshop Action saved as a Droplet. I have several droplets which process photos into various sizes and file types, and save them into various folders. (Choice 3, of course, is to open them all into Photoshop, but I think the consensus here is that we're trying to avoid that.)

If you shoot a JPEG workflow, my understanding is that Photoshop CS3 will allow you to 'process' your JPEGs through ACR in the same way that you would a RAW file. (This is similar to Lightroom, which has the same processing interface for all file types.)

This PM and ACR workflow seems to me very similar to what you all are requesting.

--Ken

[Wolvie]

This PM and ACR workflow seems to me very similar to what you all are requesting.
--Ken

I don't know about the others who are deadline oriented, but what I would like is only use ONE program to transmit photos to clients or my server.  Adding editing tools for jpeg files would make PM the most efficient application in the marketplace to do that for those of us where time is of the essence. 

For RAW shooters on deadline they could use ACR or whatever their fancy to convert the files in the background while editing a current file.  What would likely be a problem CB is adding the RAW conversion module and I don't think PM needs to have a RAW convertors, just an application to edit jpegs for us news/sports guys.

[vAfotoriporter]

For RAW shooters on deadline they could use ACR or whatever their fancy to convert the files in the background while editing a current file.  What would likely be a problem CB is adding the RAW conversion module and I don't think PM needs to have a RAW convertors, just an application to edit jpegs for us news/sports guys.

I don't agree completely. It wouldn't hurt anyone if there would be a RAW converter included, but help those who use RAW (like myself). If Camera Bits can include the RAW converter some time I hope to see it. If they cannot I won't be complaining for this.

And similarly basic editing is a must have for many guys yet others don't want to see it in PM. But if it would be there and it wouldn't have a cost of speed or efficiency nobody would be hurt. There are so many options in PM one doesn't or rarely use because they don't need it but others may still need them.

[Giles]

At risk of being repetitive, I'd love to see an 'auto-levels' option.  This feature alone would shave off couple of steps and much time from my existing on-site workflow.

Regards,
Giles
 

[Shadow]

A lot of people seem to be worried that adding image-editing features to PM would bloat the programme and make it slow and cumbersome. On a Mac, wouldn't the system's own core-image engine be able to handle most the editing work? Would adding such features really bloat the programme they way many are predicting?