I was surprised, but what is your most used/favourite Photography App that you use ??

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I want to know, what is your most used, or favourite piece of Photography Software that you use and why ? I was mucking around the other day and doing some Post Processing, and yet again i used a Plugin that erases anything you want from a photo and make it look like there was nothing there. And i thought without this App/Plugin some of my images just wouldn't look as they do now, and i wouldn't of been happy with them what so ever.
That Plugin was Snapheal Pro.

Snapheal Pro is made by one of my favourite companies that makes Photography Apps for iOS and Mac OS X. They make the likes of Colour Strokes, FX Photo Studio/Pro, SnapHeal/Pro and there latest creation Intensify and the Pro version. I have to admit I'm a big fan of the Macphun stuff as i have all there Apps on my Mac and iPhone and iPad Mini because there UI is so simple to use and navigate around, yet so very powerful under the hood.
I have used the Latter Intensify Pro as a Plugin to Aperture for Post Processing for the last 2 weeks, and haven't touched my NIK Suite at all.
But this is about Snapheal Pro.

I used Snapheal when it first came out and fell in love with it. I went through a lot of images and got rid of those little things that niggle us in a image and you wish you could get rid of it. That is where Snapheal or more so now the Pro version comes in. I bought the Pro version when i found out that they had re-written it as in a new algorithm for enhanced colour control and image editing, and they had done something they haven't done before and made it as either a stand alone App or as a Plugin for Aperture, Adobe LR, Photoshop Elements and Photoshop, and as most know, i have recently bought Aperture so this to me was a bonus.
Snapheal Pro works well in Aperture as a Plugin as it has a better UI than the non pro version for a better workflow for the Professional. With this is in mind you have a brush to brush the area you want erased, a eraser to fine tune the area and erase the brushed area, or you can use the Lasso tool in Polygonal or Free to use as your selection tool.

Now to the App itself, all you have to do, is colour in the area you want removed and then you have 3 choices to choose from for the erasing part of it, and they are Global, Dynamic, Local. If you select the Global mode, you want to erase larger objects on the image, Dynamic, if you want to erase perfections on the skin and small objects, and lastly Local, if you want to erase small objects, but more in nature that is the sky, clouds, sand ocean, fields. As well you have Normal, high and Highest precision and this makes it take longer to do what it does and the better the result is. I usually am on the Highest as i have time to burn lol
You can also zoom in to really fine tune it, and in one image 4000x6000 i could zoom in to 567% and still the Pixels where small.
In the Snapheal Pro window you have the choice for viewing side by side or you can click the eye and it shows the before shot, release and it shows the erased shot.

What gets me about this App, and i dont want to bore you too much more, but apart from the Erasing of objects, you also have a clone tool, that works amazingly good and that is determined by the brush size, you can retouch your images with Mask retouch with all the Temp, Tint, Saturation, Shadows, Clarity and so on and a Blurring Brush too.
Or you can just retouch the image, just like you can in Photoshop, iPhoto, Aperture and all those other Photography Apps.

I have to admit, until i started to write about Snapheal Pro, being it at the top as my Favourite App, and even though i have used the other features in the past when it was just Snapheal, it didn't really hit home that it could do sooooo much. That comes down to having Aperture now for my retouching and all those things you do to a image to make it the best it can be.
Snapheal Pro as a Plugin is just brilliant, and i use it all the time to get rid of those little imperfections that you just dont want in a photo.
Before i would of said that Aperture is my Favourite App, and it still is, but this comes in a close 2nd, to NIK Suite and then the new Intensify Pro that Macphun has just bought out as well. I used the trial for the last 2 weeks and im thinking of getting that too, as you just cant have too many tools to help you reach your potential in the Photography world lol

PS I just noticed they are having a promotion on Snapheal Pro and Intensify ATM if interested . . I am in no way affiliated with this company, i just love their products and want to share :)
Creative Kit - Save 20%

Here is a little one i just did to show off :) PS this had Shadows and the Skids on it before i tricked my son into thinking this was a special helicopter lol
l9aUY3h.jpg
 
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LOL you know mine.
Workflow max mainly done in Lightroom5.
HDR processing done in Photomatix Pro.
Shadow Mapping done using layers in CS6.

Now sadly I don't really need CS6 for this, I only really use the layer still like Hard Light which I could use GIMP for. But although I love GIMP, its horrid with large photos and has no plugins for Lr.
 
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Yea mine is Aperture really, but i promised someone i would show a little love to SnapHeal Pro, which is shown to be so much better than the PS CS6 Equivalent. The only down fall is its not done in real time, but i think this is why it has something over PS CS6. It can sometimes take a good 1-2 minutes if i have a intricate erase to do.

I did end up getting Photomatix Pro as well with the Aperture Plugin and its nice to use. Now to work out the Bracketing on my Nokin :)
 
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Lightrooms spot healing tool is pretty good. I can remove people with it out of the photos. Its basically very similar to PS clone stamp tool. But more user friendly. I hate that you got tied into Aperture. They really need to update the program. I would love to have used it as to keep things more Apple oriented. But even LR4 had more features and better tools at the time.
 
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I hate that you got tied into Aperture.

HAHA Im happy to be here, and like you said, it does keep me in the Apple loop, and thats cool, because when its open, i have ALL my iPhone, iPad Mini and my Photo Stream at my finger tips as well, without having to move, change open other Apps and so on.
Im doing well with the Plugins i have, and am friendly with a certain Developer and I'm getting a taste of his offerings as well.
Im happy and thats what matters ;P
 
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I flit around between programs. I am enjoying Snapheal Pro a lot, but I also love Snapseed and hate Google for having cancelled the Mac version! Of course I still use Photoshop (an older version, but it still runs!) but the Mavericks upgrade finally broke my Perfect Photo Suite, I'll have to break down and get the forthcoming v8 at some point.
 
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HAHA Im happy to be here, and like you said, it does keep me in the Apple loop, and thats cool, ..............

Yea a big reason to stick with Aperture is that eventually Apple may actually release an iOS version. I really wished Adobe would with Lr.

I shoot in RAW only, so I have to have something powerful like Lr or Aperture.
 
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Hey TattooedMac,
Have you tried the latest release of Pixlemator? 3.0 FX?

I downloaded the trail to try it out. So far, hehe its proving to be a PS replacement for me.
Would like more integration with Lr, but will look more into that.

Now I have used GIMP and Photoshop for so long to be honest, I often get confused on what I am using and start looking for stuff thats in one or the other. GIMP is great none the less, but let me be honest. While I would use GIMP hands down for web graphics as its free and I am so accustomed to it, it becomes second nature. The downfall to GIMP as a photo editor is two major things they have YET to update in the program. 1) 16bit RGB color. It uses 8bit that lacks the tonal depth needed for serious photography. 2) None destructive photo editing. While #2 can be worked around, #1 is the biggest deal breaker to me and others. Another issue is that GIMP doesn't handle large files very good at all. Even with 2 layer 5500 x 3500, rendering on my Mac Mini can still take up to 30 seconds to render even the simplest changes. This take away from productivity and discourages creative changes.

That said, I decided to download the latest Pixlemator. For years I have honestly considered this as just a paid-for version of GIMP. Mainly due to the lack of 16bit color. So here I go trying it out last night and one of the first things I notice as it has more color options (like ProPhoto RGB), professional UI and none destructive editing. Little more in depth research I found out that its is also now 16bit color. Which puts it in a whole other ball park from GIMP. I still have to play around with the program, but so far for about 30 USD its looking like a strong replacement for my slightly unpaid for version of that other image program (roll eyes). I am going to butcher this program and push its limits to see how it performs and will post more finding.. But so far I am liking it..

Cheers,
Joe
 
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Hey TattooedMac,
Have you tried the latest release of Pixlemator? 3.0 FX?

Cheers,
Joe

Hey Joe, yea mate, i have been using Pixelmator for quite some time now. As you have seen, it is a powerful piece of code, and very much so a replacement for GIMP or PS if you so need to. They have a great forum, and I'm always over there looking for answers, and Tut's (I'm not a big graphic designer/manipulator) but for things that i do do, i can easily find what i need.
If you want a good look at what it does, goto their site and as you scroll down click on the tabs and watch the videos, as you will be happy i believe once you have. They have and are looking at the Professional now, as 2 updates back, they added support for CMYK Printing support, and people asked for it, and they delivered.
Its a great little App, and for the size of 36MB and $30 how can you not love it ?? :)

But to answer your question . . . Yes lol ;P
 
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Hmm, found major bug in Pm 3.0. In many of my HDRs, I will create two Tiffs. One is a Enhanced export from Photomatix Pro, the other is a Surreal Greyscale image to layer over the top of the enhanced image and use Hard Light as the layer open, dropping the transparency down until the colors and amount of detail this brings out looks good.

Now I do this all the time in PS when just Open as Layers in Lr. Currently don't have a plugin for that for Pixelmator. First I tried to open one image then drag and drop the second image in. It either crashes the program, or the new image layers turns all Yellow. So I went to try what the Tutorials said to do and just open the first image then use the Image Navigator to drop the new images in as layers. Same deal.. This was half of what I was wanting Pm for.. Sadly I may have to wait for bug fixes. :(
 
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Hands down, Photoshop. Followed by Capture 1. I use a few plugins from Topaz, Photomatrix, PTGui, Pano2VR, Bridge and last and most infrequent use is Lightroom.

I'm currently on CSPS6, no CC in my future for my three licenses.
 
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Hmm, found major bug in Pm 3.0. In many of my HDRs, I will create two Tiffs. One is a Enhanced export from Photomatix Pro, the other is a Surreal Greyscale image to layer over the top of the enhanced image and use Hard Light as the layer open, dropping the transparency down until the colors and amount of detail this brings out looks good.

Now I do this all the time in PS when just Open as Layers in Lr. Currently don't have a plugin for that for Pixelmator. First I tried to open one image then drag and drop the second image in. It either crashes the program, or the new image layers turns all Yellow. So I went to try what the Tutorials said to do and just open the first image then use the Image Navigator to drop the new images in as layers. Same deal.. This was half of what I was wanting Pm for.. Sadly I may have to wait for bug fixes. :(

Point me to the Tut, and ill try and replicate what your doing, as i have a MBP i7 but 2.9GHz and 8GB.
Did you have anything else open, ?? I suppose it shouldn't matter now in Mavericks with Nap Time going on. . . .
Did you send them off a Bug Report ??
 
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Point me to the Tut, and ill try and replicate what your doing, as i have a MBP i7 but 2.9GHz and 8GB.
Did you have anything else open, ?? I suppose it shouldn't matter now in Mavericks with Nap Time going on. . . .
Did you send them off a Bug Report ??

I have 6 or less running apps open at a given time, sometimes maybe 7 seldom more then 8. In this case iTune of course, NAS Navigator2 (idling in background), Lr, Mail, Safari and Pixelmator. But i7 2.6Ghz Quad Core with 8GB RAM is more then powerful enough.

I havent sent in a bug report yet. The ex-programmer side of me wants to dig deeper into why this is happening before sending in information. I have developed and beta tested so much its like 2nd nature for me to dig deeper when something crashes. I haven't messed with it today, but I suspect could have something to do with file formats and pallet used. After I get a little more info I will shoot them the crash report and my system report so then can narrow down what happening or show them whats causing this.

But its basically this, open Lr, export to Pm, drag and drop in another photo either from image viewer or from Lr and you will either end up with a yellow layer or a crashed program. It shouldn't do this, I have something going on they must have missed when beta testing.


EDIT:

Ok found out what the issue is. So now I can shoot them a proper bug report. You can open a 16bit color file as the initial layer/background. But if you try to bring in any other 16bit color file, via drag-in-drop or via the Photo browser as an additional layer it corrupts the image brought in, or in most cases just crashes the program. 16bit is a new feature added in this release BTW. So me found a buggy.. Now it doesn't matter the file format, Tiff, DNG, Jpeg. As if the file is in 8bit, the program works as expected. You can drag and drop any 8bit color file and it works very good. But 16bit color files crash it when brought in as a layer.
 
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And found in 34 mins Well done ;)

I bet they will be happy to hear about it too, as thats seems like a Major bug to me.
 
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And found in 34 mins Well done ;)
......

Thanks :)

Not sure how they missed this to be honest. Then again I never used 16bit color or TIFF until I started photo editing.

What prob happened is they tested it by opening a 16bit TIFF and thought it was all good. Then tested the other photographic features with Jpegs which are 8bit only anyway. You can even open a 16bit image, then drop a 8 bit on top as a new layers and it still works fine.


This has got me thinking though, don't everyone panic.. LOL
How much picture quality is really lost when going to 8bit. I mean we export to jpeg all the time and everything seems honky dory. Although if someone wanted photos for print, I would put them on CD as 16bit color TIFFs.
If I had my export to Photomatix set to 8bit color instead of 16bit I would have never noticed this bug. Its when I tried to overlay two HDR images to get a super HDR that I ran into this.

Incase your wondering what I was doing.. I take the normal HDR on top, then add the shadow mapped HDR (b/w one) and layer the B/W HDR over the normal and choose Hard Light and drop the transparency down to like 35-50% to get the final pic below. It adds more detail..

JoeJacksonPhotography-1.jpg

JoeJacksonPhotography-2.jpg

JoeJacksonPhotography-3.jpg
 
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Very cool. I might have to try some of that stuff, as i only have at the moment, i set of ev +/- images that i might try to use and play with. Im still really only learning my way around Aperture, now with all the plugins i have.
But it certainly does make a difference.This is where the tripod comes into its own :)
 
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Got an UPDATE: Reply of Pixelmator Team
Hi Joe,

Thanks for reporting this. It seems to be a known issue, and we're currently working to get it fixed. As you've already found out, it does happen only with 16-bits/channel images when you drag and drop them onto the canvas, however, it happens because Pixelmator supports only 8-bits/channel images, and the conversation from 16 bit/s to 8 bits/channel fails when you do it this way. This is what results in the image being displayed improperly. As a workaround, you could try opening images via File > Open (this will open them in a new document), and then copy and paste them into the other document (Edit > Copy/Paste).

Basically, Pixelmator currently supports only 8 bits/channel images, and upon opening all the images that have a deeper color depth (32/16 bits) are converted to 8bits/channel anyway. In other words, you cannot open 16 bits/channel image and export it in the same color depth. Under all circumstances it will be exported as a 8 bits/channel image. So if you have your images saved in 8 bits/channel ones, you can simply use them to avoid this issue from happening.

Sorry for any inconvenience.

Best, ................


Ok, two things that come from this. Pixelmator isn't really using 16bit color. It appears that was a mis conception being that it could open 16bit files. The second is while this may discourage many of us, the fact is Photoshop Elements does not either if you start using layers. I realized this testing it out this morning. If I open a file, it remains 16 bit (TBOMK). Now when I go to duplicate the background to a layer, it forces me to convert the image to 8bit.. Which as being a photo editing tool from Abobe no less, I expected more.

Now I know we kinda side railed this topic. My apologies. But I am hoping I can correct this with more input over the next day or so.

I removed Photoshop CS6 from my computer. I figured this is the best way I can truly get a new workflow going. Now while photoshop is good, it has more tools then I really need. Its a large toolset with a large toolset price tag also. Now Pixelmator and Elements are smaller toolsets but still offer the tools I need. They also have a smaller price tag. In other words why buy a 1200 piece craftsman toolset when a 100 piece Stanley set has all you need.

But thats what I am going to set out and try. Both Pm and Elements have a 30 day trail on them. At the end of this trail period I am going to purchase one or the other. Currely Pixelmator is a head in this race. While its only a editor, I don't need multiple file browsers. I already have Lightroom. So the one that comes with elements is not used. Also I am currently not liking the Elements UI. It seems of less quality and like they put in less effort on it. TTBOMK it used to look more like Photoshop, but now its almost gimmicky. Also Elements tries to be less of a program to its bigger brother Photoshop. While Pixelmator team is working at adding new stuff to Pm constantly.

So there is a lot to consider.

Time will tell..

Joe
 
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Ummm Yea ok . . . . . jk

Well you do have a lot to consider, but i love that you have the passion to push and follow things up, and thats interesting to know about Elements. IMHO (i just downloaded the trial of Elements) i think you will go Pixelmator way. I love the UI and how everything is there, or if it isn't you can put it there, meaning in Tools. I have a lot of fun with it, being a Vector App as well, but I'm in no ways a expert on it, but i have the time sitting here at home day in and out. I could take a break from C, Obj-C and Cocoa Touch

I will look forward to you take on it in a few weeks as i bet you will know in a week, F/N at the latest which way you will go ;)
 
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Ummm Yea ok . . . . . jk

Well you do have a lot to consider, but i love that you have the passion to push and follow things up, and thats interesting to know about Elements. IMHO (i just downloaded the trial of Elements) i think you will go Pixelmator way. I love the UI and how everything is there, or if it isn't you can put it there, meaning in Tools. I have a lot of fun with it, being a Vector App as well, but I'm in no ways a expert on it, but i have the time sitting here at home day in and out. I could take a break from C, Obj-C and Cocoa Touch

I will look forward to you take on it in a few weeks as i bet you will know in a week, F/N at the latest which way you will go ;)

I am still testing Pixelmator as well as Elements. I am finding I like Pm more and more. While Elements is proving to be frustrating. Seems like with PSE they went out of there way to make it so UN-photoshop that its just more bothersome to use. Take for example the EFFECTS tab that houses the Filters, Styles and Effects. What would this hurt to leave it the standard photoshop way. Not to mention, while they did seem to give the many of the features you would use in Photoshop, they took away the ability to customize the effects. I have got to the point were I really don't like using PSE at all. I don't find the UI friendly and Photomerge doesnt justify the 100USD price tag. Its horrible even at post production photo editing. IMHO Adobe should move Photomerge to Lightroom and just drop Elements all together. I got a gut feeling they may actually do this on the next version or two.

So, looks like I am adding Pixelmator to my tool belt.

EDIT:
Can anyone recommend a good Photostich program. I don't do Panoramas but maybe 1 or 2 times a year, but would like to have one as friendly as Photomerge is in PS. I have been trying Hugin, but its so overkill and complex. It just makes it overwhelming and quality seems like crap when I do get it to halfway work.
 

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