Image Optimize -- meanings

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greenmorpher
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Image Optimize -- meanings

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Hello Martin

Can you explain what "width" means in the Digital Camera|Image Optimize dialog and what should I expect from altering it quite a lot? (Yes, I have tried altering it quite a lot so that gross distortion of colour happens, but I'm not sure what I am looking at.)

Cheers, Geoff

Geoffrey Heard, Business Writer & Publisher

"Type & Layout: Are you communicating or just making pretty shapes" -- Revealed! The secrets of how you can use type and layout to turbocharge your messages in print. See the book at http://www.worsleypress.com
Martin Huber
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Re: Image Optimize -- meanings

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greenmorpher hat geschrieben:Can you explain what "width" means in the Digital Camera|Image Optimize dialog
Width is used to stretch the light/shadow values linearly.
greenmorpher hat geschrieben:and what should I expect from altering it quite a lot?
A very ugly image :-) You really shouldn't set the width value to high, because a value to high may cut off picture values.
I can't tell you a general upper limit, but more than 30% is rarely needed. Most of the time it should be below 20% (in my experience).

Martin
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greenmorpher
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Re: Image Optimize -- meanings

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Thanks, Martin.

Something else that strikes me in the same dialog -- gamma is given as a percentage. Normally gamma is something that works around one -- "1" -- for example, in PL32's Histogram Correction tool.

What is the relationship of the gamma as a percentage in the Image Optimize filter to the figure in the Histogram Correction tool and why can't they be expressed in the same terms?

By the way, I believe these sorts of explanations should appear for every tool and filter in the Help.

Cheers, Geoff

Geoffrey Heard, Business Writer & Publisher

"Type & Layout: Are you communicating or just making pretty shapes" -- Revealed! The secrets of how you can use type and layout to turbocharge your messages in print. See the book at http://www.worsleypress.com
Martin Huber
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Re: Image Optimize -- meanings

Beitrag von Martin Huber »

greenmorpher hat geschrieben:Something else that strikes me in the same dialog -- gamma is given as a percentage. Normally gamma is something that works around one -- "1" -- for example, in PL32's Histogram Correction tool.

What is the relationship of the gamma as a percentage in the Image Optimize filter to the figure in the Histogram Correction tool and why can't they be expressed in the same terms?
Shadow: 0% corresponds to 1 and 100% corresponds to 2.
Light: 0% corresponds to 1, too, and 100% corresponds to 0.5.
greenmorpher hat geschrieben:By the way, I believe these sorts of explanations should appear for every tool and filter in the Help.
I don't think so. Of course experienced users are interested in this kind of information, but for most users it is distracting. They just want to know, how to use a function.

Martin
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greenmorpher
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Re: Image Optimize -- meanings

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Martin Huber hat geschrieben:
greenmorpher hat geschrieben:Something else that strikes me in the same dialog -- gamma is given as a percentage. Normally gamma is something that works around one -- "1" -- for example, in PL32's Histogram Correction tool.

What is the relationship of the gamma as a percentage in the Image Optimize filter to the figure in the Histogram Correction tool and why can't they be expressed in the same terms?
Shadow: 0% corresponds to 1 and 100% corresponds to 2.
Light: 0% corresponds to 1, too, and 100% corresponds to 0.5.
Huh? So you can INCREASE gamma -- contrast -- above "1", but NOT decrease it using this tool? You can increase it OR decrease it (change the gamma to below "1") in the Histogram Correction tool. Why not in this one too? One would think that capability MUST be available if all images are capable of being optimized using Image Optimize.

Since there is a linear relationship between the usual gamma measure based around "1", why not use it in this tool so it is in line with others rather than using percentages? Users get confused with this stuff! We really need this stuff!
Martin Huber hat geschrieben:
greenmorpher hat geschrieben:By the way, I believe these sorts of explanations should appear for every tool and filter in the Help.
I don't think so. Of course experienced users are interested in this kind of information, but for most users it is distracting. They just want to know, how to use a function.
Dammit, Martin, I am seriously offended.

That is the kind of rubbish that "experts" come out with when they want to stop others becoming experts. You have a marvellous program here, just tell us what is supposed to be going on so we can understand it and that will help us apply the appropriate tool and use it in the best way. What you are suggesting is analogous to teaching someone words but not allowing them to know the meanings or how to put them together to make sentences.

I am experienced in computer use, DTP and photography back in the dark (room) ages, but I am struggling with understanding this.

Speaking in my other role as a small business marketing consultant, I suggest you really ought to think about your statement. You are telling me, a user, what I want, as a user. You are telling me that I don't want what I have asked for. Do you really think you are qualified to do that?

Let me make it clear, I am a USER, I am NOT an
experienced user
in this kind of work, BUT I want to become a more experienced user and to become that, I need to know what underlies tools so I can get a grasp of the processes you have given me to work with and make the best use of those processes through the best and most appropriate choice and use of the tools.

But rather than listen to this user, you are telling me that I don't want what I asked for! A simple explanation! Why don't you want to give that information to users?

If you don't give us information, how on earth can we BECOME expert users?

I would also suggest that what is actually going on here is that you guys are engineers who enjoy making the program but dislike writing the manual. May I suggest you hire someone to do it for you. The PL32 program is brilliant, your suport is normally very good, but the manual/help is pretty pathetic.

Cheers

Geoff

MarketNOW with Geoffrey Heard
Practical, Ethical Marketing - PR - Advertising
Tel: (03) 9583 0788 / 0418 330 911
Email: marketyman@googlemail.com
http://www.marketnow.com.au

08:52 AM, March 3, 2008
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Hoogo
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Re: Image Optimize -- meanings

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Users are difficult and very different creatures ;)

I also talk to users of my programs (nothing about graphic, its something about logistic for our clients). It depends on who I'm talking to how I explain something. Sometimes I can tell by the silence on the phone that I waste my time with more precise explanations, sometimes I say a few words and the users tell me why something won't work. Some users call me because "... the internet-program does not work...", others ask me what ports they have to unlock in their firewall. Some users asked me about things in Excel I never heard of, while I've met others that read a whole column of numbers in their excel, type it into their calculator, just to move the result into their Excel-Sheet again. Some understand something at first glance, others would not find the correct position to sleep if gravity would not aid them. But all in all I have the feeling of living in a dilbert-comic, if you tell about a simple, bad solution and about a more complex, but working one, the simple one is chosen. Oh, and the users are most of the time more clever than their managers.

Back to graphics.
Typical questions in a photo-forum are how to crop a picture, how to turn it to black and white and how to do a color-key. If they can choose between a bad, but simple solution and a function that needs 2 clicks more, the simple solution is usually chosen. Write "click here to make it darker", and they like the simplicity, write "click here to convert a gamma 2.2 into a linear one" and some may say that other programs are much easier. Guess what a Katrin Eismann wrote in their masking-book about layer-modes? Nothing useful if you want to know what the layer-modes really do. Guess whos books most readers like? Scott Kelby, because its so simple. There is simply no solution that fits everyone. And writing some understandable help files really sucks a lot of time when you aren't a writer. These lines took me about an hour, my help files took even less :mrgreen:

What I want to say is: I guess it is not the intention to keep the users stupid when a help-file is too meaningless. At least for me I can say that an exact description is just a waste of time, because that is just the thing that most of my users do not even like. I only learn about really needed things when I get feedback. And you won't belive how many of my emails are not answered - because the question is too complicated. I will never know what's needed.

This is just MY point of view - I cannot speak for Gerhard and Martin, their position might be totally different.

By the way: NoSi is currently setting up a wiki, if I did understand it correctly it shall contain the handbook for the beginning.
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greenmorpher
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Re: Image Optimize -- meanings

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True enough, Hoogo, but it is beside the point. When I write a long ad, for instance, wisth lots of words, I always put in lots of sub-headings which are well marked by e.g. bolding and different type style, so that those who don't wish to know more information can skim through and gather the main points of what I am saying by bouncing along on the sub-heads.

But there are lots of other people who DO want to know more and who would ask better questions if they were offered more. They might not want to know more about EVERYTHING, but they will want to know more about SOME things, so they will bounce along the sub-heads until they come to a part that is of particular interest to them, and they will read that part in full.

Then there are others who really do want to know all I can offer them. So they simply use the sub-heads as a guide and then read everything.


The point is: the information MUST be available so users can advance their knowledge in the direction they want to go.

Canvas X's manual is 941 pages, GraphicConverter's manual is 348 pages, PhotoLine's is 280. PhotoLine is not as complex as Canvas X in many respects, but it IS as complex or more complex in others, and it is certainly more complex then GraphicConverter. PL32's manual should run to at least 500 pages with appropriate explanations and illustrations of tools, in my view.

I may never look at the DTP stuff -- Canvas does me very well for that -- but I certainly want lots more detail on image editing and camera interfacing so I can work through it in detail and (try to) understand where I am going, and I would certainly work right through the type manipulation stuff. Fpor example, how do I decide whether to use Histrogram Correction or Imnage Optimize? I'm never going to do enough day-in-day-out work to learn from the experience of doing hundreds of pix, but if I understand the what underlies the tools, I can make an informed decision -- and understand they that decision is wrong sometimes and the alternative is better.

Cheers, Geoff :?

Geoffrey Heard, Business Writer & Publisher

"Type & Layout: Are you communicating or just making pretty shapes" -- Revealed! The secrets of how you can use type and layout to turbocharge your messages in print. See the book at http://www.worsleypress.com
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NoSi
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Re: Image Optimize -- meanings

Beitrag von NoSi »

Hoogo hat geschrieben:By the way: NoSi is currently setting up a wiki, if I did understand it correctly it shall contain the handbook for the beginning.
The WIKI shall contain tipps and tricks as "step by step" descriptions and/or video descriptions. The goal is not a replacement of the manual, it shall be a supplement for it.

Setup is done (http://pl.nosi.de), currently German only. If someone wants to support the wiki, but English, let me know.In this case I will add the required informations in English and introduce an "English-spoken Area". Maybe this will be a plattform that offers useful hints to all - because tipps may be translated from another autor (DE-EN and vice versa).

Greets,
NoSi
Screencasts zu Photoline: http://www.buoa.de • Win 10x64 / PL64, immer und ausschließlich die aktuellste Beta-Version.
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Hoogo
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Re: Image Optimize -- meanings

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I thought the wiki would start with the text from the handbook? :cry:
But at least we can upload text from it and keep it's structure. Well, I think I have to have a closer look at a wiki...
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greenmorpher
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Re: Image Optimize -- meanings

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I don't know what a "Wiki" is or how it works. I just want to know what the tools are in PL32 and how they work.

Cheers, Geoff

Geoffrey Heard, Business Writer & Publisher

"Type & Layout: Are you communicating or just making pretty shapes" -- Revealed! The secrets of how you can use type and layout to turbocharge your messages in print. See the book at http://www.worsleypress.com