A few remarks from 1. time PL user

[Gerhard Huber]

35. Back to Autotransparency, according to help "The Autotransparency is similar to the Automask (chapter 6.3.6). The main difference is, that it doesn‘t create a mask but a transparency channel chapter 2.3.2". OK, so why in Channels palette I don't see A(lpha) channel?

It's the same as in PS (without P).

37. In benchmark drop down list there are items in German.

There are all actions listet. It's possible that not all are translated.

Gerhard

[Xyzzy]

Hello!

There is really no need to answer all these points!
This thread is about subjective perception and pretends to be nothing else! It doesn't try to be precise or objective. I am not trying to denigrate PL in any way- I wrote what I found & thought at given moment of time.
I am simply not a target clientele for PL.
Sorry for taking your time!

X.

[Koyaanis]

Gerhard, I have to agree with you on many points. Specifically every time you reply with "I don't understand this." I think I speak and understand English pretty well, it's the only language I know. But even I can't understand him in half of his comments, and he used very confusing English in those that I did understand .

I think, as you have already guessed, that he's just expressing his unfamiliarity with your software. It can take weeks to discover and use all the tools properly, the same amount of time as any decent software as feature-rich as yours is. I wonder how long it took him to learn how to use layers in PSP? Weeks or months? Surely it wasn't in one day, as he's expecting to learn ALL the tools in PL32. As well as his being locked into only one way of thinking now. Some of us are not so rigid/inflexible in our abilities to think, reason, and be creative. When some people are taught to stay inside of the lines with one color of paint with one brush and apply it in only one way, there they stay the rest of their lives, and are quite content to do so.

He does raise a few okay points, but those are minor ones, which you agreed might need be worth correcting. Which reminds me to ask something that I've been curious about. Are you the only one programming this software? Or is there a whole team of people writing and testing it? (forgive me for not reading credits and things to find out on my own, like you and others, I too get too busy with other things)

In any case, his posts made for an interesting read, and study, in how some can easily adapt to new things and others cannot. Those that cannot adapt, die. (PSP falls into that category now.)

[Ludger]

Yes, you're right, his brain's too fixed in PSP. So was mine, a year or so ago (not PSP but PS and PP, I never used PSP) ...

I tried PL 32 three times (?? since version 7...) before I bought it, but at least I never returned to PS or PP (even if some functions of these progs are still lacking in PL). So, very very good job.

Ludger

[lutz]

I believe "Xyzzels" comments might be quite helpful as they are pointing to parts of the interface which might be not as intuitive as they could be. I do agree with several of his points.

For example, I am also missing a "fit to window" button for the preview window in the filter dialogs. A 1:1 or 100% button would also be helpful.
Further, it would indeed be great if one could swtich quickly between a with/without filter preview and if one could reset any slider to neutral individually simply by right clicking on it. These enhancements could speed up the work nicely.
The current Light/Shadow tool in the english version 13 is missing the reset button and uses "Schutzbereich" instead of protected range.

Regarding naming conventions. OK, it was not God who coined the terms Curves, Levels, Adjustment Layer etc. But where is the advantage of using different terms for these in different programs? As far as I know these terms are not trademarked. A good reason to replace the standard terms might be the chance to introduce more clarity or simplicity. I do not see these kind of advantages in the discussed cases.
For people new to the program terms like "CLUT" are likely to be unnecesary barriers ( CLUT is not a word, Color Look Up Table is not very descriptive of the dialog box that one encounters and very few people will have ever heard of Color Look Up Tables). 99.9% of all tutorials on the web will use the term Curves.

[DJJohnson]

Okay, I'll have to agree from those points of view. I guess I can't see any harm in using the english language files making the whole program more familiar to the english-speaking crowd. And it won't increase the size of the program any. It would certainly bring in many more people willing to preview it more completely if they don't get continually frustrated by running into a translated-language stumbling-block. Which would only add those that would now turn to PhotoLine 32 as their editor of choice.

I like the features you'd like to see on the filter dialogues, but my fear is that some of the functions would then be duplicated. We already have the "Full Preview" option on all of them which I use often. But in using that it would be nice to disable the small extraneous preview in the filter/adjustment dialogues so I could see more of my full-preview image in the main editing window. My only fear is that if these functions are duplicated in adjustable-size before/after previews in each and every filter or option, then it would make the program turn into over-sized and slow bloat-ware. The very thing that I despise about those programs I've left behind. If this can be done without adding too much to the program's size or detracting from other functions, then yes, it might be a nice touch to add it in. The zoom-steps can also be set up in options already, so you can make them more to your liking. A variable zoom slider might be a nicer way to go though. (There is a "Reset" button on most all of them I've used, but maybe I'm not using the same ones you are more familiar with.)

I am in awe of how they've been able to use one "Curves/CLUT" function serve a purpose for so many other features. It's this efficiency that I admire. I'd hate to give that up things like that by wanting PhotoLine start looking and acting like every other program on the market -- slow bloatware. I still want to be able to fit PL32 on my unused 32 meg memory card for my camera!

It wouldn't hurt to bring some of the earlier programmed filters up to date to match the same common features that the newer ones all have, I guess. Something to work on to give the program a little more polish as a finished cohesive product.

What I find interesting in all of this, nobody's really complaining about lack of really important features or disastrous bugs -- just some cosmetic features that might make the program a little easier to use by those more familiar with another language and other software. Read any other forum or news-group geared toward any other maker of graphic-editing software and you'll read complaint after complaint of bugs or main features that they wish they had. That says a lot about PhotoLine 32 -- all to the good.