And whllew we are talking about this stuff, let me put my oar in.
I, too, promote PL whenever I get the chance, particularly on the photo forums I contribute to, but I know all too well that it will not be taken up.
There is an old saying in marketing that you should offer your key difference(s) and promote those -- but they should not be TOO different; maybe 10% different. And they should be set in a solid foundation of the conventional -- or the apparently conventional.
I departed Photoshop at v.5.5. I am quite sure that given super geekness (of which I am not in possession) I could do all or nearly all in PS 5.5 that I can do in PL or the current PS -- or at least, all
I want to do. However it would involve delving into the deeps, which I don't want to do.
So in today's world (and my 73rd year) I want some nifty tools where I can just click the button and everything happens -- and I want terms used that make sense to me in plain English (or German or whatever language is my mother or work tongue) from my point of view as a user of the program.
Someone mentioned a "Clarity" tool. Yep -- that's what I need. I know there are ways to achieve it, but approximately 70 years ago I was the kid in kindergarten (yes, that is what we called them in Australia) finger panting who could take any two or three colors, mix them, and inevitably end up with muddy brown. I have retained this remarkable talent all my life and now I can do it on a computer.
If I want "Clarity" now I go to the Topaz Adjust plug-in, click the button, and get it. Then starting from that safe base, I can start making micro-adjustments to get exactly what I want. If it all goes muddy brown, I click "Reset" then click "Clarity" again and it is all back to where I started.
So easy.
THAT is the sort of ease of use -- available within PL itself -- that would help attract new users, and since it uses PL's existing capabilities, it would be just a matter of light code to put it together -- or even making it an action but not necessarily a public one; i.e. don't put it in the Actions menu but hide the fact that it is an action behind a menu command or a button or something.
Adding something to the interface, like the Topaz Adjust interface where you get a bunch of sliders showing you the current settings and which you can alter, would also be very handy. That might be getting a bit more complex than we want to be, though.
Let me give an example of this: in Canvas X (and a little earlier, I think) there is a facility in the Images menu called "Trim to Path". Now what you do is this: you have a photo and you want to trim to the shape of a vector path. So you set up the photo to size, then draw the vector path on top of it (in a recent case, this was as simple as rounded corners rectangles), select both, then click on Trim to Path. You can actually see Canvas X going through the motions (it is 9 years since it was supported
). In fact, what you see is a script at work (Canvas has scripting built-in) which simply does what you could always to in Canvas, but it is scripted.
And what you could always do in Canvas is much the same as how you can achieve Trim to Path in PL -- having set the photo to size, you draw your vector path (filled), than change the path to a lasso, then move from the Lasso menu to the Mask menu and invert mask, then delete. And there you have your picture in its chosen shape.
Canvas's simple single menu item made all these moves unnecessary -- and if you wanted to reverse it, you did that in one command-z step too.
Of course, you could also use the Clipping Layer; that's a single command
but the important thing is that the command doesn't tell you in plain English what you want to do -- i.e. Trim to Path.
Simple stuff, but very convenient.
And then there are the other terms used. Everything is layers. Okay, I understand that now. But how about talking about the "image". Photographers think of images, not layers.
Another one -- and we have discussed it before -- that danged "Invert Mask". I want to see "Invert Selection". The engineers' view of this is that when we use a lasso to make a selection, we are putting a mask on something. I don't care -- we photographers think we are making a selection, not masking the very thing we are selecting. Can we have "Invert Selection"? Maybe as an extra command?
It is all about ease of use by the (new) customers.
Cheers, geoff
