AfterShot Pro and Lightroom

From RAW conversion to image editing and printing
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bakubo
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Re: AfterShot Pro and Lightroom

Unread post by bakubo »

Oh, and I saw a post by a Corel employee saying that there was an ASP update coming in April.
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UrsaMajor
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Re: AfterShot Pro and Lightroom

Unread post by UrsaMajor »

IMO. for anyone who is using any version of Lightroom the two best sources of information and help are Victoria Bampton's "The Lightroom X FAQ" (where "X" is the version of Lightroom you are using), plus the discussion forum on Victoria's web site.

The web site is at:

http://www.lightroomqueen.com/

In addition to the web site's discussion forums, the "FAQ" e-book can be purchased there, and I have found the Lightroom 3 version to be well worth the purchase price - enough so that I just bought the Lightroom 4 edition. (I also think that it was nice of her to price the LR4 edition at 1/3 off to buyers of earlier editions.)

With best wishes,
- Tom -
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bakubo
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Re: AfterShot Pro and Lightroom

Unread post by bakubo »

I lost interest in posting my further findings as I played with these two programs, but I finally settled on one for most of my use a couple of months ago. Because both only had 30 day trial versions that expired before I was ready I ended up buying both. I bought LR 4 and ASP 1. I waited until LR 4.1 RC1 came out though before buying since it fixed many problems reported in 4.0. Soon, there was an update to ASP so I installed it also so I was all set to continue my evaluation. Then LR 4.1 RC2 came out and I installed it.

I own both programs, but I decided that LR was the one I would use. I installed the official LR 4.1 several days ago. I still find that there are some really nice features of ASP 1 (think of it as Bibble 6) such as layers (really reduces the need to transfer file to PSE), but it still needs more work to get more consistent, refine some controls, have more lens profiles, etc.. LR 4.1 is, as I determined months ago, more refined and also the new raw conversion, highlight recovery, etc. is nice.

I will keep my eye on ASP, at least any free updates to version 1, to see how it is doing. I think free updates end when they go to version 2. If you are on Linux then ASP really adds some nice photo capability since, unlike, LR it is available for Linux. One other good point is that your ASP license is good for Windows, Mac, or Linux so you don't have to buy again if you change platforms. I think I recall seeing a post by Corel earlier this year saying that you are allowed to install on multiple computers/OS platforms at the same time as long as only one is used at a time. Don't hold me to that, but I do think I read that somewhere.

LR is more resource hungry it seems. I upgraded my memory from 4gb to 8gb a few days ago so that LR 4.1 and Win7-64 would have a more comfortable amount of memory to work in. Actually, 4gb was enough most of the time even with Firefox (with many open tabs) going at the same time. I could even have PSE 9 open at the same time and mostly it was okay. Certain LR operations though would cause memory usage to temporarily go up to 95% and then the computer would really get slow until LR was done and freed memory. The 8gb only cost $41.49 (no tax, free shipping) from newegg.com. Had to take out the 4gb, but I might be able to put it in another laptop or give it to a friend.
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Birma
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Re: AfterShot Pro and Lightroom

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Interesting to see how your evaluation panned out Henry, thanks for posting the details :)

I'm running LR3 on a fairly old (Win XP) PC and it is slow but I like the results. Not sure about LR4 but the license for LR3 allowed use on another machine (not at the same time) so I also run on my Laptop (Win 7). I thought the L3 license also allowed a second copy to run on Mac OS - certainly the disc I have is for Windws and Mac.

I will wait to upgrade to LR 4 until I have a new machine at home with more grunt (probably Mac).
Nex 5, Nex 6 (IR), A7M2, A99 and a bunch of lenses.
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bakubo
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Re: AfterShot Pro and Lightroom

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Birma wrote:Interesting to see how your evaluation panned out Henry, thanks for posting the details :)
I have about 50k OOC original photo files in the LR catalog now. I have added basic keywords to all of them and added star ratings to most of the better ones. I have 6k or more 10mp film scans that I need to get better organized and put into the catalog also, but I am not sure when I will get around to that.
Birma wrote: I'm running LR3 on a fairly old (Win XP) PC and it is slow but I like the results. Not sure about LR4 but the license for LR3 allowed use on another machine (not at the same time) so I also run on my Laptop (Win 7). I thought the L3 license also allowed a second copy to run on Mac OS - certainly the disc I have is for Windws and Mac.
LR 4 doesn't run on WinXP so you will have to go to a later Windows or get a Mac. Yes, my LR 4 and PSE 9 discs have both Windows and Mac versions. I haven't bothered to find out what the usage rules are though
Birma wrote: I will wait to upgrade to LR 4 until I have a new machine at home with more grunt (probably Mac).
Why are you thinking of switching to a Mac?
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Birma
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Re: AfterShot Pro and Lightroom

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bakubo wrote:Why are you thinking of switching to a Mac?
A number of different reasons, probably the biggest being that I've never had one as a long term machine and want to try it out :) . I also want my home work-station to be just an "appliance", and I'm fed up with having to wrestle with compatibility between the h/w and the o/s. At work I'm using Win 7 at the moment and what struck me using this was how hard Microsoft seemed to be trying to get Windows to be Mac OS - I might as well just use the real thing ;) . I expect to be paying more in terms of hard cash for the equipment, but I'm hoping this will pay dividends in precious 'time' and ease of use. We'll see :D .
Nex 5, Nex 6 (IR), A7M2, A99 and a bunch of lenses.
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bakubo
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Re: AfterShot Pro and Lightroom

Unread post by bakubo »

I had a Mac at work some years back, but I never got the urge to get one for myself. I am fine with Win7-64 and have no problems. If you have been having compatibility problems I suppose you build your own computers since that is usually where problems crop up. I just buy off-the-shelf computers that the manufacturer has already chosen components and provided drivers. The software I have is all for Windows (except that LR and ASP can work on both). I don't care about the newer fancy Windows interfaces. The first thing I do with a new Windows computer is turn off all the fancy gui stuff and set it to use the classic gui (Win95/WinNT style) that uses less memory, fewer cpu cycles, etc.

Since for the last few years I need to be rather mobile I have switched to using laptops. My current one is 2 years old, but still adequate:

Win7-64, i3-330m, 8gb, 500gb hd, 17.3" 1600x900 screen

I also have three 1tb portable external hds that I use for redundant backups.
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Birma
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Re: AfterShot Pro and Lightroom

Unread post by Birma »

Turning off he Win 7 GUI ? Hadn't spotted that. Will give that a try - thanks Henry :)
Nex 5, Nex 6 (IR), A7M2, A99 and a bunch of lenses.
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Dusty
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Re: AfterShot Pro and Lightroom

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Birma wrote:Turning off he Win 7 GUI ? Hadn't spotted that. Will give that a try - thanks Henry :)
First thing I did after getting a Win7 box was add classic shell http://classicshell.sourceforge.net/ (free).

Let me operate the computer with fewer clicks, and the way I'm used to. I hate the fact that companies are always changing interfaces to just add eye-candy, not function.

Dusty
An a700, an a550 and couple of a580s, plus even more lenses (Zeiss included!).
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bakubo
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Re: AfterShot Pro and Lightroom

Unread post by bakubo »

Birma wrote:Turning off he Win 7 GUI ? Hadn't spotted that. Will give that a try - thanks Henry :)
In Win7 you just open the Control Panel, click on System, then on the right side click on Advanced system settings. Then in the Performance section click on Settings. Select Adjust for best performance. There you go. My recollection is that WinXP and Vista were pretty much the same.
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artington
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Re: AfterShot Pro and Lightroom

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Birma wrote:
I will wait to upgrade to LR 4 until I have a new machine at home with more grunt (probably Mac).
I would think very carefully before doing this. I used an iMac for about a year with LR3 and eventually decided to revert to PC after the advent of Windows 7. My reasoning was partly economic - the Mac simply did not have sufficient grunt and it would have cost an arm and two legs to get it. Secondly, and some will disagree here, the Mac screen is much too bright. Indeed I don't think it is possible to get it below 160 cd/sqm (which,as it happens, is the upper limit EIZO permit for their screen brightness before the warranty is invalidated). Of course, you can always buy an external monitor but that adds even more to the cost. My solution has been to have a purpose built computer (I used Scan computers) which is modular and hence pretty future proof together with a 22 inch EIZO monitor which I run at 70 cd/sqm. (Running at such luminance has eliminated printing more darkly than expected). The cost of my very highly specced set-up was a lot less than it would have been if I'd gone the Mac route. One more thing. When I switched back to pc and tried to transfer my images back from the Mac the pc woukd not read the external disk. OS-X and NTFS do not communicate on file sizes greater than 4Gb! Windows 7 would see the external disk but could not access it. Clearly, this presents a huge problem because if you break up your images into smaller file sizes and transfer then using a flash drive you will then have to re-direct the LR catalog to each folder - a laborious nightmare. However, I eventually discovered a third party utility which allowed my pc to read the external drive but I went through some sweaty moments! I do not recall having a similar problem transferring the other way.

One point about LR4. I have found the new exposure engine, PV 2012, to be a huge improvement on the earlier engine in LR3. This is well illustrated in the following article (apologies if the link as already been shown)

http://www.luminous-landscape.com/techn ... om_4.shtml
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Birma
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Re: AfterShot Pro and Lightroom

Unread post by Birma »

Mmm. Thanks for that Artington - some food for thought on my workstation change there. I expected an iMac to tackle LR pretty easily, and I hadn't thought much about the monitor at all (other than not wanting a glossy one).

That is a very interesting article from LL (bookmarked!). The LR4 exposure engine looks great.
Nex 5, Nex 6 (IR), A7M2, A99 and a bunch of lenses.
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Dr. Harout
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Re: AfterShot Pro and Lightroom

Unread post by Dr. Harout »

GUI is definitely not Golfing Union of Ireland. Therefore it stands for Graphical User Interface (Thanks Google).
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bakubo
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Re: AfterShot Pro and Lightroom

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Dr. Harout wrote:GUI is definitely not Golfing Union of Ireland. Therefore it stands for Graphical User Interface (Thanks Google).
Sorry, Doc. I thought that GUI was an old enough and common enough acronym that almost everyone on the internet would know it by now. Of course, I realize that what might be generally known among native English speakers may not be generally known for people for whom English is a second (or third, etc.) language. It is hard to know when an acronym will be okay. There are so many in the computer and camera world. Fairly often I come across one that I don't know, but most of the time those are general terms that people who do a lot of texting have carried over to internet forums. Please feel free to ask if there is something that you haven't seen before.
Last edited by bakubo on Mon Jun 11, 2012 11:30 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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bfitzgerald
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Re: AfterShot Pro and Lightroom

Unread post by bfitzgerald »

LR 4.1 is a bit better than the 4.0 version which suffered from slowness esp moving between modules. It's not there yet though
I'm running a new build PC quad core 16Gb ram and it's not that fast. I've run LR on some boy racer computers too and it's still not really quick (quicker to export but it's just not optimal right now)

Maybe LR5 will use GPU acceleration, but I think the problems are not PC hardware but lack of optimal code from Adobe.
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