Posts Tagged ‘Adobe’
Two Trick Pony
June 6th, 2010
by Gwyn Headley
Managing Director
I will not yield to anybody in my admiration for Adobe’s Photoshop. It is a stunning piece of software, and anyone who uses a digital camera for anything more than snapshots must have a copy — and use it.
I am less enamoured with Adobe, the corporation. It’s well known that I and many others abhor their commercial decision to charge 37% more for their recently released Creative Suite 5 in the UK than in the USA, as I argued in a recent blog.
Last week I went to a day-long presentation of Adobe CS5 in London, presented by Adobe Evangelists. This is not my opinion of them — this is the genuine job title they carry on their business cards. And they live up their titles: fervent, enthusiastic, excitable, missionary; they tried their level best to whip a somnolent English audience into paroxysms of frenzy with whoops and hollers, at one stage encouraging us to yell “Yee-HAW!” if a particular feature of CS5 caught our approval.
We didn’t. Not because we weren’t impressed, but because we were British. We don’t do “Yee-HAW!” especially when we have to pay 37% more than the Americans to shout “Yee-HAW!”
We just sat there, mute, unresponsive, like London pigeons ignoring the strutting, flaunting cock bird. For, like the pigeons, we all knew that we would end up getting screwed.
In the morning, we were shown the exciting new features in Photoshop CS5. And, in case we weren’t paying attention or we really were dead (as I swear the morning evangelist believed we were) they showed them again to us in the afternoon in a separate seminar. Still, we eventually got the point.
And yes, the new Photoshop has a fabulous new trick called Content Aware which looks at the background of an image, and if you delete something in the foreground you don’t have to be left with an empty hole as you would expect — it will guess at what’s behind and fill it in. You have to see it work, and you can here.
There’s another feature that enables you to pick up hard-to-select parts of an image such as flyaway hair. Very impressive.
But I had other more important concerns. Another new featurette (maybe this was in the page layout package in InDesign, part of CS5) allowed you to attach the Caption (or Keywords, or Description, or other parts of the IPTC dataset) directly to a placed image. Earlier versions of Photoshop have notoriously stripped out the IPTC metadata from an image, not the most useful feature for stock libraries and professional photographers, which are perhaps the audiences at which Photoshop is primarily aimed. So I asked our afternoon Evangelist Terry White if this sinful aberration had been rectified. He blinked cautiously, but then a mouthful of American teeth flashed a “Yes.”
If Terry told me the truth — and how could I doubt an Evangelist? — this is the strongest possible argument for the world upgrading to Adobe CS5. Forget the party tricks; this is what we need from a professional tool. It’s not before time.
Neither I nor anyone else asked if they’d built a more robust version. We didn’t have the heart, after Adobe Bridge crashed twice in the morning sessions. We Brits don’t like to embarrass people.
The relationship between Adobe’s Evangelists and their British audience reminds of the old story of a Frenchman who was caught having sexual relations with a corpse on a beach. Les flics pulled him off and asked what the hell he thought he was doing. “Mon Dieu!” he answered in some shock, “I thought she was English”.
Adobe still at it …
April 16th, 2010
by Gwyn Headley
Managing Director
Tags: Adobe, Creative Suite, over here, overcharging, overpriced, rip-off
… ripping off UK customers, that is.
They’ve just announced Creative Suite 5, the top of the range version of which retails in the UK at £2,303 and in the US at $2,599. That’s £1,685 at today’s exchange rate.
Why should this product — which is software and therefore can be delivered in identical packages anywhere in the world at no additional cost apart from local taxes (not included in these prices) — cost an astounding £623 more in Britain than in America? That’s a 37% hike. There is no way any company in the world can justify such an extortionate, exorbitant pricing decision.
So they don’t. No one at Adobe will lift his cowardly, avaricious head over the parapet to defend the reasoning. “We have established what is effectively a monopoly. If you’re in the image business, you need Adobe Photoshop. So fuck the Brits, we can charge what we fucking well like.”
It’s a wonderful product, but the officers of the corporation who decided on this price differential are shits.
And I bet it still strips metadata. Because Adobe doesn’t own the system.
fotoLibra 2009 Pro Blog Index
January 7th, 2010
by Gwyn Headley
Managing Director
Tags: Aaron's Apps, Aaron's Time Machine, Adobe, Amazon, Apple, BAPLA, book publishing, books, CS3, CS4, drag and drop, easy upload, ebook, ebooks, Encyclopedia of Fonts, fotoLibra, Google, heritage, iphone, iphone apps, Macintosh, marketing photographs, Microsoft, Model releases, photography, Photoshop, picture library, picture sales, Prices, property releases, rights, selling photographs, selling pictures, stock agency, territories, upload checker, user experience
Here’s an index to the fotoLibra Pro Blog for the whole of 2009.
As I complained 6 months ago, it takes a surprising amount of time to compile, so if there are any WordPress experts out there who know how to automate this process, we’d love to hear from you.
If you’re new to fotoLibra, welcome, and may we suggest you read through the HINTS & TIPS section, and if nothing else read Great Expectations. If you enjoy a bit of controversy, read BAPLA Shock Horror.
Comments are welcome, even on old posts, and will be read and often responded to.
HINTS & TIPS
- Three hundred pixels per inch
- Shots of Redemption
- How To Take Aerial Photographs When You Haven’t Got An Aeroplane
- Compression
- Great Expectations
- RSVP
ABOUT FOTOLIBRA
- New fotoLibra
- BOMBSHELL
- Most Popular Searches
- White Labelling
- A Third of a Million
- Picture Calls
- fotoLibra DND & Checker 2.1 Released
- Drag ‘n’ Drop Upload Checker
- The New Picture Call Tab
- SPQR
- Search Engines and fotoLibra
- Yahoo Blocks Our Emails
- It’s got to be today
- 300,000 up!
ADOBE
BAPLA
CUSTOMERS
E-BOOKS & PUBLISHING
- Free iPhone App: Aaron’s Time Machine: London Lyte!
- Orphan Books
- The Killer eBook Is Nearly Here
- UK Politicians Not Entranced by eBooks
- Primary School Books
- Getting ready for e-books and Graphics
- Kindle 2
- More Kindling
- The Killer Book for e-books
IT
LAW
MISCELLANY
- Winterval
- Reunited
- Prophecies & Prophets
- Unpleasant Comments & Spam
- Proto-foto-Libra
- Cancelled Air Show
- Giving It Away For Free
- A heritage in photography
- Farewell Kodachrome
- The perils of publishing
- Happy New Year
NETWORKING
NEWS
PICTURE CALLS
SECURITY
TRADE FAIRS
BOMBSHELL
July 24th, 2009
by Gwyn Headley
Managing Director
I recommend anyone joining fotoLibra to read the Great Expectations blog posting to find out more about the exciting community they are joining.
Ben Shipley posted a comment which I said I’d answer in a new posting. Now David Carton has reminded me that I haven’t answered it, so here goes. First, Ben’s original comment:
It would be nice if the list view showed lightbox adds as well as views (at present the only way to get this info is to try to delete the photo).
Also, after working with other libraries, I am not sure what “views” means – did the photo show up among 1,000 others, or did someone actually bring up the full-size preview? And is that “someone” a valid customer or does it also include fellow members?
The best thing about fotolibra for my money is the way you all try to keep members informed – you seem like a very cool bunch of souls in general – but one can never get too much clarity, especially when it comes to what is selling out there.
Along same lines, I am curious where you see yourselves in the photo universe – what niches you aim for, where you saw this going when you started, where you see it headed today, where you fit into the whole amateur/professional photography experience, not just commercial stock. We get hints from Jacqui, but clarity definitely breeds patience.
Right. The first request is a simple feature enhancement. We already gather this information; the problem is figuring out to feed it to you in a neat, uncluttered, intelligible way. The data feed you currently get has nine columns; adding a tenth is going to make it uglier. We will work this out. It may involve having to drop down through layers of data.
‘Views’ (I answered this) means Thumbnails that have been clicked on to create Previews. The people who click could be either buyers or sellers; if they’re not logged in we don’t know who they are.
We always enjoy compliments. Thank you for that one.
OK, here’s the big one. In our photo universe, we’re not Getty Images, Corbis or Alamy. We’re much smaller, much more flexible, faster and much more personal. Buyers deal directly with the owners of the company, not a nominated ‘account handler’. Some people love this, others actually prefer anonymity and disengagement. When did you last speak to someone from Amazon, Adobe, Google, Microsoft or Apple? But you probably give them your money.
In Britain there are over 600 picture libraries. 440 of us are serious enough about the business to pay an annual subscription of about £500 to BAPLA. In terms of visitors to our web site, we come eighth. So we’re in the top 2%, and we only started 5 years ago. But we still need to do better.
Our major market is book publishing. It’s a market we know and feel comfortable with. We don’t reach ad agencies and design groups as we should. We sell to calendar and greetings card publishers. We don’t do much in the way of celebrities, news or sport.
We started with the intention of providing access to family albums, shoe boxes, the fading photographs in Granny’s attic. But we were swamped by the digital revolution.
HERE’S THE BOMBSHELL. We still want those pictures, so now we’ve decided to do something about it.
Alongside the existing Member, Pro Member and Platinum Member accounts, we are creating a completely new membership category.
It’s going to be called HERITAGE MEMBER. It is completely FREE, and it gives you UNLIMITED storage.
WOW!! I hear you shout. What’s the catch?
The photographs must have been taken before January 1st 1980. They must adhere to our Submission Guidelines.
And that’s it.
Membership will run in tandem with your existing fotoLibra membership. Full details will come with the formal announcement. We hope to have this in place by the beginning of September.
If you agree with this statement, why not join our group on LinkedIn at http://bit.ly/1HAsKC ?
Photoshop is the tool of choice for most fotoLibra members. At the last count 7,227 fotoLibra members were using Adobe products. If one in ten of you can add your name to this petition we’ll soon have over a thousand.
A substantial constituency. Yet one that is treated with disdain by the Adobe corporation. Pound for dollar, Adobe products have always been around 20 to 40% more expensive in the UK than the US. They claim that support and marketing is more expensive over here.
I don’t believe that. Americans are higher paid and taxed lower than the Brits.
Come on Adobe. Show some respeck, man!
Photoshop Strips Metadata
April 1st, 2009
by Gwyn Headley
Managing Director
Why aren’t we rioting in the streets?
18 months ago I posted a blog complaining that Adobe Photoshop CS3, a tool used by all sides of the picture business, removed metadata such as captions, descriptions and key words from images processed in Photoshop. Which means almost every image.
fotoLibra member John Strain got in touch with us to complain that the latest version, Adobe Photoshop CS4, also strips metadata.
I have recently uploaded several pictures to fotoLibra but found that the metadata did not transfer from Photoshop CS4 to fotoLibra when using fotoLibra DND. This has happened on previous occasions in the odd instance but this time a whole batch had no metadata attached. There are ways around this, rather than having to type all the data in again in to each image window, by copying and pasting but for some reason CS4 does not seem to allow “file info” information to be copied, which is a bit of a bind. You used to be able to copy and paste the information from CS3 but not it seems in CS4. So when it happens now, I type in keywords in to the fotoLibra window for one image and then copy and paste from there if the other images can use the same keywords and delete or add words as necessary.
I wondered if you had come across this before. I don’t know if it is a CS4 problem that meta data is not transferring or a general one.
Well frankly we feel it’s a complaint that should be made to Adobe, as there’s nothing fotoLibra can do about it. So we told him so (nicely, I hope) and he went off to talk to Adobe.
He came back to say:
I have just had a word with Adobe technical support and they were able to help to a degree.
Apparently the metadata cut/copy and paste issue answer is that right clicking on words to cut or copy just doesn’t work. The agent said that metadata is dealt with by a different company from Adobe and the ability to right click on words has not been built in to CS4. He didn’t know why that was and thought it unlikely that it was something which would be addressed.
He pointed out however, that pressing Control + C followed by right click and paste does work. It is a strange anomaly.
In respect of metadata not transferring to fotoLibra I got much the same answer as you did. He said that Photoshop does not support the transferring of metadata to a third-party application. I told him that it sometimes works but usually doesn’t. He suggested that your “page” that might not have been fully updated for CS4. I told him that it was also an issue with CS3 and he suggested that you contact him about it as it may be something which needs to be addressed. I asked for a reference so that you could take it from there if you wish and they would know what it was about but he declined to open a “case” as he said it would be something which fotoLibra would have to raise with them direct. I didn’t get as far as mentioning that you had tried to do so before.
So it does seem to be a recognised problem which Adobe has so far not addressed. It will be helpful though when metadata has not transferred, to be able to copy the words from the file information in the picture and paste them into fotoLibra as I used to be able to do with CS3.
I hope that all this might prove useful to anyone else having similar problems.
I would love to discuss this with the gentleman from Adobe, but I have no way of contacting him. We know the past two releases of Photoshop strip out the phoographers’ metadata. They seem to know it too. Why aren’t they doing anything about it?
The International Press Telecommunications Council (IPTC, the body that specifies metadata standards) has published a list of Software supporting IPTC photo metadata standards IIM and “IPTC Core” that very clearly omits Adobe CS3 and CS4. So it would appear to be a commercial decision of Adobe’s part not to support it.
Why aren’t we rioting in the streets?
Oh. I’ve just heard we are.