As a side note, the very existence of this entire site and community is specifically to address these types of issues along with providing a nice place for all of us photo/free-software nerds to commiserate.
We should be directing folks here as often as possible to help propagate the much more serious and incredible work possible with free software1.
1 And I should be getting off my ass to keep content flowing and things fresh - I’ve just been busy irl lately and nobody else has been available yet.
Well, most commercial programs are not bound to license renewal, so in general it is not a problem that work couldn’t be accessed in the future. That doesn’t apply to Adobe’s latest offerings of course, but I guess many people already invested so much into those programs (even if they only had to learn a new tool it might be a deal breaker for many) that there is no way back for them. And then there are the big masses of people who 1) have no clue and 2) want to be as cool as the big boys, so they use the same tools. And to be honest, just because open source would allow them to look into the code and understand what’s happening doesn’t mean that they are capable of doing that. And if we are honest, even those who know how to read code don’t look into it in general. The way we use all those free tools isn’t any different from how others are using commercial programs. Just free (as beer).
Pat, sure, I see your points and I’m aware of them. I am using free software wherever possible, since more than 15 years. That means 99 in my private life (tax software and turboprint being the only exceptions) and about 70 in my professional life. But I again totally failed to transfer my point (maybe because I am not a native English speaker and don’t know the right words or, more probable, because of my complicated writing style that I indeed have to get rid of). I wanted to bring up the idea, in the context of the jpeg2raw podcast that brought the idea into my mind, that a plenary discussion (is this the right word¹) about this topic would be interesting to see. Bringing people of both worlds together face-to-face and discuss these things. That could maybe lead to new insights that you do not get when you stay in your community. LGM could be one opportunity for something like this to happen.
¹I thought on something like what the German public TV is broadcasting Sundays around 10 pm, where about 6 politicians are sitting in a half circle and discussing a given topic.
Yes and no. I am not able to understand most of the code of e.g. Darktable, but, as you know (and thanks to you), one or the other of my ideas made its way into Darktable. That would not have happened with lightroom or other proprietary software. Of course I cannot be involved with every software that I use to the same degree, and there is software where I am much more involved for one or the other reason, but it is the contributing¹ users and the different degrees of contribution that are possible that is a difference between them and us[TM]. Of course, they listen to the users as well, but they listen to the masses and with free software one voice can be heard. And the level of contribution can change. Some start with bug reports, and become more involved over time. And usually, before I report a bug, I have a look at the code. Sometimes this helps finding the bug or at least helps me doing better bug reports. That’s not possible with closed-source software.
¹I mean real changes to the software, tutorials are written for both. But with free software a single user has the chance (not the right) to see his ideas coming to life.
As far as I have heard, CC still lets you view files, just not enter the “develop” mode to edit them, if you allow your Adobe subscription to lapse. So they’re not holding anything hostage.
Not that I like the business model. At least it lets you avoid the sense of “sunk costs” when you eventually want to switch away…
I was lucky enough that when I was taking photography in school, my teachers were big fans of learning how to look at things and see what you wanted at the scene. I try to keep the images I see while shooting fresh in my head so that I can come home and try and get as close on screen as what I saw when I took the photo. I think that has been the single biggest thing that has helped me as a photographer.
I’m thinking perhaps of making a stronger point for learning/thinking about processing in terms of results and processes as opposed to particular software steps.
In that same lane of thought, from an article linked below, I thought this was good:
No one ever looks at a house and says “I wonder what brand of hammer they used to build that house? That’s how I’ll know if it’s a good house or not.”
@patdavid Incidentally I’ve been offered the chance to speak for 15 - 20 minutes about free software at the photo club at work. I’m going to put tog ether some slides (so much good stuff in this thread already), and I can put the slides on github or something. Maybe we can start sharing this kind of information so others can reuse it and adapt it.
Yes, and yes. We absolutely should be sharing whatever resources we can for this. I have no problem doing this on github if you think it might be the best way:
Just hit me up and I’ll add anyone that wants in. I can start by adding in the slides I sent to pippin to use at LGM2015 “State of the Libre Graphics” presentation.
If you’d like a hand with your slide deck please don’t hesitate to hit me up (for assets/images or more).
So does that mean that Adobe CS is free for anyone to use if all they want to do is view existing Adobe-format files? Interesting if true.
Another way that a subscription model can get you into trouble: I went to a talk on processing of nighttime photos. When the speaker tried to fire up PS to demonstrate, he hit a license check dialog. He said he had checked and verified his license on that laptop earlier that day in preparation for the talk, but apparently that wasn’t enough: Adobe decided it wanted a verification right then. He had to leave the audience waiting while he wandered off to find someone who could help him get on the network; that done, we all got to watch as he connected to the network and then to Adobe and finally got PS running. Most embarrassing.
Live demos are risky enough without wondering if the software is suddenly going to decide it’s time for a license check. At many talk locations, a network connection isn’t an option. I’d also hate to be processing vacation photos in a hotel and have my software suddenly stop working because the hotel wi-fi is broken. I’m somewhat amazed so many people are willing to put up with that.
I gave my talk and demo yesterday, it went pretty well! I gave a brief overview of Free Software and talked about what Free software means to me as an artist. Then I spoke the available tools, where to get help, and how to contribute. Then I demoed some of the tools available in Rawtherapee (Lab adjustments, film emulation) and gimp (wavelet decompose & a bit from your skin retouching tutorial, some gmic filters, and a little resynthisizer).
I ended up talking for the whole hour! And I was asked to do another session where I actually go through the whole skin retouching tutorial. So awesome!
People were curious about free software and I explained how projects work, how most free software projects are not corporate backed, how they get stuff (web hosting, downloads).
It was solid advice to demo cross-platform software, so RT and gimp were good calls! I also found another Linux user, which is great as well, don’t encounter too many others that use it in the wild.
Anyway, hopefully I’ll be sending a pull request soon!
Glad to hear it went well! It’s easy to lose track of time and just keep going when you’re talking about a subject you enjoy personally.
This always helps a ton, I think. Especially with such a dominant number of OS X/Win users out there comparatively. Remember – this is just a gateway drug to more software freedom!
Got it! I had to make some changes to integrate it with the existing content nicely. I’ve done that, merged it, and have issued a PR back to your fork to keep things up to date.
