Jan. 29th, 2010
Considering that I edit photos for a living, you'd think I'd already figured this out, but... Sadly, no.
Here's the core problem:
I hate Photoshop. No, really. I hate it. I hate Adobe's UI, for one, and the thing is a giant, memory-sucking behemoth that takes about 10 minutes to load on anything other than the computer equivalent of a Testarossa. Even Elements doesn't solve that problem.
For hardcore image and design work, of course that's the industry standard. But when you're just doing day-to-day grind stuff? It's like using a commercial kitchen to make a tuna sandwich.
Unfortunately, because it's so popular with said hardcore designers, it's basically wiped out the market for any and all other photo editors.
The Company's efforts this direction have been sadly lacking. Paint, always a standby for grunt work, just doesn't really work with photos in any useful way. Live Photo Gallery is missing some key elements and has some features that are actually bugs, IMHO. And Picture Manager has some fatal flaws, and won't do any creative work.
My favorite tool, Photo Draw, ceased production 10 years ago and won't run on Win 7, so I can't go back to it. Also, it's old enough now that it can't handle newer formats anyway. Word and Publisher and all those other bits have some photo editing options, but they're really designed for docs, not photos.
So... I'm screwed. I find myself having to do one thing in one program, and then switch over to something else to do the other stuff I want to do, and that is a giant pain in the ass.
( My criteria: )
Anyone know of anything that will do all this that also is simple, streamlined and loads fast? Or am I stuck wrestling the Photoshop Beast of Traal?
ETA: Thinking about this more closely...
I really do like Picture Manager in a lot of ways. It has just about everything I want, ( with just a few problems: )
Here's the core problem:
I hate Photoshop. No, really. I hate it. I hate Adobe's UI, for one, and the thing is a giant, memory-sucking behemoth that takes about 10 minutes to load on anything other than the computer equivalent of a Testarossa. Even Elements doesn't solve that problem.
For hardcore image and design work, of course that's the industry standard. But when you're just doing day-to-day grind stuff? It's like using a commercial kitchen to make a tuna sandwich.
Unfortunately, because it's so popular with said hardcore designers, it's basically wiped out the market for any and all other photo editors.
The Company's efforts this direction have been sadly lacking. Paint, always a standby for grunt work, just doesn't really work with photos in any useful way. Live Photo Gallery is missing some key elements and has some features that are actually bugs, IMHO. And Picture Manager has some fatal flaws, and won't do any creative work.
My favorite tool, Photo Draw, ceased production 10 years ago and won't run on Win 7, so I can't go back to it. Also, it's old enough now that it can't handle newer formats anyway. Word and Publisher and all those other bits have some photo editing options, but they're really designed for docs, not photos.
So... I'm screwed. I find myself having to do one thing in one program, and then switch over to something else to do the other stuff I want to do, and that is a giant pain in the ass.
( My criteria: )
Anyone know of anything that will do all this that also is simple, streamlined and loads fast? Or am I stuck wrestling the Photoshop Beast of Traal?
ETA: Thinking about this more closely...
I really do like Picture Manager in a lot of ways. It has just about everything I want, ( with just a few problems: )
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