ACDSee Pro 3

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Edit, Then Develop

(22 posts)

Started by camera.ken
Started on November 3, 2009 - 06:34 PM (2 weeks ago)
Latest reply from John Radcliffe (4 days ago)

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camera.ken
Member

Hi:

I cannot do the following in ACDSee Pro3.

Crop, then adjust lighting. If I try, I lose the crop when I go to "develop".

Sequence of events:

1. Start from photo named "Bob.3.jpg".

2. Select View Bob.3, the select "process / edit / crop"

3. Apply crop, select "done". Bob.3.jpg appears on screen in cropped version.

4. Select "save", Bob.3.jpg. "Image saved" appears briefly.

5. Select Develop, pop-up "Switch to develop-- the image cannot be opened in Develop without losing the changes made in Edit", select "Save as" Bob.3.jpg. Yes it already exists, yes I want to replace it.

6. Bob3.jpg appears on screen, in "develop", but uncropped.

7. All subsequent attempts to open Bob.3.jpg in Develop revert to the uncropped version, including shutting down ACDSee Pro3, re-opening it.

8. To be clear: Shut down ACDSee Pro3, open it again. Now go back to Manage, Bob.3.jpg thumbnail is cropped. "View" Bob.3.jpg -- photo is cropped. Select Process, Develop and pop-up appears: "Switch to develop -- the image cannot be opened in Develop without losing the changes made in Edit". Save as Bob.3.jpg. And the cycle starts again.

9. The same thing happend when I Develop first, then crop.

How do I crop an image, then develop it, without losing the crop?

Posted On November 3, 2009 - 06:34 PM (2 weeks ago) (Permalink to this post)
BrettB
Member

Why don't you crop in develop?

Posted On November 3, 2009 - 07:43 PM (2 weeks ago) (Permalink to this post)
camera.ken
Member

Hi Brett:

Yes, it certainly looks as though you must choose either "Develop" or "Edit" and use the tools that are there. I see there is plenty of overlap -- so much so that one wonders why there is a distinction at all between "Develop" and "Edit".

Posted On November 3, 2009 - 07:47 PM (2 weeks ago) (Permalink to this post)
BrettB
Member

I'm probably not best placed to answer fully as I don't usually work with jpegs.

ACDSee is creating an originals folder (hidden unless you set the option to show) when you first use Edit and it is this saved original it expects to use. It is trying to preserve your original file.

I found that going from Develop to Edit did not lose the crop (selecting done and then changing to edit).

The idea is that develop is an entirely non-destructive mode - I use it mainly with RAW files and then save a TIFF for further editing in ACDSee (Edit mode) or Photoshop. ACDSee is unusual in offering non-destructive processing for non-RAW files.

In some ways there is no logic in starting in Edit and then going to Develop. ACDSee is designed to move your workflow in a particular way - once you work it out it is really very effective.

There are some long threads on this subject here, but I'm sure someone will come along to give you a simpler summary that is more coherent than mine.

Brett

Posted On November 3, 2009 - 08:48 PM (2 weeks ago) (Permalink to this post)
camera.ken
Member

Hi Brett:

Thanks for your thoughts. Much appreciated.

I see that I have a bit more work to do in learning to use ACDSee Pro3 effectively.

Ken

Posted On November 4, 2009 - 03:18 AM (2 weeks ago) (Permalink to this post)
John Radcliffe
Member

I think I'm right in saying that new to the release version (i.e. changed since Beta 2) is the ability to Develop and Edit (in that order) the same image (the thumbnail will show both a blue [D] and a green [E]).

Applying further Edit-mode processing to such an image is possible, but the Edit-mode steps will be "chained", i.e. the image file will suffer an extra Jpeg compression step. In this case it might be preferable to abandon the previous Edit-mode processing (there is a Manage-mode command to do this) and redo all the Edit-mode processing in a single step.

It is also possible to do further Develop-mode processing, but in this case one must either abandon all the previous Edit-mode processing, or save the current processed image as a new "original" (i.e. with a new name) (when you attempt the re-Develop a Developed+Edited image, Pro3 will give you these options). In the latter case, the ability to adjust prior Develop-mode processing with be lost (all previous processing will be “set in stone”), and a further Jpeg compression step will occur after the additional processing.

I hope that clarifies things, rather than just causing more confusion!

Posted On November 4, 2009 - 02:02 PM (2 weeks ago) (Permalink to this post)
carson
Member

My feeling is that ACDSee is making it more difficult to use external tools. I only use ACDSee for image mangagement. All editing is done using Photoshop and since moveing to 3.0 I find if more difficult to use ACDSee which is unfortunate since I find it to be a very good asset management program but a very poor editor and I the direction they seem to be heading very disconcerting.

Posted On November 6, 2009 - 02:06 AM (2 weeks ago) (Permalink to this post)
John Radcliffe
Member

My feeling is that ACDSee is making it more difficult to use external tools. I only use ACDSee for image mangagement. All editing is done using Photoshop and since moveing to 3.0 I find if more difficult to use ACDSee which is unfortunate since I find it to be a very good asset management program but a very poor editor ...

Can I ask why you find v3 more difficult to use as regards image management? Other than being forced to use the "black only" interface, I find that little has changed here from v2.5.

and I the direction they seem to be heading very disconcerting.

I'd be interested in understanding what you mean. Is it simply that you don't want to have to pay for features you don't use, or perhaps you think the developers have lost interest in the management side of things? (I know I've been waiting two years for Viewer sharpening. And I still dislike how ACDSee loses or corrupts certain metadata fields, although I've learned to live with that.)

Posted On November 6, 2009 - 01:51 PM (2 weeks ago) (Permalink to this post)
BrettB
Member

I don't think carson is criticising the image management particularly, but the ease of moving from the image management to the external editor.

In 2.5 it was very quick to choose between any number of external editors. You can still choose, but have to go through the menu options. You can add the default external editor to the tool bar, but if you use more than one editor this is only a partial solution.

I used to use a selection of editors, but now only use Photoshop CS so that problem is solved for me.

the direction they seem to be heading (is) very disconcerting.

I think the point is that Pro 3 has focused on the editing side and is clearly aiming to gain market share from other editing programs. It has not developed the management side very much. I suppose if the management side is already excellent (and I think it is) it wouldn't be a problem, but if the management side becomes an add-on then the reason many of us use the program starts to disappear. I used Pro 2 for a long time completely ignoring the editing side.

I would like to see ACDSee Pro maintaining its selling point as a superb and developing management program with improvements to the editing side as the add-on.

Posted On November 6, 2009 - 04:24 PM (2 weeks ago) (Permalink to this post)
Marc Sabatella
Moderator

camera.ken said:

Hi Brett:

Yes, it certainly looks as though you must choose either "Develop" or "Edit" and use the tools that are there. I see there is plenty of overlap -- so much so that one wonders why there is a distinction at all between "Develop" and "Edit".

I think the distinction mostly because of the few things that Edit mode can do that would have been too difficult to implement in the non-destructive Develop mode. Mostly, the operations on selections, including the use of the selection tool, but also things like heal & clone and red-eye fixes. It's not impossible to implement this sort of thing in a non-destructive editor (Lightroom does it, at leas in some ways, and it looks like Bibble 5 will too if they ever actually get the product out), but it's harder. I'm hoping the do that for the next release so Edit mode can go away. But for now, that's the basic distinction - global changes can and should be done in Develop, but any local changes need to be done in Edit.

The expectation is that most people can do most of what they want in Develop mode, and you should go there first unless there is a specific reason to need a different workflow. Do as much as you can in Develop, then if you find there is something you need Edit for (like a clone operation), switch to Edit, knowing that you are going down a one-way street at that point, as it's impossible to still offer the same ability to revisit your Develop changes after the file has been through Edit.

The alternative some prefer is to do there Edit mode stuff *first*, doing a Save as to create a fresh copy with those changes that you can take into Develop mode. This would be more palatable if not for a few quirks in how Save As currently works, but it *is* an option.

Posted On November 7, 2009 - 06:35 PM (1 week ago) (Permalink to this post)
camera.ken
Member

Hi Marc:

As usual, Marc, you are a wealth of pertinent and useful information -- far beyond what is usual.

Much appreciated.

Ken

Posted On November 8, 2009 - 05:15 PM (1 week ago) (Permalink to this post)
Marc Sabatella
Moderator

You're welcome. I recognize that new Process mode paradigm is going to be a big adjustment for a lot of people. Although for people who shot RAW and were accustomed to using RAW Processing (the equivalent of what Develop mode now is) in previous versions of ACDSee, it's not really very different at all. So those of us who were already accustomed to working in this way with RAW have a leg up on understanding how to use Develop and Edit modes effectively, since we've basically been doing this for years already.

BTW, one thing I forgot to mention - we've been told by folks at ACD that the reason Edit still has a lot of the tools that are duplicated in Develop mode is so that, once you've moved an image from Develop to Edit mode, if you then realize yu forgot to do something that should have been done first in Develop mode, you can still get the job done in Edit mode without losing the other things you've done in Edit mode. Because normally, once you've done work in Edit mdoe, you can't go back to Develop (at least, not without losing your Edit mode changes, or making separate copy of the file). Again, for those of us accustomed to working in RAW, this seems perfectly natural - Develop mode is the non-destructive stuff that works directly on the RAW image data, Edit mode is the the stuff that requires you to save as JPEG and therefore cannot be taken back into RAW processing.

Posted On November 8, 2009 - 06:30 PM (1 week ago) (Permalink to this post)
John Radcliffe
Member

Marc Sabatella said:

BTW, one thing I forgot to mention - we've been told by folks at ACD that the reason Edit still has a lot of the tools that are duplicated in Develop mode is so that, once you've moved an image from Develop to Edit mode, if you then realize yu forgot to do something that should have been done first in Develop mode, you can still get the job done in Edit mode without losing the other things you've done in Edit mode.

But this doesn't explain why the tools aren't in fact "duplicated". Frequently those in Edit mode are implemented in an entirely different way to those in Develop mode. I haven't used Edit mode much; in previous versions I rarely used anything other than the "Advanced Shadows and Highlights" tool, and I probably wouldn't be doing much else in Pro3 now if it wasn't for the introduction of non-destructive processing in "Develop mode". This means that, in assessing Pro3's processing abilities, I've tended to concentrate my attention on Develop mode.

However, at the weekend I had reason to try out Edit mode, and I was amazed that just about every tool that is available in both Develop and Edit modes is implemented differently. I knew the two "Perspective Correction" tools were different, but just why, for example, are the "Advanced Shadows and Highlights" tools also different? (And I also wonder where the simple Levels control went?)

My guess is that Edit mode was taken over largely unchanged from the previous version, perhaps because they hope to phase it out in the next release and so didn't want to spend too much time on "bringing it into line". But I do think it gives the program a "half-finished" feel. Would it really have been that difficult to use the same tools and interface in both modes (with the Edit-mode-only ones simply unavailable, or even "greyed out", in Develop mode)? And if the versions in Develop mode are "enhanced" in some way, why shouldn't Edit mode benefit from those enhancements?

On the other hand, faced with these differences, perhaps more could have been made of them as a selling point. “Pro3 doesn’t just give users two different modes with the same tools: it gives users two entirely different editors for the price of one!” (And, yes; I am joking.)

Posted On November 9, 2009 - 02:17 PM (1 week ago) (Permalink to this post)
Marc Sabatella
Moderator

John Radcliffe said:

But this doesn't explain why the tools aren't in fact "duplicated". Frequently those in Edit mode are implemented in an entirely different way to those in Develop mode.

Very true. I agree with your assumption that the reason for the difference would seems to be entirely historical - most of the Edit mode tools were developed long ago for use with JPEG, the Develop mode tools were developed more recently for use with RAW. And for better or worse, no one ever spent the time that would have been required to make them work more alike. While I'm sure there would be a lot of advantages to making them more similar, that *would* take effort, and the question would be how to prioritize that.

My personal feeling - and here I must make perfectly clear I am in no way representing ACD; I'm speaking as a fellow user only - is that I'd like to see Edit mode simply go away, as you also suggest. The few things it currently does that Develop mode cannot should be re-implemented in Develop mode. Combine that with some sort of option to allow develop mode to work destructively (!), and there would be no reason to hold on to Edit mode at all. I have no idea how much effort would be required to pull that off, but that's something I hope ACD considers from Pro 4.

(And I also wonder where the simple Levels control went?)

It's the second item under Exposure/Lighting on the main Edit mode tool panel. I think those tools used to be listed toward the top of the panel, because they are commonly used tools, but the order was changed for Pro 3, presumably to move the unique-to-Edit-mode stuff to the top. This should facilitate the sort of workflows I referred to - either do everything you can in develop first then switch to Edit for the rest (local edits, mostly), or do the local edits first in Edit then do a Save As and switch to Develop on the output.

Posted On November 9, 2009 - 05:01 PM (1 week ago) (Permalink to this post)
John Radcliffe
Member

Marc Sabatella said:

(And I also wonder where the simple Levels control went?)

It's the second item under Exposure/Lighting on the main Edit mode tool panel.

Sorry Marc, I didn't make myself clear: I found it in Edit mode, but where is it in Develop mode? Has it in effect been "combined" with the revised Curves control?

I don't tend to use Levels much, which is probably why I've not missed it before now. Typically I only use Levels if I've considerably under-exposed an image and want to "expand" the histogram. If I've got the exposure pretty well spot on, I've found the Advanced Shadows and Highlights tool doesn't need a separate Levels step.

Posted On November 9, 2009 - 06:15 PM (1 week ago) (Permalink to this post)
LV_Bill
Member

To: John Radcliffe and Marc Sabatella (and anyone else who is interested). I think I may have found the final piece of the puzzle to conquer the most troublesome workflow for Pro3: Develop-->Edit-->Develop.

I recently discovered that Pro3 permits you (with a previously Developed image), to edit the saved original image in the [Originals] sub-folder. You can either use an External Editor, or even Pro3 itself. As long as you don't change the Geometry settings, Pro3 will dutifully re-apply all of your previous XMP settings to an "altered" original. And believe it or not, you can even switch the file type of the original (e.g. convert Jpeg's to Png's to preserve losslessness). As long as you change the XMP filename appropriately, Pro3 will re-apply all previous Develop settings to the new image format.

I ran both "Develop-Photoshop-Develop", and "Develop-Pro3 Edit-Develop" with no problems. It turns out that you can literally bounce back and forth from Develop to Edit as many times as you wish. That's because what you're effectively doing with this method is repeatedly altering the "original", then re-applying all of your previous Develop settings. I'm currently using this technique on a first batch of production images - trying to get it down to a routine. More later.

Posted On November 10, 2009 - 02:15 AM (1 week ago) (Permalink to this post)
LV_Bill
Member

Follow-up to the above post. After some real-world experience with the "Edit the Original" technique (described above), I can state positively that this is it! This is the solution to the elusive goal of co-mingling Develop and Edit.

Here's the classic scenario: Develop an image. Then, Edit it with Photoshop (or any Editor). Then, return to Pro3 Develop and see all the previous Develop settings, in tact, and ready for more Developing. Sound impossible? I'm kicking myself for not thinking of this sooner.

First, you Develop normally. When you encounter an Edit-required situation, you make a PNG copy of the undeveloped original. Next, copy and paste the Develop settings from the real original to the PNG copy. Now you have a perfect PNG copy of your Deveped original - works the same for both Jpeg and Raw. Then, start your Edit program and open the saved original of your PNG copy. Perform your edit work, save your output, and return to Pro3 Develop. All of your previous Develop settings will still be there, ready for more developing.

As of this post, I have completed 57 images using the "Edit the Original" technique. I am so pleased with the results that I am going back and trashing some previous edit work that was done with the former technique (Develop, Save As, Edit, Develop) which unfortunately locked-in all of the original Develop settings. I'm still working on developing a workflow "routine" and trying to find more efficient ways of performing some of the mundane mechanical steps (e.g. intermediate backups, turning off read-only flags, and batch creation of the PNG copy files, etc.). I'll create a new thread with plain language "how to" instructions when I get a little more experienced at this.

Posted On November 11, 2009 - 05:13 PM (1 week ago) (Permalink to this post)
Marc Sabatella
Moderator

Bill - interesting! I suppose this might not work for some people as I gather that when you edit the saved original directly, you aren't seeing any of your previous develop mode processing applied. But if that's not a problem for you, then great - very clever!

Oh, and John - yes, the equivalent of the basic Levels controls in develop mode are the three controls below the Curves (and the "auto" button is basically an "auto levels").

Posted On November 11, 2009 - 09:22 PM (1 week ago) (Permalink to this post)
LV_Bill
Member

Marc - Glad you enjoyed my little discovery. It works amazingly well and I am using it in production, full speed ahead. If you haven't already tried the "edit the saved original" technique yourself, let me suggest that it would be a wise investment of your time to do so -- for three reasons.

First, it's a workaround that may solve an ongoing workflow problem for many other Pro3 users. Second, it operates with surprising effectiveness (very cool actually) even though previous Develop settings are not visible. Lastly, it's a little trickier to operate than I made it sound - there are quite a few potential "gotchas" during the process.

I mentioned posting a "how to" thread about this technique. Actually, I would feel a whole lot better about going public if you had tried it first and pronounced it suitable for public consumption. On the other hand, this may be a little over-the-top for even the average Pro user. Let me know what you think.

Posted On November 12, 2009 - 06:31 AM (1 week ago) (Permalink to this post)
John Radcliffe
Member

Marc Sabatella said:

Oh, and John - yes, the equivalent of the basic Levels controls in develop mode are the three controls below the Curves (and the "auto" button is basically an "auto levels").

Thanks Marc, so now I can stop looking for what isn't there.

Posted On November 12, 2009 - 02:04 PM (1 week ago) (Permalink to this post)