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Amiga computer related discussion => Amiga Software Issues and Discussion => Topic started by: AmigaMac on November 16, 2002, 05:51:38 AM
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Hey you ImageFX gurus out there... I was curious about your thoughts on ImageFX versus Photoshop... basically on what you can do with the application and how well it performs doing similar tasks. Which one of you out there is currently running ImageFX?
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AmigaMac wrote:
Hey you ImageFX gurus out there... I was curious about your thoughts on ImageFX versus Photoshop... basically on what you can do with the application and how well it performs doing similar tasks. Which one of you out there is currently running ImageFX?
ImageFX is more designed for video work, personally I think its easier to use, and Cinematte (included with ImageFX) pulls mattes better then about anything (thats why we ported it as a Photoshop/Aura plugin). And it runs pretty fast on my PC under UAE. Lots of cool effects too. Photoshop was designed for printwork, and though its gotten lots more video oriented, it still has that backwards feel at times.
-Tig
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ImageFX and Photoshop are apples to oranges... If you want to compare ImageFX to something compare to to project dogwaffle or Aura2... in both cases the more modern Dogwaffle/Aura2 map floor with ImageFX...
Not to say ImageFX is bad.. it's a nice little app... it's just not comparable to modern apps in that it dosent support many things... it may in the future on A1...who knows..
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I have used both and found Photoshop to be a bit awkward to use sometimes, but the again so can ImageFX. The way Photoshop does something is a bit silly and drawn out (excuss the pun). ImageFX has a lot more effects too. Its not very quick though.
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Its not very quick though.
It will be !!
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ImageFX has a lot more effects too
when you say effects do you mean filters?...if so I dont think so..there are thousands and thousands and thousands ...tens of thousands...of photoshop filters made by third partys..
as for awkward ...everything is awkward when your new... I remember thinking scala was very backward now I really like that app.
Once you get the hang of photoshop you will like it...and yes IFX is slow... try loading a 3000x3000 IIF into it... and watch it crash and burn..
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I'm taking Photoshop's side in this one. I use it extensively every day at work, and I have to say that its bloody marvellous - except when it comes to batch processing, which is not its greatest talent.
I reckon ArtEffect would be a better program to compare directly against Photoshop though.
I used to use ImageFX years ago on my A1200 but could never get my head around it. I was always a big fan of Photogenics and Brilliance though.
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photogenics is a nice 2D app... I hope they make a native PPC version for OS4/MOS.
still no photoshop stomper though.
I think IFX would be better compared to AFX aswell but when you do that... I mean... AFX is just worlds away... AFX is used to do comping work on movies...several movies where comped useing AFX..
I think a better comparison is an app like Aura2... I mean it does Video work likr ROTO/Paint/ crappy compositing stuff stroke recorder,animatable brushes,key framer,etc.... alot of simple video effects...its a full featured 2D package aswell..supporting wacom tablets...and spline based drawing... editable brushes..and of course layers wich BTW can contain video and even video of differant formats wich can then be encoded together when saved.
I think when you do a comparison like that you realise that either A1/Pegasos need to get some developers on board IE:Newtek or their in trouble app wise... because it would take years for someone else to develop an app like Aura2.
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Brilliance was a truly amazing paint program.
by the lack of postings about brilliance its obvious that it wasn't the big seller that both you & I know it should have been.
I love Brilliance, just So DAMN EASY to animate things. Wooped DPaints arse by a country mile !!
Brilliance is one app I really do want ported to PPC (but I'm not holding much hope on that)
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Well, truth be known, I've frequently loaded HUGE images into ImageFX, along the size of 6000 x 6000 without a whole lot of trouble. Actually IFX was the ONLY app I have on the Amiga that would even display the images. Slow? Somewhat, but not unusably slow, and it certainly didn't crash. IFX's stability is very dependent on hardware and VM configuration. Also, FXForge is compatible with Photoshop's Filter Factory, so that leaves a lot of doors open.
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@gnarly
I'm taking Photoshop's side in this one. I use it extensively every day at work, and I have to say that its bloody marvellous
I agree, a total bastard to get the hang of at the start but after getting used to it PS is amazing and is a brilliant product but i think its way to expensive for what it does,
As for the PS filters they are outstanding.
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re:
found Photoshop to be a bit awkward to use sometimes
akward? you are overly polite and P.C., you should actually say *counter-intuitive* or *anti-intuitive* , where the root word is *intuition*
uh oh , which computer has *intuition*
viva la diamondbox,photogenics,gimp,artfx,imagefx and brilliance.
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I dunno... to me it shines through in wich was chosen and why.
Adobe products where chosen to be the kings of desktop publishing on mac's long ago(IE:in the time of the amiga).. there is a reason 99% of print shops use one or more adobe products in their pipeline.
typically
Illustrator,Photoshop,InDesign, along with Quark,,,, the reason bieng is Adobe products are remarkable and wonderful products.
I've found all their apps to be well coded and polished to a perfect shine.
I think their one of the best app makers in the business because all their apps are very well laid out and easily learned. I mean once you learn one you learn the rest. and productivity is great.
Adobe is the savior of Mac's without Adobe Mac's would totally suck in every way.
I think the approach people like me have is the OS is an interface to the apps... to me I spend very little time in windows doing things... I spend times in apps doing things.. to me the apps matter.... Amiga and my other quirks aside when it comes time to go to work ... you gotta admit you spend very little time messing around with OS level stuff even on an amiga.... the less time you have to spend screwing around searching for files...or any number of things the better... In windows and and MacOS(a couple OS's I consider to be on par with eachother) you dont have to spend much time messing about ... you install an app and you use it and you click the icon to make it open and you make a folder to put the files in it produces..and its very easy and intuitive to get everything up and working fast... even Linux is getting fairly easy in that reguard these days as far as haveing a more icon/menu driven system.
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Perfect .. Well ..... I wish Ps used the right button to correct mistakes ala photogenics ... instead of the POXY undo button.
I guess Ps isn't perfect, either.
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I think Photoshop is a little less flakey than ImageFX, but thas all down to speed.
And I`m not new to photoshop. I did a course and photoshop was part of it in its own way. Yes I tried to cut it out when ever possible, but hey I used it enough.
TVPaint is by far the best way of actually drawing. Not great at effects or filters etc, but the best for creating stuff.
I wish i could program, cause I`ve been designing a paint package. Reality bites yet again!
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Nick try Aura2 its basically 'next generation TVPaint' ...I prefer it for creation most of the time... it can even use all 3rd party photoshop filters.. well 'most' anyway.,..and it can apply them to video... wich is pretty cool... so its got some AE type features.
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Hey Nick-Slack!
I have same thought as you about TVPaint!
BTW I'm learning C++ at college! :)
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Apples and oranges, really.
PS is an excellent photo retoucher, and in many ways it is better than IFX doing that, though IFX is also very good in that dept. IFX on the other hand is an awesomely powerful image processor, to include outstanding batch and video processing features, and in that dept PS is surprisingly weak. In fact, the vast majority of IFX's image/batch/video processing feature set doesn't even overlap with PS.
PS is a better match with Art Effect4. Using both regularly, I'd say AE4 isn't quite as good overall, though it does do a few things better and is less than 10% the price of PS.
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"IFX is slow... try loading a 3000x3000 IIF into it... and watch it crash and burn.. "
Hmmm, I use IFX to process enormous files regularly ("" 600 dpi scans, about 100MBs per, around 6600x4800 pixels), and I haven't had any problems with it.
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I wasn't expecting to see Dogwaffle in there. I like blurbs.
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Photoshop vs. ImageFX. Considering the dent in the wallet as well as
the abilities of each program, ImageFX is far superior. The
difference in effects does not justify the cost difference. However,
I will also note that many proffessionals use both.
Even in the Amiga heyday, art would start in app1, then go to app2,
then app3, etc. Because certain functions of certain applications
feel better in one or another.
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Arteffect 4 all the way for me, way more easy to use than ImageFX.
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Hey, I didn't slam ArtEffect. I like both, and I use both ;-)
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If you like Photogenics, then take a look at fxPaint. It's a great
application and very similar. At least the WarpOs-Version is quite
fast and really fun to use. And I'm sure there will be an update
when AmigaOS4 is released.
Regards,
Holger Biehl
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@The_Editor
Hey, I've got both versions of Brilliance and as far as I'm concerned it's in a league of its own. Rock solid stability, and easy to learn/use. A big plus is the was the menu system can be switched around useing the numeric keypad, a, err, brilliant idea.
Unfortunately, Digital Creations (the publishers) were swallowed by Play Inc, who subsequently went bust. So unless there is someone out there who knows any of the original programmers, the chances of anyone re-sourcing a program written in 100% Assembler is pretty remote.
Bear in mind I paid £140 for Brilliance 1 and a further£40 for Brilliance 2, I'd quite happily pay over £100 again for an updated PPC/RTG version, but sadly I cannot see it happening.
Oh (swerving wildly back on topic), IFX vs Photoshop. Anything like this is always subjective, it's difficult sometimes to pick app X over app Y. Anyway I use both regularly. Batch processing wise, there is no competition, IFX stomps mercylessly all of Adobe's effort (in fact it's so one-sided that IFX could be accused of bullying :-D ). Each of the apps have many merits of their own, but for me, I prefer the way IFX does things.
-john
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I cant really comment on ImageFX - having never really got to grips with the guts of it.
But photoshop is king for today. Right now I've just been helping a student. Poor lad was given this week to produce 15 seconds of animation, coloured up with a sound track... he hasn't even been taught the principles yet. Let alone how to use the software. Furthermore half the equipment that would help automate the task has yet to arrive. So I used my brain, and had a look at what we already had...
So we shot the line test on the EOS - used Premier to split it up back down into the individual frames. Used Photoshop Actions to clean the drawings up - make the lines darker, loose some of the smudges etc. And then used Actions to automate colouring up flood fill areas.
He's now going through colouring up the fiddly bits. Later on we will be back into Premier, glue the frames together - whack on a backing track and out onto miniDV :-)
Its cool, cos now you can do this stuff on a shoestring :pint:
Anyway - its Friday, most students have gone home for the holidays. I should be getting all my lovely bits and bobs on Monday - Equipment! Set it all up next week and it should all be hunky dory for them in the new year :-)
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Just out of interest - does ImageFX allow you to batch process a number of images as opposed to a folder?
I mean is it possible to get it to batch process frames 001 to 093 leaving 093 and upwards alone. That would be dead cool if it can.
If it could do that - and there was some modern decent animation software available for OS4/AmigaOne... well ... :-)
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Its cool, cos now you can do this stuff on a shoestring
Shoestring in the grand scheme of things maybe, but for the likes of me buying Photoshop and Premiere is fecking scary! :-)
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Calm down, calm down, I did'nt say that you did.
Just saying what I prefer to use.
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@Bobsonsirjonny
I mean is it possible to get it to batch process frames 001 to 093 leaving 093 and upwards alone. That would be dead cool if it can.
Yup, piece of cake. AutoFX (IFX's batch processor) can do that and more.
AutoFX is file rather than drawer (folder) orientated, so if you had a drawer with say 1000 files in it, you select only the ones you want to process. It's so easy it's scary. The other thing is your files can be in different folders and still be batch processed together. Very flexible. I'm getting my PC updated to an AthlonXP1800 today and I'm looking forward to running IFX on UAE. I'v got a big animation I want to do which uses the IFX cloud generator, a starfield generator, the PanCanvas and TimeMachine plugins and then Cinemorph to form a transition between two animations. All this is a little too much for my 1200/060 and I'm hoping that I'll get a decent speed increase as at DVD resolution (720x576) it'll take forever otherwise.
-john
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Wow - From an animation point of view - particularly for students I think we may have the OS4 killer App here.
I could see how easily this could be used for cell animation painting - working with files as opposed to folders will be so tidy. Can you specify it to work on odd frames or even frames - could you make a selection and can it duplicate that selection over and over on other files/frames and colour that selection acordingly.
For example - I have an animated man. I know that the torso will only move so far in one direction and so far in the other - so if I select the centre of the torso, I know that no matter where the body moves - the centre of the torso will be selected. If thats the case you could just do a batch colour and have all your torso's done with ease. Is it then possible to render the frames out as a .avi or .mov. Specifying the frame rate, codec and res?. Obviously at the start people will have to take there frames in at the correct res - or at a high enough res at the right aspect ratio so at least it could be worked down if need be. Sound could be added etc in any old edit package.
Animo, CTP, Toonz et all - and other cell animation production tools cost a bomb - and I mean seriously funny money. But if Image FX is the right price - and can do all that - well it may be worth my while to invest in it. Anything that can speed up the ink and paint process is a Godsend. Were animators, so we'd rather spend more time doing that :-)
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Once I heard that ImageFX is capable of using photoshop filters. Is it true?
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Bobson check out Aura2.5 its got all those features... plus tight integration with NLE cards/Lightwave... very nice app...and the DV version is free still? if you visit a newtek reseller...it does most of what the video version does..
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I like both ImageFX and PhotoShop. And besides, ImageFX is the only program I have that can properly drive the flatbed scanner that I have hooked to the parallel port on my A4000T. :-)
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@ Mips
Thanks! The potential use of this is huge. I'm gonna do more diggining. If such a set up is as/more powerful than the industry standard solutions available, and more economical I will definately get one. I can now justify buying an AmigaOne (I was going to buy one - but with this, well at least I can justify its presence :-) ) Seriously - the market for its use as a tool to assist the 2D animator is massive.
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@Bobsonsirjonny
Can you specify it to work on odd frames or even frames - could you make a selection and can it duplicate that selection over and over on other files/frames and colour that selection acordingly.
Yup. When AutoFX starts up, you direct it to the Drawer where your files are located and select what you want, as many time as you want.
Is it then possible to render the frames out as a .avi or .mov
Off the top of my head MPEG and FLI animation support is offered, but my personal choice is to save the frames out and load them into an appropriate PC package.
-john
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@Bobsonsirjonny
I had Aura 2 for about a year but never used it then I upgraded free to Aura 2.5 but still never used it. Always used Photoshop and Premier. Then I saw the webcam streaming from Siggraph by Newtek showing Aura and it looked great. Still didn't use it though, Photoshop is always there. Correction I did use it to convert an mpeg to avi as it was quicker than Premier.
Now I have this nightmare project. 20 mins of a non edited fashion show(30 garments) on vcd that has to go on the web. Converting the dat to mpeg gives a 450Mb file! Each garment needs to be indevidually edited and given visual treatments.
I wanted to know how Aura would handle this on my home 800Mhz 256Mb PC. It is fine, better than fine. Not quite realtime but just needs a fraction of a second to update. The thing I love is that it allows you to visually set the start and stop markers of the video. This allows me to cut the video file even before loading it in.
The garments tend to get lost as the model wanders around the hall. To solve this I blur the area around the garment. Not by hand but automated using a path that follows a pixel on the garment. At set keyframes I can alter the blur settings.
I had to time section for the quote. The first one took me about an hour to do 4 garments. That's getting the theory, learning how to do it and applying it in practice.
I use the Photoshop Actions and Automate whenever possible. I am also a big fan of Premier and now I can add Aura as another lifesaver. I definately underrated this one.
Valan
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Check out this link: http://www.quake2.com/modeling/q2modelingFAQ.html
and section [1.2] WHAT PROGRAMS CAN I USE TO MAKE SKINS?
Pretty interesting and has some references to Amiga and to non-official DOS Brilliance port too.
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well it can use those Filter's that's called
Filter Factory on Photoshop
(called FXForge on IFX) but only those saved as
text files.
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@Valan
now I can add Aura as another lifesaver. I definately underrated this one.
Good story! I've been using VirtualDub for a while now, and had been given a copy of Aura.. Now, I've got to try it out ;-)
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Correction:
I won a copy at AmiWest donated by the NewTek guys.
Had to clarify; it sounded bad.
:roflmao: