JJMack wrote: If Photoline is a good photoshop alternative and is flexible the Photoshop CC. Why then is Photoline not the Gold Standard of Image Processors. It more likely you use a small subset of Photoshop feature and Photoline feature cover the subset of Photoshop features you use. However I have seen you over in the scripting forum the last time I looked Photoline could not be scripted it only had action support. Have you given up on scripting Photoshop? |
Photoline does not do any video or 3d stuff (well, there is some primitive 3d tool). Also, the brush engine for digital painting is not really comparable: it is more or less on par with the older Photoshop versions, before the updated brush engine. It is, however, compatible with most Photoshop brush libraries.
So in this sense: yes, Photoline covers a subset of Photoshop: image editing. And in this regard it does an extremely good job, with tools that are mostly (95%) on par with Photoshop. Up till 14 months ago I used the full scope of functionality in Photoshop for professional photo work, web work, graphic design and 3d texturing. I have used it since version 3 in my work. In September last year I decided to stop using Adobe Photoshop for my work, as I discovered alternative tools that just work much better and are more efficient.
In terms of workflow Photoline offers a much more streamlined and non-destructive layer stack. I used all of Photoshop's image editing features, and use most of the techniques described by Marguilis for image colour correction and enhancement. And Photoline's approach works BETTER than Photoshop for general and detailed image editing (in my opinion).
For example:
- no need to switch image mode when you wish to work with the curves in Lab mode. This is part of the curves: a neat dropdown allows me to work in RGB, Lab, HIS or HSV colour mode.
- far better control of layer opacity and effect control due to a -200 up to +200 opacity slider. You can easily invert a layer's blend mode effect this way. Or double its effect
- cloned layers update in realtime. And source layers can be moved to their own page. Multiple views can be setup, and changes in the source layers in one page update in realtime on other pages. Very handy to organize your work. Arguably works better than "smart objects".
- layer masks act like regular layers. The amount of freedom this allows you in your workflow is staggering: group layer masks together, apply adjustment layers, layer effects - the sky is the limit. Completely non-destructive, and you can add as many bitmap and vector layer masks per layer as you want. And these can be cloned as well, and reused anywhere in your layer stack or pages!
- and of course, any layer and layer mask can be individually set to 8/16/32bpc and any image mode.
There is also no need to convert layers to smart object for them to work with non-destructive adjustment layers. Just apply them. Edit the contents in place - why force me to open a smart object in a new window that will not update in real time in the original comp? Just silly.
Anyway, Photoline is Photoshop sans 3d and video. With a much improved layer stack workflow.
Granted, the one thing really missing is scriptability, unfortunately. No scripting in Photoline. I have mentioned this lack of control to the Photoline devs, and hopefully they will address this in the future. At the moment I use ImageMagick for more complex batch image processing jobs instead, but I do hop this will be amended in a newer version of Photoline.
For digital painting work I now use Krita - the brush engine in Krita is insane, and blows Photoshop's brush engine out of the water. As it happens, Krita applies the same layer paradigm as Photoline, so they feel like sister applications.
For 3d painting and texturing work I generally use 3dCoat. Photoshop's 3d is pretty horrendous as it is, so I already moved away from that a long time ago.
For web work Photoline is better than Photoshop, since I can work in pages. Optimization I do with freeware tools such as Color Quantizer. Photoshop's web export is rather bad, so additional tools are required to take care of proper optimization.
Besides, the point I am making is this: Photoshop tries to be everything to everyone nowadays. It has lead to fragmented development, and at the same time it can never hope to be as good as specialized tools. More bugs are introduced due to bloat and legacy code that has to support extraneous features that are good, but not great (3d everyone?). At the same time less time is spent on the core functionality that made Photoshop so great in the past as an image editor. And it is starting to show.
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