Updates

Easing back onto the grid

I've been off the photo journey for a month or more while dealing with one of my dog's, my favorite dog's, end of life. It's been rough for him and my wife and I, watching him deal with cancer and finally having to put him down. He's been a huge part of my life for 14 years and having that come to an end, and without having any other choice, has been and is very difficult. I don't believe that the hole he's left in my heart can ever be filled. Even though we have 3 more dogs, the house does not seem the same to me without my friend Alvin.

I'd like to get back to getting out of the house again, but this first weekend is hard. Even thinking about going away conjures up emotions and memories of all of the trips Alvin has made with us, and that leads to noticing the empty spaces that Alvin usually could be found, and that leads to depression and distress and tears. Lots of tears.

His passing puts this electronic stuff into perspective even more strongly. I've been increasingly disenchanted with technology for years, and Alvin's passing punctuates it more strongly. For probably a year now I rarely look at my personal email, perhaps once per month if that, and even then it's only to look for something specific that I know should be there, like an Amazon.com order update. I don't miss it. I feel less stress because of NOT paying attention to it. If there's anything truly important, I figure the originator will call me.

The only technology I'm interested in any more is for my photography related activities, and then it's only to the extent that I need it in order to take, process, and publish my photographs to my online gallery.

Adobe Updates

To that end, I've updated my Adobe software. I got a new version of Lightroom and Photoshop (and Bridge too, I believe, but I don't use it).

The Lightroom update un-installed the old version (5.4) and installed the new version (5.5). It made my shortcut on my Windows 7 taskbar inoperative. It's not just an update, it's an entire installation of a new version. And, while I'm on Lightroom, I notice it looks differently in the Adobe Creative Cloud panel - like Lightroom is not the same "clould" software as Photoshop somehow. As long as it does what I use it for, I have no further interest in trying to figure out why (or caring about why).

One more thing I'll say about Lightroom - I wanted to try editing a picture in it recently and couldn't even see where the editing tools are. I think there's supposed to be brushes, etc., where you can apply touch-ups selectively, but I couldn't find them. I did apply a "quick" or "easy" color correction to a photo, but then couldn't see how to save the photo as a new copy and as a jpeg (the original was a tiff). That's one big complaint of mine regarding all Adobe software - their interfaces generally suck. There are buttons and controls scattered all over the screen. Some controls work fine but others you have to go through quite a few button clicks to do something. I miss the old, typical Microsoft influenced menu systems where everything was available at the same place on an application, the toolbars could be fully customized, and if a menu item wasn't available due to the state of the content, it was greyed out. That sort of operation is more similar to my preferred electronic hardware that I use for recording music.

Photoshop's "update" is even more strange to me. It installed an entire new version, Photoshop 2014, alongside the previous version. I've read some of the new features available in Photoshop, but haven't tried them yet and I don't know when or if I will.

I've mentioned earlier that I am at the stage where I try to do as little as possible in post processing and the new Photoshop features that I noticed had to do with better selection functionality, like creating masks. At this point, that doesn't matter to me. In fact, I can't remember the last time I used Photoshop for editing.

I've done the updates because I've paid for them with my subscription. But for actual image editing I still use Nikon CaptureNX 2, and plan to continue using it as long as it works. Nikon is putting CaptureNX down and releasing something new that doesn't do as much and hasn't been received well.

All of these changes, along with others that I see almost daily during my work as a software developer (I have a hard time calling it "engineering" any longer), really build my disdain and distrust of software. I really wish there were more hardware based solutions to processing photographs, like in the film days, that weren't being updated by people new to the process that can't bother to learn from what's happened to a product before they showed up on the scene. Functionality is constantly in a state of flux while the new kids re-learn the pitfalls that their predecessors solved, re-implementing things correctly or sensibly just in time for another batch of newbies.

That is exactly why I started accumulating and using hardware in my audio recording process as much as possible - the recording software I use (Cakewalk Sonar) kept devolving and becoming less intuitive, productive, and functional. Sure, it MIGHT have some audio improvements, but to take advantage of them meant giving up other things. That seems backwards to me and consequently makes me tune out of the flash in the pan "updates".

Okay, enough complaining. My pup Alvin has just opened up my senses, re-enforced my personal outlook on what's important about life, and software and it's devolution, especially if it's outside what is necessary for my hobbies, is not one of them.