Best Version of Windows?

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tokumaru
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Re: Best Version of Windows?

Post by tokumaru »

rainwarrior wrote:FWIW non-destructive editing is on GIMP's roadmap. I'm sure it will eventually happen, but I wouldn't bet that it will happen in the next 5 years.
In theory, the implementation sounds simple enough... just save the original and cache the transformations, when the transformations change, rebuild the cache. If the original changes, same thing. OK, maybe I'm oversimplifying things... I'm not considering previewing, for example, but even without that, just the basic implementation would help a lot.
Myself I haven't used Photshop often enough to be efficient/effective with adjustment layers anyway. I've seen how they're used and why they're effective, but I can generally do what I want within GIMP anyway.
Like I said, if you just want to get something done and forget about it, GIMP is fine, but when you work in an advertisement agency (like I have) and you reuse previous work a lot, and there's a lot of back and forth between the designers and the clients where all kinds of little adjustments are necessary, GIMP doesn't cut it. Designers often have layers and layers of effects applied on top of each other, and any of them can change at any time, and it's not practical at all to constantly redo the whole chain of transformations every time you need to tweak a little detail in the middle.
How much of that tradeoff is really inherent in a feature like adjustment layers, and how much of it is just in using Photoshop daily and GIMP rarely?
I used GIMP almost exclusively before working at that agency, but once I finally understood what the other designers were doing in Photoshop, that greatly increased my productivity. Not only you have less layers and groups to manage due to not having to make manual backups, but the software will automatically rebuild everything for you every time a parameter changes. It's a HUGE time saver. Maybe it's the kind of thing that before you use you don't see what the big deal is, because you can achieve the same results without it, but once you get used to it you just can't live without. I still use GIMP for quick edits that I'll never touch again, but if it's something for a client that will need to be tweaked and reused to hell, I wouldn't consider anything but Photoshop.

Think about effects applied on text, for example... you can just edit heavily stylized text normally, and see the results instantaneously, so you can play with font sizes, character spacing, etc. and immediately see what works best with the effects. Can you imagine trying dozens of variations of text formatting and manually applying effects to transform it every time until you find the ideal combination?
Operating systems for me just need to run the software I want to run.
That and be reliable. I'm not too picky about UI stuff either, I can adapt.
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rainwarrior
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Re: Best Version of Windows?

Post by rainwarrior »

Yeah, that's definitely a good use case for Photoshop. I mean, if I worked for an ad agency I'd assume they'd be paying for the license anyway, though if I was a freelancer doing that kind of stuff I'm sure I'd already have it myself.

Like the perspective I look at it from is using GIMP daily for pixel art stuff, and frequent minor image editing. I do occasionally use it for more complicated design layout or other drawing, but by far my primary application for it is pixel art, and it's really not deficient for that need. I'm sure there are some uses for adjustment layers there, but I have a hard time imagining how much. Like I think the kinds of things I'd want to use them for just aren't frequent needs. (And a lot of the things I think I would use them for are operations that I can almost do efficiently in GIMP anyway. I would love to be surprised though, if anyone's got any cool Photoshop pixel-art adjustment layer tricks to share.)

That's sort of why I have a hard time when people want to make huge value differences between these two things, it's only more valuable if you can actually make use of those features. It's not better until you have a situation they apply to, and you're trained enough to use them. (Same like the idea that FCEUX is "inaccurate"... it's very accurate for a lot of purposes, and some of its tools have serious advantages for the right situation.)

In a specific thing like tweaking a series of font transformations, yeah doing that efficiently in GIMP is not easy. Either a lot of manually redoing steps, or you learn how to work with scripts (which has a huge learning curve, but for my needs it's definitely paid off to learn). ...and yeah, also terrible for transferring to other people to work with (and useless for collaborating with people that use Photoshop already), but that's never been my job or need. Having something that makes editing something for a fussy client way faster doesn't help me if I don't have any fussy clients. ;)

FWIW knowing GIMP has been useful to me in many professional and non-professional situations, where there has been some immediate need to do some image editing. I can download it, use it, do the job quickly, no worry about licensing / dongles / pirating / cracking / viruses, and its portable version is only about 100MB these days. ...but if I hadn't already been ready to use it, it would have pretty much been worthless because of its stupidly obtuse learning curve. :P I would definitely say that a lot of the things you can do with adjustment layer type things are way more intuitive to figure out than anything equivalent in GIMP. (I avoided it for many years, but I regret that because learning it has been great to me. It's way more capable than every other free image editor I've ever used, except for doing animation, but I go to Aseprite for that.)

Though who knows, maybe if I constantly had Photoshop on my computer ready to play with I'd be tempted to do tasks that it's suited for more often. ;) I might have developed different hobbies, ha ha.
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Banshaku
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Re: Best Version of Windows?

Post by Banshaku »

The tool I liked the most when I was actively drawing was deluxe paint animation but these days I do not think you can really use it. Maybe still for nes based thing inside dosBox ^^;;;
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tokumaru
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Re: Best Version of Windows?

Post by tokumaru »

rainwarrior wrote:Like the perspective I look at it from is using GIMP daily for pixel art stuff, and frequent minor image editing.
Yeah, for that kind of work, GIMP is great. Photoshop's non-destructive editing doesn't help much with pixel art, really... when working with a limited number of colors, there are hardly any transformations you can do. There's one thing that might help though: smart objects. A smart object is a layer that doesn't contain an actual bitmap, only a reference to a separate graphics document (bitmap or vector). Any changes you do to it won't modify the original graphic. What's interesting for pixel art though is that there can be multiple references to the same smart object, so if you do change the original graphic, all instances will be updated. This could be useful if you were designing a tile map, or even a level, seeing as you could have each tile or metatile be its own smart object. You can't edit smart objects in place though, so that limits the usefulness of the technique. Maybe if you wanted to reuse animation frames in multiple animations you could edit the individual frames in a single place, I don't know. I never did any of that, I basically use 3 tools when doing pixel art: pen, eraser, drag. And layers, mostly for animation.
FWIW knowing GIMP has been useful to me in many professional and non-professional situations, where there has been some immediate need to do some image editing. I can download it, use it, do the job quickly, no worry about licensing / dongles / pirating / cracking / viruses, and its portable version is only about 100MB these days.
Yeah, I've used GIMP like that too. I still do, occasionally.
Oziphantom
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Re: Best Version of Windows?

Post by Oziphantom »

re Slack in a browser window.

Having its own icon that won't get grouped, and will show notifications on it that there is new stuff. It shows toasts, integrates with the notification panel and follows the rules of "focus" mode. I don't think the browser version would so as well.

To be clear, I have a Ryzen 5 1600 that has 8 cores unlocked so 16T with 16GB of RAM. So I run 3~4 instances of VS 2017 + VS Code + Slack + Skype + relaunched + 1 or 2 Regenerators + other editors + Photoshop and/or Illustrator + emulators all at once and don't notice the slightest issues with CPU power.

Oh and if you build C++ bringing up the Task Manager hit F5 and watch all 16 go to 100%, the power you feel :D

Another aspect for Photoshop, all Adobe stuff. I can pay $15 get a really good training video series on Udemy, Lynda et all, with a bunch of teachers or focuses to learn from and I can learn how to use them quickly. More websites cover tips and tricks, youtube videos etc, If I need to do 'a thing' its a lot easier to see a quick video that will show me 'the thing'. Support around a tool is also important.
Oziphantom
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Re: Best Version of Windows?

Post by Oziphantom »

Banshaku wrote:The tool I liked the most when I was actively drawing was deluxe paint animation but these days I do not think you can really use it. Maybe still for nes based thing inside dosBox ^^;;;
PC DP II are you mad? WinUAE and DP V don't muck around with the lame PC version ;)


However if you are doing pixel art, I don't recommend GIMP or Photoshop. If you want free open source GrafX2 - its basically DP IV remade to work on something other than an Amiga ;) Linux supported as well I believe. However on Windows, wait for a Steam sale and get Pro Motion NG ;)
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Banshaku
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Re: Best Version of Windows?

Post by Banshaku »

My first computer was a commodore 64 then we got an Ibm ps1 (286) so I almost had dos only based pc and never had the chance to have access to an amiga so I don't know how much better it was unfortunately. For non professional use, I really enjoyed it and it was better than windows 3.1 paint (I think there was one?) or anything else under dos, which I do not remember.

It will try the one you mentioned. thanks!
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Re: Best Version of Windows?

Post by tepples »

Oziphantom wrote:Having its own icon that won't get grouped, and will show notifications on it that there is new stuff. It shows toasts, integrates with the notification panel and follows the rules of "focus" mode. I don't think the browser version would so as well.
I don't know what "focus" mode you're talking about, but Slack (web) integrates with the Notifications API to show these "toasts".
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tokumaru
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Re: Best Version of Windows?

Post by tokumaru »

Man, I used to love Paintbrush in Windows 3.1! Paint in Windows XP is probably the best version, though. I still use it for pixel art every once in a while.
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slembcke
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Re: Best Version of Windows?

Post by slembcke »

I don't think it will ever be "year of the Linux desktop", and I don't really care honestly. :p 10-15 years ago I was sort of frustrated with Linux in that I liked a lot of things about it, but there were a lot of really frustrating things (I'm sure people can imagine a list, lol). My recent experience in the last few months with Ubuntu 17 and 18 has been relatively flawless though. No driver issues, system configuration in Gnome 3 is massively better/simpler, though I did need to edit config files for mouse button remapping. I knew where to look, but it would be annoying for a beginner probably.

As for the "what about"-isms against Linux... I dunno, the last time I used Office was 15 years ago (can't say I miss it really). I don't really have a favorite music player, and I'm pretty happy with the basic one that comes pre-installed (there are a dozen more if I bothered to try them). GIMP is... fine, but certainly not Photoshop (which I've paid thousands of dollars for over the years). I don't use the Slack or Discord clients (simply having them open halves my laptop's battery life). I dunno, sort of rambling here, but I guess my point is that Linux in 2018 has fit me surprisingly well, maybe it will work well for somebody else too. I only have "what about"-isms of my own to quote for Windows though. :p
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Banshaku
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Re: Best Version of Windows?

Post by Banshaku »

I remember linux from that time too... I tried Fedora 9 because we had a pc at work that was old and though it would be a good idea to have one, for testing purposes. It was never working properly, you started apps, the busy mouse icon changed then the app died without telling you why it happened etc. It was awful.

Things are a lot better today. Still some issues here and there but better.
Oziphantom
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Re: Best Version of Windows?

Post by Oziphantom »

tepples wrote:
Oziphantom wrote:Having its own icon that won't get grouped, and will show notifications on it that there is new stuff. It shows toasts, integrates with the notification panel and follows the rules of "focus" mode. I don't think the browser version would so as well.
I don't know what "focus" mode you're talking about, but Slack (web) integrates with the Notifications API to show these "toasts".
Focus mode - when you watch a movie or play a game. You can also manually invoke it. Windows will stop all sounds, popups, msgs etc. Then when you leave focus mode it will give you a "this is what you missed" summary.
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koitsu
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Re: Best Version of Windows?

Post by koitsu »

So Linux is the best version of Windows? 'k.
calima
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Re: Best Version of Windows?

Post by calima »

"It said Windows XP or better, so I installed Linux"
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Re: Best Version of Windows?

Post by tepples »

Or, more rigorously:
Wine on X11/Linux is probably the best environment for running Windows applications once Windows 7 sunsets, particularly on desktop or laptop hardware that Linux supports and FreeBSD does not.
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