** Heads-up for photo enthusiasts ** | Artistic Talent | Forums

Sorry if this is in the wrong place but I've hunted around the forum for an appropriate board and "artistic talent" seems reasonably appropriate.

This note is intended for folks who regularly post-process their out-of-camera images. I do, using an old version of Photoshop (which at the time of purchase cost a small fortune) because post-processing means I don't need to have a camera which attempts to do in-camera image manipulation (and fails.)

Couple of months back, I ran across the work of a guy called Rob Nelson. He's developed a 48-bit editor called Sagelight.  As a PS user, I didn't think it would be of much interest to me, but Rob offers one of those rare things: a 30-day trial of the app without nag screens or the crippling of any features. So I gave it a whirl.

As a hobby photographer, I've tried or actually used image editors of innumerable kinds since going from film to digital in 2003. I've always gone back to Photoshop because though 75% of its features are irrelevant to my needs (and, to be honest, I don't understand 'em anyway) the 25% of Photoshop that I do use is pretty damn good.

So: Rob Nelson's Sagelight. How useful did that prove during its one month free trial? Answer: as an image management app, it's astonishing. I've no idea how he's achieved it, but tasks that have taken me a lo-nn-g time in PS have been reduced to less than a couple of minutes in Sagelight. More to the point: the results have mached and often exceeded those from PS.

Reason for posting here? Well, like everyone else, I **hate** spam and spammers. But I'm also aware that there will be quite a few dot techies who enjoy digital photography. So. . . this *isn't* a spam message, rather a heads-up for other dot techies who may not have heard of Rob Nelson or his creation. The no-strings free 30 day trial is well worth exploring by any dot techie, bearing in mind that the download is small, the app is elegantly coded, and unlike PS or Adobe Lightroom,  can be used by both the novice and the pro from the get-go because its GUI is brilliant and its help system cleverly thought out.

I guess we're all aware of the work of many "little guys" in software development, and appreciate the enormous difficulties they have in contending with the power of the big companies. This note is therefore, above all else, a note about one such "little guy" (with whom I have absolutely no connection.)

I'm not going to stick a link in this post: if you're interested in transforming the images you take with your digital camera, just Google for Sagelight.

Thanks prema -- I didn't link because I didn't want to come on like a spammer. 

Hope you enjoy yourself with Sagelight; I'm anything but an expert (actually, I'm still learning: the darn thing is deceptively simple, and then you start delving into its depths and oh-gosh-golly) but if you get stuck with anything, just post.

jayesstee said:

Thanks MikeR.  dotTech at it's best! 

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Well, I'm hoping so, jayesstee!   It is amazing though how dot tech grew up from nowhere so quickly to become a blog/website/forum considerably different from so many others out there: I've never seen anyone here being malicious, or humorless, or unhelpful (which is kind of the opposite where a lot of other forums -- fora? Flora? Huh? -- are concerned.) About the only thing I could never fathom was what we were all doing on something called 'politically-motivated.com' when nobody was political and the only one who seemed motivated to do very much at the beginning was, er, Ashraf. But of course, that was all to do with Ashraf's sense of humour, which has long been on the wierd side and the result of too many nights spent writing reviews. Good ol' dot tech!

Hi Phoenix! Right then, in response to your utterly unfounded eulogy, all I can say is. . .

Check's in the post!

Jyo said:

Indeed, it is a pretty cool program. The intro screen tutorial pop-ups are very nice and easy to understand. The thing I like about this software is that most editing is done through the scale sliding feature, which makes it fun and easy to experiment. I should add that the download size is only a mere 15MB! Thanks Mike!

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Hi Jyo: well done you for pointing that out, I'd completely forgotten to mention the download size. It was the first thing that surprised me when I DL'd, considering that (for example) Adobe Reader Free Version is an almost 60MB download -- not that anyone would use AR.

There are (and always will be) a lot of dot.techies who are infinitely more knowledgable than I'll ever be about writing software code, so I'm assuming that the developer's use of SSE and MMX assembly language accounts for the absence of bloat? Well, er, I guess so -- never mind code, I have enough trouble just writing letters. 

Anyway. Thanks again to everyone here like Jeffinprov for responding to my post in the spirit in which it was made. I know we're all fed up with spam and irritated beyond measure with trialware that comes with high recommendations but turns out to be crippled in use and bedevilled with nag screens, so I would've understood if my post had been misinterpreted. That everyone's been their usual decent selves really does say a lot about the calibre of this little community.