"RSD99" writes:
Digital Light and Color’s Picture Window and Picture Window Pro. Designed by a photographer, for photographic images.
www.dl-c.com/Temp
Yep, Picture Window Pro is really lovely. It has the best "curves" tool I’ve ever seen (and that’s the most important tool for "darkroom" type work on an image), and the best detail color correction tool (so good they make it as a photoshop plugin, too, "color mechanic pro") too.
It doesn’t match my preferred working style for serious work, unfortunately (or I could have saved quite a few dollars sent Adobe-wards over the years!). No adjustment layers or other kind of layers; all changes are permanent, and all the changes are inseparable. (There’s plenty of "undo" and such, so long as you’re in one work session you can always go back; but not between sessions, except to specific files you saved along the way).
(I really don’t want to try to argue this is the "best" or "only" working style or even that it’s "better", and certainly not "more valid", mind you. Just the style *I* like to use.)
This is sort-of okay for Q&D or commercial type work (at least so long as I *realize* that I’m starting down a risky avenue of exploration and save a version before that!). But for trying to make exhibition-quality prints, I really need to take my time and let things "cool off" and look at them again later, and make little tweaks (for that kind of printing I often have more than three curves adjustment layers each with a layer mask, and I might tweak either the curves or the layer mask or both many times before settling on the final version).
So, if *your* working style is comfortable with making up your mind and sticking to it, Picture Window Pro is very much worth considering.
Oh, it also has some of the best geometric distortion tools (perspective adjustment, barrel and pincushion distortion, and also chromatic aberration).
—
David Dyer-Bennet, <mailto:>
RKBA: <
http://noguns-nomoney.com/> <
http://www.dd-b.net/carry/> Pics: <
http://dd-b.lighthunters.net/> <
http://www.dd-b.net/dd-b/SnapshotAlbum/> Dragaera/Steven Brust: <
http://dragaera.info/>