Anyone using TIFFany?
I'm interested in anyone's experience with TIFFany 3. I'm already very familiar with Photoshop, but I've heard generally good things about this app from old NeXT users. Also, it's plenty cheaper than Photoshop and I've already read about some of the features that pique my interest such as bracketed photo merging, hot folder processes and batch processes.
I'm giving it a spin with a trial license at the moment, plus reading the user guide and tutorials. Are there any features that make you green with envy as a Photoshop user? Any deal-breakers? Any of you using it and would sooner have it pried from your cold, dead fingers? I'd appreciate the input.
Thanks.
I'm giving it a spin with a trial license at the moment, plus reading the user guide and tutorials. Are there any features that make you green with envy as a Photoshop user? Any deal-breakers? Any of you using it and would sooner have it pried from your cold, dead fingers? I'd appreciate the input.
Thanks.
Comments
<a href="http://www.applelust.com/alust/resources/Reviews/Archives/tiffany/rev_tiffany.shtml"; target="_blank">http://www.applelust.com/alust/resources/Reviews/Archives/tiffany/rev_tiffany.shtml</a>;
Macworld also reviewed it this month and gave it four blue mice, but they said some of the effects/actions aren't in real time, despite that Caffeine describes them that way. Dead link to the online article though:
<a href="http://www.macworld.com/2002/06/reviews/toast.html"; target="_blank">http://www.macworld.com/2002/06/reviews/toast.html</a>;
PixelNhance on the other hand is a nice little freeware tool they offer. Sort of an add-on for iPhoto. That is worth checking out if you're not the photoshop type but want basic control over your image's appearance.
I'll go over my reservations first (and end on a good note). Like I sadi, it's conceptually very simple. You have engines that make specific actions. Everything is an action. More on that later.
To select, you have bitmap marquees and vector (paths, rectangles, polygons) marquees. Bitmap marquees can be created with the magic wand (which has a lot more control than Adobe's, though it takes some trial and error to take advantage of this) and by applying any action as a mask. Masks = marquees pretty much. Believe me, it's very simple without a loss of functionality. You can have many at any time (they're saved and available with the layers like paths only with less fuss), they work as boolean operands (addition, difference, intersection), they have feathering, intensity, etc. And the fact that you can select a pixel marquee using pretty much any action means you have a tremendous amount of control and power over your image. Again, it's something of a double edged sword in that you have to get used to the amount of control and how to effectively use it to your advantage.
Actions are like filters, layer effects, transformations, etc. There is a set of more general engines that can generate any number of manipulations: geometrical, color, alpha, edges, etc. The action catalog keeps what are basically just presets. For example, the brightness folder contains actions ofr brighteneing 10%, 20%, contrast adjustment, auto-levels, darkening, etc. Any time you want ti change the settings, you double-click o the action and it brings up a control menu, with expert and basic settings so you can change the settings and save them as new actions if you want. This means you can save anything you do as a preset very easily. The pro version lets you make process actions, which are like Photoshop's use of the word "action." all of this can be very simple (click on an action, apply it, done) or very complex (e.g., scientific formulas can be entered for distorting geometry with the ability to apply it just to certain colors, values, etc.).
You have independent control of resolution, size, color spaces, an infinite canvas and so on.
you can either apply an action to the entire selction or you can brush it on (and use an undo brush later too). You can create you own brush patterns very simply too.
You have a huge number of undos that you control how many, how large and whether you want them saved with the file. So you can always revert to even before you last saved.
It also has some nifty ready-made process actions that do things like take bracketed exposures and combine them into one image. you just tell it which is under-exposed, the median, and the over-exposed image.
Now for my qualms and other musings:
I do a lot of geometrical corrections to my photos, especially perspective and horizon correction. While the pro version can do everything I need it to with mainly its four-point mapping engine and simple rotation, I don't know if it's the best means for me to do this. It's mainly done in the settings window numerically, not graphically driven like in Photoshop. On the other hand, it can compensate for lens distortion better than Photoshop, but again, it is a rather involved method of geometry -- this is where those scientific formulas come into play. The trade-off is between intuition and a visual approach (Photoshop) over a precise and numerical one (TIFFany). Alone, this is not the end of the world. I've already gotten pretty good at making my verticals more, uh, vertical.
While this also isn't a deal-breaker, one feature I could really really use is the ability to merge photos into panoramic views. I have a lot of that stuff, and when PS Elements introduced that function it saved me about half my time doing that kind of thing. It would be nice to have one package that did that.
The actions don't show themselves in real time like the way Photoshop shows a preview of the filter. You have a small drawer that comes out of the action catalog that previews the action over the entire drawing (not the marquee), but it's small. Knowing that their other application, PixelNhance, can do this nicely, it would be nice to have that functionality all in one place.
Something to point out that I don't have much concern over, but others might: it understands ICC profiles, but it cannot set or manipulate the images using them. It only imports the profile with the image.
It does have some UI issues, mostly because they're in the process of adjusting to Aqua when it is intimately tied to the old NeXTstep UI. You might think that they're practically the same, but this app sometimes highlights the differences at times.
I've had some stability problems recently when I've layered up some big photos. it might be an issue with the new release since it wasn't happening before then.
Finally, as you can tell from this post, most of my work is simple color correction and a whole lot layering and geometry correction. I could be happy with PixelNhance alone for the color stuff (hell, iPhoto is pretty close), but I need an app that can make my cheap 35 mm lens photos and make them look like a more professional architectural photographer's work. The panoramic merging feature would also be a HUGE time-saver. I should probably write to them about it. By the way, does PS 7 have this? I'd hate to buy a classic app to do just this.
In all, TIFFany has potentially more functionality than Photoshop if you use it to its advantages. It's realy going to satisfy the geeky super-control freak with all of its possible settings and combinations of them. If you're just going to use the default actions, I don't know if it's worth as much to learn it. But the fact that it costs significantly less than PS might offset that logic.
I actually re-read the MacWorld review just now. I thought it very accurately reflected my thoughts and experience with TIFFAny:
<a href="http://www.macworld.com/2002/06/reviews/tiffany.html"; target="_blank">http://www.macworld.com/2002/06/reviews/tiffany.html</a>;