Live Picture: Software that was way ahead of its time • Hacker News Board

Re: Live Picture: Software that was way ahead of its time

#21

Post by frozenport » Tue, Dec 25, 2012, 4:28 PM UTC

aneth4 wrote: post #18

Why does Photoshop need to be killed? Seems like a good, powerful piece of software loved by many.

Adobe must die.

I set up a workflow for InDesign CS5.0 and everything worked. InDesign CS5.5 came out and they refused to sell me CS5.0. They introduced no new features, but the export as HTML option started producing random crashes. I spoke with their engineers and they said they would fix it in the next version.

We still experience a random crash in 1/30 automated jobs - which requires us to redo a large portion by hand. I don't know if they had fixed it, but I know they want thousands of dollars to upgrade to CS6.0.

Why did this problem happen? Because they released a new version called CS5.5 that introduced only bugs. Using Adobe software feels like you are being robbed.

Adobe must die.

Re: Live Picture: Software that was way ahead of its time

#22

Post by gokhan » Tue, Dec 25, 2012, 4:38 PM UTC

pyalot2 wrote: post #15

jawngee wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone that used it, it did indeed have all of those features. Sorry to burst your bubble. As for resolution independence, what they mean is that all of the operations and manipulations you performed were resolution independent. If you upscaled the image, any manipulations weren't simply upscaled, but reperformed at the new scale which provided significantly better results. It was indeed instant. You could load a…

Sorry to burst your bubble, if you think there's such a thing as unlimited and instant you're sorely mistaken. It might've been fast in simple cases compared to the alternatives, but there's no two ways about it that all computation takes time, and you can make tradeoffs where you cache more and compute less, but that's it. It's not instant and unlimited. It's Limited and fast, or more limited and faster, or more ram…

Did you actually use the software in the article?

Re: Live Picture: Software that was way ahead of its time

#23

Post by muyuu » Tue, Dec 25, 2012, 4:46 PM UTC

pyalot2 wrote: post #15

jawngee wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone that used it, it did indeed have all of those features. Sorry to burst your bubble. As for resolution independence, what they mean is that all of the operations and manipulations you performed were resolution independent. If you upscaled the image, any manipulations weren't simply upscaled, but reperformed at the new scale which provided significantly better results. It was indeed instant. You could load a…

Sorry to burst your bubble, if you think there's such a thing as unlimited and instant you're sorely mistaken. It might've been fast in simple cases compared to the alternatives, but there's no two ways about it that all computation takes time, and you can make tradeoffs where you cache more and compute less, but that's it. It's not instant and unlimited. It's Limited and fast, or more limited and faster, or more ram…

These terms are understood in their context, or otherwise completely useless in real life.

Re: Live Picture: Software that was way ahead of its time

#24

Post by pronoiac » Tue, Dec 25, 2012, 4:52 PM UTC

norswap wrote: post #10

The article praises Live Picture, but offer no hints as to why it failed to "kill" or even simply concurrence Photoshop.

I heard that it was due to the lack of plugins, and that was in turn due to a tricky and complicated API. Live Picture used some interesting and complicated data structures to work its magic, but all of that complication was exposed to and required of plugin authors.

Re: Live Picture: Software that was way ahead of its time

#25

Post by revelation » Tue, Dec 25, 2012, 4:56 PM UTC

valley_guy_12 wrote: post #13

Here's a brief comparison of Live Picture vs. PhotoShop. It says Live Picture is sluggish and only better than PhotoShop on really large images. http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:j7viI0y...

It also seems to be from the 90s.

Edit: Maybe I'm mistaken and the linked site is talking about _software_ from the 90s? It's down, so I really don't know. All I know is that they need to stop calling that an "app", then.

Re: Live Picture: Software that was way ahead of its time

#26

Post by pyalot2 » Tue, Dec 25, 2012, 4:59 PM UTC

jawngee wrote: post #16

pyalot2 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry to burst your bubble, if you think there's such a thing as unlimited and instant you're sorely mistaken. It might've been fast in simple cases compared to the alternatives, but there's no two ways about it that all computation takes time, and you can make tradeoffs where you cache more and compute less, but that's it. It's not instant and unlimited. It's Limited and fast, or more limited and faster, or more ram…

Stop bending semantics to fit your binary view point. Instant in this case means you move the brush and it distorts as you move the brush. No parallax, no beach ball waiting for it to do the computation. It happened as you moved it. It was instant. Even with brush sizes the size of the image you were using. It had unlimited undo. It had unlimited layers. That's not an arguable point.

Right, unlimited everything, got it.

/me wonders why he even tries to point out the folly to people with no clue about how computers work...

Re: Live Picture: Software that was way ahead of its time

#27

Post by pyalot2 » Tue, Dec 25, 2012, 5:00 PM UTC

gokhan wrote: post #22

pyalot2 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry to burst your bubble, if you think there's such a thing as unlimited and instant you're sorely mistaken. It might've been fast in simple cases compared to the alternatives, but there's no two ways about it that all computation takes time, and you can make tradeoffs where you cache more and compute less, but that's it. It's not instant and unlimited. It's Limited and fast, or more limited and faster, or more ram…

Did you actually use the software in the article?

Did you actually think before writing that?

Re: Live Picture: Software that was way ahead of its time

#28

Post by rcgs » Tue, Dec 25, 2012, 5:01 PM UTC

aneth4 wrote: post #18

Why does Photoshop need to be killed? Seems like a good, powerful piece of software loved by many.

Adobe are the incumbent in this space and, seemingly, will continue to be. There is so much in Photoshop (and other Adobe software) that could be improved from an experience point of view. Simple things like the layers palette need a rethink; there are small inconsistencies with many of the tools; and the software is generally buggy. Often when I get frustrated with the software it's usually over something that one infers is still there due to legacy.

There are a lot of more niche tools coming out which do look really promising, but there are a couple of issues:

1. Professional software is often quite pricey, and understandably so. Even if a company offers a 30 day trial, that sometimes isn't quite enough to evaluate a piece of software.

2. The new tools are rarely compatible with PSDs and other Adobe file formats. I have to sympathise with the software creators here, Adobe file formats are a complete mess, nevertheless it's a required feature for anyone who wants to work with other companies within the industry.

It's a shame really, Adobe's monopoly on creative industry type software is holding everyone back, but no one is really in a position to do anything about it.

Re: Live Picture: Software that was way ahead of its time

#29

Post by pyalot2 » Tue, Dec 25, 2012, 5:02 PM UTC

muyuu wrote: post #23

pyalot2 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry to burst your bubble, if you think there's such a thing as unlimited and instant you're sorely mistaken. It might've been fast in simple cases compared to the alternatives, but there's no two ways about it that all computation takes time, and you can make tradeoffs where you cache more and compute less, but that's it. It's not instant and unlimited. It's Limited and fast, or more limited and faster, or more ram…

These terms are understood in their context, or otherwise completely useless in real life.

In and Out of context, there's no such thing as instant and unlimited. There might be fast, and there might be a lot, and there might be faster and more than you usually need. But I repeat, stop claiming utter nonesense.

Re: Live Picture: Software that was way ahead of its time

#30

Post by indrax » Tue, Dec 25, 2012, 5:15 PM UTC

jawngee wrote: post #16

pyalot2 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry to burst your bubble, if you think there's such a thing as unlimited and instant you're sorely mistaken. It might've been fast in simple cases compared to the alternatives, but there's no two ways about it that all computation takes time, and you can make tradeoffs where you cache more and compute less, but that's it. It's not instant and unlimited. It's Limited and fast, or more limited and faster, or more ram…

Stop bending semantics to fit your binary view point. Instant in this case means you move the brush and it distorts as you move the brush. No parallax, no beach ball waiting for it to do the computation. It happened as you moved it. It was instant. Even with brush sizes the size of the image you were using. It had unlimited undo. It had unlimited layers. That's not an arguable point.

What I'm hearing is that there was a lengthy render time to convert out of the proprietary format.