All-in-One version of Photowiz Bundle

General discussions ColorWasher, FocalBlade, LightMachine, B/W Styler and ContrastMaster
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eseavey
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All-in-One version of Photowiz Bundle

Post by eseavey »

Hello everyone,
This is my first post though I have been using focal blade for 7 years and like it a lot.

I have been evaluating each of the separate plugins/stand alone programs included in the Photowiz Bundle. These are powerful programs and I can think of many great uses for them. However, one thing came to mind, and there may be a very obvious answer, but I was just curious. Why are these all separate programs/plugins as supposed to an all-on-one program/plugin?

Often one will use these programs/plugins one after another, though it would be nice to see the final result instantly. For example, Colorwasher adjusts color, but has some light and contrast controls, Lightmachine adjusts lighting and has some contrast and color control. Using some Contrastmaster features introduces noise, that requires a Noisecontrol process.

It seems to make sense to streamline these individual programs/plugins into an even more powerful all-round photo adjusting processor.

It is actually keeping me from dropping $199 for the bundle, and having to think about it some more. Whereas a fully integrated bundle would be a no-brainer.

I was just curious about the reasoning.

Thanks,

Eric

HaraldHeim
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Re: All-in-One version of Photowiz Bundle

Post by HaraldHeim »

Thanks for your suggestion, Eric. All PhotoWiz plugins have been developed individually over the years and most of our customers only need one, two or three plugins and not all of them. So that is main reason for them being seperate so far. Additionally in the past the plugins used the CPU to full extent and RAM was not so abundant as now. So it did not make so much sense to combine them a few years ago.

You are right that there are some advantages to integrate them into one plugin or program. One problems of such an integration would be that the individual plugins are not optimized to work together and you would have a few similar feature in some of them. But I guess that could be optimized over time.

Another (and probably better) idea would be to create a new plugin with all of the effects of the available plugins and an even closer integration, so that you would not need to switch between individual modules. This would also mean increased rendering speed and more effective usage.

So we are considering an integration of some kind. At the moment the priority is on finishing a seventh PhotoWiz product.

If you nevertheless buy the bundle, there some possibilities to make them cooperate more effectively. In Photoshop you can assign key shortcuts to each of them to quickly run them. Or you can create an action which runs the plugins in a certain order one after the other. I know this does not give you a preview of the effect of all plugins, but it helps switch between them faster.

You can also apply them to a smart object, so that you can readjust the settings. But you will also have various rendering breaks.

eseavey
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Re: All-in-One version of Photowiz Bundle

Post by eseavey »

Thanks for your reply and suggestion.
I definitely like your idea of of an integration of the effects into one plugin. Sounds like such ultimate photo processor plugin/program would streamline the photo editing for many. I look forward to such plugin/program.

I am guessing it would take a while to develop, so I might invest in the bundle in the mean time.

Thanks again,
Eric

HaraldHeim
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Re: All-in-One version of Photowiz Bundle

Post by HaraldHeim »

Good to hear that you are considering the bundle. There will certainly be big discounts for the integrated product for customers of the current PhotoWiz products.

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