GOD DAMN FLASH !!!

[Monkeh]

Seriously, you rely on the google play store? I get nearly all my apps direct, all 143 of them!

What the fuck does that have to do with anything?

Flash is not supported.

[Bored@Work]

We can still get flash apps running decently,

While you still can get Flash, although no longer supported, it does not run decently. At least not on all the Android devices I tried it on. Flash 11 was really hard to install and almost impossible to get working on Android 4.0. I typically had to fall back to Flash 10, intended for Android 3 and below, and that version showed all kinds of quirks. E.g. the Flash content not playing in the region where it should play, but with an offset of a few 100 pixels in both directions - overlaying other content of the page. Or not playing at all, and just showing a blank screen overlaying the complete page and the web browser.

Adobe never managed to get it working acceptable on Android. And they are to incompetent to fix all the security bugs their minimum-wage programmers from Ebonia regularly add to the code base.

But for those who can't resist the urge to try the piece of crap called Flash on Android, you can get your unsupported fix here http://helpx.adobe.com/flash-player/kb/archived-flash-player-versions.html

[T4P]

That's odd. I haven't seen a problem yet on my Sensation. Guess everyone's bugged then

[Mechatrommer]

Adobe never managed to get it working acceptable on Android. And they are to incompetent to fix all the security bugs their minimum-wage programmers from Ebonia regularly add to the code base.

or maybe they never care, not much profit out of it and not much people supporting it anyway? i know Adobe is very close if not the same class as other software companies like Altium or Autodesk or M$.

[poptones]

Why does adobe even exist? What do they offer? PDF creation tools? Photoshop? Inkscape and film gimp pretty much do all they do. Most of the big players use linux tools for video editing, and even in Windows there's many better alternatives than afterfx. I don't understand how Adobe can even be in business.

[Mechatrommer]

you dont understand because you dont involve in photo, video and press print editing i just googled Adobe is actually orders of magnitude bigger than Altium.

[jucole]

Why does adobe even exist? What do they offer? PDF creation tools? Photoshop? Inkscape and film gimp pretty much do all they do. Most of the big players use linux tools for video editing, and even in Windows there's many better alternatives than afterfx. I don't understand how Adobe can even be in business.

hahaha;  I've been doing art and design for 24 years and not using Adobe software for design is like trying to send the Curiosity Rover to Mars using Arduino! ;-)

[amyk]

Having worked with Flash since before Adobe bought it, I can tell you it was never meant to go in the direction it went.

Here's some interesting quotes from the file format specification (v7), as far as I can tell they were there since the beginning and just got copied over with each new version. It is still there in the latest v10:

The Macromedia Flash file format (SWF) (pronounced “swiff ”) delivers vector graphics and
animation over the Internet to the Macromedia Flash Player. The SWF file format is designed to
be a very efficient delivery format, not a format for exchanging graphics between graphics editors.
It is designed to meet the following goals:
On-screen display The format is primarily intended for on-screen display and supports
anti-aliasing, fast rendering to a bitmap of any color format, animation, and interactive buttons.
Extensibility The format is a tagged format, so it can be evolved with new features while
maintaining backward compatibility with earlier versions of Flash Player.
Network delivery The format can travel over a network with limited and unpredictable
bandwidth. The files are compressed to be small and support incremental rendering through
streaming. SWF is a binary format and is not human readable like HTML. SWF uses techniques
such as bit-packing and structures with optional fields to minimize file size.
Simplicity The format is simple so that Flash Player is small and easily ported. Also, Flash
Player depends upon only a limited set of operating system features.
File independence The files display without any dependence on external resources such
as fonts.
Scalability The files work well on limited hardware, and can take advantage of better hardware
when it is available. This is important because computers have different monitor resolutions and
bit depths.
Speed The files render at a high quality very quickly.

The horribleness is due to less-than-competent programmers working for them.

[T4P]

Photoshop in comparison to GIMP is a far shot, it's just about 1000x (roughly) more POWERFUL than GIMP
I used CS3-CS5 and i'm not joking. (At least they still start roughly the same time, seems like they like to concentrate the "non-codemonkeys" into their paid software
Photoshop CS6 is VERY serious stuff though

[poptones]

I've used both and I've written image processing software. There's not one thing I have ever seen photoshop do that gimp/inkscape/imagemajick cannot do and more. The exact processes may be different, but the fundamentals are exactly the same. I've heard this argument from people who swear by photoshop but I've never seen anyone provide concrete examples.

[SeanB]

Only difference are plugins, which generally automate actions.

Then again, i have used both for simple picture editing, and they both do what they should. Difference is the cost of the license, and the pain when you upgrade. PS is expensive, GIMP is low cost.

[jucole]

ImageMagick is quite good! I've used it several times over the years including when Photoshop let me down with jpeg chroma subsampling issues on a batch of several thousand images.  I did compare a straight bicubic resampling in Photoshop vs ImageMagick a few years ago and imageMagick was not as good.

Gimp? well, the clue is in the name ;-)  but ok for free.     

One thing to note if someone did write a seriously good image editing application because of the crazy world of software patents Adobe would just sue them.   Flash was owned by Macromedia at one point and Adobe and Macromedia I recall sued each other each month over something UI related.

Adobe Systems has timed a suit perfectly with this announcement, taking Macromedia executives to the courthouse and keeping them from the press conference. The suit concerns “tabbed palettes,” a user interface concept that Macromedia used in its Flash creation tool. Adobe claims copyright to the idea and is suing for infringement. Macromedia has countersued, claiming Photoshop and GoLive infringe on some of Macromedia's copyrights.

[poptones]

What are you talking about Gimp is crazy good. Imagemajick is crazy good. Film Gimp does everything Photoshop does including 24 bit color layer depth. Even Avisynth can do that (well, it may not now but it COULD since I wrote most of the color image processing code and could easily extend it. I even thought of doing this back on 1002 when we were originally developing it and we decided that there were no video formats to support it so there was no need. Shows what we knew!)

There's another very good image manipulation program on windows that it seems Corel has bought out. I learned on it many years ago and when someone finally share photoshop 3 with me I was like "Oh, this is just like Paint Shop Pro." PSP even has HDR tools and can process video (as can Film Gimp).

The one thing I wish gimp developers would do is layer styles. Layer styles is a really nice feature to have. I've even thought of making an avisynth for graphics since it's so easy to save processing "palettes" and apply them, but I really don't have the time any more for that kind of development. Someone needs to though...

[Mechatrommer]

I've written image processing software.

i also did but wouldnt dare to mention it anywhere. since you did it must be good! please provide me a link, if it is i'll be glad to buy the license from you
or maybe can you teach me how to properly practically convert rgb to cmyk, cie or lab color format? adjusting histogram curve, saturation masking, fainted overlayed masked images with path etc etc. or provide me a link where the free dll i can link to my app to easily read or save jpeg (or jpeg2000) with exif tag read/write capable?

(ps: i thought making an EDA is easier than image editing software? )

[T4P]

Have you considered the speed of photoshop? Does GIMP actually have hardware rendering/acceleration?
How about 3D editing? HDR? As well as a massive myriad of filters, you will only say "OH GIMP CAN DO IT!" If you've seen the earlier versions.
CS4 is already quite old by now, go and see CS5 (The one with Content-Aware)

[Mechatrommer]

CS4 is already quite old by now, go and see CS5 (The one with Content-Aware)

no no no! you got it totally WRONG! you dont mention CS4 you should mention CS3 or lower. i used CS3 and never need higher version (i did tried 4,5,6), but sorry i dont need Content-Aware whatever it is. i'm already quite aware of my content

[poptones]

Gimp interacts with the graphics drivers, so if the system has 3d acceleration then gimp has it. Windows graphics interface is slower than optimal linux drivers (check it yourself). HDR support is not built into gimp because it supports only 8 bit layers - that's what film gimp is for.

Filters are built upon mathematical processes. You can write your own filters or stack those already made. IThis may not be good for those who understand image filtering in the context of "you push this button" but if you understand image processing it's equally powerful.

So far as licensing anything I wrote in this regard there's no need; avisynth is open source and still has a pretty good community ten years later (over 10,000 downloads just last week!) Whether someone has written cmyk filters I have no idea, but it's had masking tools, curve tools and all sorts of compositing options for many years. Look in mplayer and vlc and you'll find much of the ported code.

I actually prefer working with text files. You can build projects from a text editor, there's no mucking with buttons and guis and such. It may sound crazy, but I find it much faster. It also allows you to easily build a box of tools, just like building command lines for imagemajick, that you can reuse.

[Mechatrommer]

Filters are built upon mathematical processes.

this is what image processing is and this is the reason i said why making EDA is easier than image processing. there's too much mathematics in image processes.

avisynth

oh its moving image processing (i'm not very good at).. Adobe Premiere can be hard to use for beginners, even for me. but from what i can see Adobe's "mentality" is build the simplest (GUI) application but can do almost everything supporting the highest theoritical and practice in still or motion picture industries. most other developers will mostly always do the backward (complex GUI but can do little).

is open source and still has a pretty good community ten years later (over 10,000 downloads just last week!)

open source will most likely get supporters if its good (its free!? anyway!). and if its sooooo good, professional paid company will likely to die (phased out), but i've never seen such a case even in gigantic magnitude of effort such as operating system business competition (free linux? vs paid Windows?).

Whether someone has written cmyk filters I have no idea

rgb->cmyk is not a filter its a conversion process from one color domain to the others. i thought you were talking still picture, but motion picture has not much use of cmyk, its only for printing where ink or machine is cmyk. you need to be aware of the gamut between the two domains and limitation, have good understanding of math processes, color and human vision theory and know what to do if the gamut is not supported in the other domain, Adobe is very good at this and has done the study in years. though i believe in developing interpreted sequential programming or computing or automated processes such as Flash or IDE etc they maybe a bit behind, i'm not sure dont quote me on that

I actually prefer working with text files.

how classics! dude this is 2012 people using multiple tap touch screen now! but i did not say text based is not good (gotta be clear about that or i'll get another bashing from fanboys )

[poptones]

There's plenty of math with eda as well. But it's not too hard to find the basic algorithms which can be ported. I don't think I could do eda, most especially now that I lack that sort of concentration. I am tempted to dive back into avxsynth development, as much of the layering function was written in assembly (I spent hours poring over mmx code) and so, because it's now running through a different compiler, they simply commented out much of that great code for the linux port.

I hate premier. When I used windows I used Vegas, which didn't suck. I've tried using kdenlive but it doesn't  appear to work at all like vegas in spite of having a similar interface. This is why I like working with text files.

What's the difference if I type 01:31:00.33 into a gui window or into a text box? Big projects end up with HUGE edit lists, you need these to be able to manage the project. Avisynth not only allows that it mandates it. It also acts as a frameserver over IP, which allows weird stuff like "browsing" a video frame by frame from a web browser, but also allows creating complex serial chains of image processing: machine A performs rescaling, machine B performs color adjustment, machine C performs transformations, etc. They all just pass the frame one to another via a socket. You can monitor the process at any step in the chain and make updates in real time. You can even have other scripts running on a machine that updates the avisynth commands in real time. Try that with Premier.

[jucole]

This is quite an interesting Flash project; it's a low level (but not hardware level) Commodore 64 Emulator. (for those who have Flash installed ;-)       
The system is online to play/mess  with at:  http://codeazur.com.br/stuff/fc64_final/     It's obviously not a 1:1 of the entire system but you can poke-in 6502 assembly which is crazy!




This gave me an idea for a way to prototype my next hardware project UI.



(Edit: to type stuff in to emulator window - click the Flash window to give it keyboard focus)