I'm A Lucky Dog

From my prior posts, you probably know I'm a big fan of OnOne's Perfect Photo Suite. I have been using this software to process images for a while now as well as past permutations of OnOne's stuff. I've used "Perfect Resize" for years, long before it was re-named to "Perfect Resize", when it was just plain old Genuine Fractals. GF was a life saver when it came to enlarging cropped images, or just simply enlarging images. GF was always far superior to the Photoshop tool for enlarging images as GF did a much better jib of sampling edges and reproducing them so images looked much sharper than PS. 

So, when OnOne came out with its original Perfect Photo Suite, bundling Genuine Fractals with other processing software (an re-naming it Perfect Resize), I upgraded. My thinking was several fold: 1) I wanted the latest, greatest version of GF; 2) GF was always the bomb, so I assumed any other OnOne software tools would be just as good; 3) Perfect Portrait looked too cool for words, allowing me to better process beauty & glamour studio images; and 4) Perfect Effects looked really interesting. I was not disappointed and have upgraded to the new versions as they have been released.

While at PSW, I showed the OnOne reps some of the images I've created with Perfect Photo Suite and told them how much I loved their software. The OnOne folks were kind enough to give me a disc for the latest version of Perfect Photo Suite 7, which was greatly appreciated since I only had two licenses for the 7.0 version and the poor old MacBook was still loaded with the 6.0 version. Perfect Photo Suite added Perfect B&W to the suite when it released the 7.0 version and I use it frequently on both desktops.

As if my luck couldn't get any better, while passing by the Nik software booth, one of their reps asked me what software I used for effects, etc. I replied that I had been using OnOne's collection for a while and he asked if I would like to try their Nik Collection and compare the two. I told him I was sold on On One's software and wasn't interested in spending $150 just to try out software that had the same basic tools. I also mentioned that I had been very disappointed Nik's HDR software, HDR Effex Pro, as Photomatix Pro was far superior. I had been using Photomatix Pro for a while, but in a delusional moment, I had sprung for Nik's version to see what Nik would do, hoping that it would give me more flexibility in creating HDR images. After trying out HDR Effex Pro, I was so disappointed I haven't used it again.

Nik's guys admitted that their initial version of HDR Effex Pro was lacking but said their updated version was much better. Not wanting to be rude and tell them fool me once, shame on you, I was getting ready to move on when they offered to provide me with a complete working copy of their entire collection and set me up with training as to how to use the software if I would do a review/Blog post with my impressions. A Pepsi v. Coke kind of thing. OK, I was more than happy to be a guinea pig.

Late last week, I received an e-mail from Nik with a link for the entire collection. Nik is setting me up with the on-line training tutorials so I can learn the ins and outs of their collection. After I have a chance to play around with it, I will review the Collection in a Blog post. So, look for that in the coming weeks.

Website Update

And that, my friends, brings the week to a close. Still working on images for the new website and tweaking the design. I learned how to import this Blog into a Blog page on the website and have the Contact page pretty much done. I have 20-30 images uploaded into each of the various gallery categories with the exception of travel images as I'm still pouring through the hard drives searching for what few nuggets there might be that deserve a shot at being featured on the site after processing.

I still have to trim the number of images in each gallery category as I would like to go with no more than 15, but I may be kidding myself. Maybe 20? I don't know. I feel like I'm cutting one of my children loose every time I delete an image from the site. I have a sentimental attachment to many of the images I've cut, or probably will cut, and it's hard. But, I know it has to be done. I want this to be my best website ever and in order to get there I have to suck it up and separate the wheat from the chaff.

Have a good weekend.