AfterShot Pro 2.0 Beta Update

[Rick Champagne]

Hi Everyone,

It's been a while since my last communication regarding AfterShot Pro 2.0, so I thought it was time to give you a quick update. First, for those of you standing by for the Beta Program to begin, thank you for your patience! We are not quite yet ready to begin the Beta Program, but we are making the necessary progress to get us there. We'll start official recruiting by going out to previous testers and the people who have already communicated with me.

Separately, there are a couple of things that I am able to disclose to you about the next release of AfterShot Pro. Two weeks ago, Corel was at AMD's APU13 Developer Summit where we gave a couple of talks on HSA and how it is redefining the user experience. One of the presenters was AMD's Michael Wootton - formerly of Bibble Labs. Michael has been working very closely with Corel to help us do more with regard to leveraging both the CPU and GPU. Performance is a key area for the next release of AfterShot Pro and an area that we will continue to focus on into the future. Apart from just performance, what HSA has allowed us to do, is make it possible for us to implement new features that we were not able to in the past. AfterShot Pro works with tiled images, so a filter that works on individual tiles is somewhat straightforward, however if a filter depends on neighboring tiles of each individual tile to make its correction, there is a considerable amount of additional computing to be done. For this reason, we have foregone doing these "large radius" filters in the past and left them to run only on the CPU if they were even feasible. HSA changes all of that for us and we are now able to efficiently run large radius filters on both the CPU and GPU. At APU13, Michael showed a "Local Contrast" feature which we hope to release as a part of AfterShot Pro 2.0. I will provide sample images once we get into Beta. While there will be certain advantages to running on AMD hardware, there will be gains on any GPU-accelerated system with OpenCL and SVM.

We have also started on camera updates, but that really isn't much of a secret. So while I can't go into all of the details of the next release, I did want to give you that quick update. There will more detailed information about the work we've been doing with AMD coming over the next couple of months. As for other product details, they will remain confidential until the 2.0 release next year.

Warm Regards,

Rick

[algreen345]

Hi Rick,

Thanks for the update. I've got an Intel Sandy Bridge CPU with an Nvidia GPU and while HSA sounds exciting it isn't as important to me as Olympus OM-D E-M1 support, bug fixes, and better highlight and shadow support. A new toolkit for plugin developers, a better method for plugin distribution would also be great, Camera-specific noise profiles, and more flexible self-service methods for users to update lens and camera support - all of these are features we users need.

New architectures and filters sound grand. But I'd be happy for monthly updates from Corel instead of random communication whenever someone remembers. Adobe puts out several point releases every year. Darktable is Open Source with updates every week.

Please focus on the basics - fix bugs, provide features customers require - and work on the HSA Rocket Science later.

[algreen345]

Speaking about communication skills...

HSA = Heterogeneous Systems Architecture: http://www.extremetech.com/computing/17 ... u-save-amd

The Michael Wooten Presentation = http://www.slideshare.net/DevCentralAMD ... on#btnNext

As of 2Q 2013, AMD has 17% market share for CPU's and 40% for GPUs. Why it makes sense to predicate ASP development on the system architecture of a minority player when customers are asking for feature fixes for years is completely beyond me.

Honestly... Corel, why do you make it so hard for your customers to love you?

[jknights]

Thanks for the update Rick.
It is always useful to keep us updated with these future product prospects.

I'd be really interested in testing the new camera release stuff as I am still waiting for a Corel ASP version of the RAW processor for the Fuji XTrans sensor.
The longer term enhancements are also great but I think that we need to get some momentum started by showing a future specs list or enhancements list.

[grubernd]

thanks for the update. looking forward to beta-testing, been missing that.

although, i doubt i have any graphicscard in all of my computers that goes anywhere near this fancy openCL stuff. everytime the tickbox in the preferences is greyed out. being on a laptop running linux does not help much, too.

but there is always a decent gigabit network around and several more or less equally fast computers hooked up. supporting that vacant computing power would be highly appreciated. which would photographers finally bring up to the level of all the other render-genres like video, 3d, fx, music, science, etc which had distributed rendering like forever.
yes, i do know about i/o limits, but if video-software can utilize networkrendering, then it shouldnt be much of a problem to do it for single unrelated images.

maybe talk to these guys, they have the render-manager stuff pretty much done: SquidSoft

but all that doesnt really help with the old nagging issues like Fuji, dual-screen, timely new cameras, legacy cameras, python scripting support ...

[spoilerhead]

IMHO most important should be
Camera support and Image quality.

There's no use for all the speed gains if your camera isn't supported, or the results are plain ugly. (Noise, pink highlights, ...)
competitive IQ and cam support, but SPEED, now that would be something

[fcoiffie]

I agree : You shoud improve quality (highlights and noise management) and the support for new cameras.

Improving speed is quite useless : it requires a new hardware for customer and a new rendering engine could break current plugins (which are no longer maintained). And ASP without all the current plugins isn't really useable...

[-cr]

Thank you for the heads-up, Rick!

New architectures and filters sound grand. But I'd be happy for monthly updates from Corel instead of random communication whenever someone remembers. Adobe puts out several point releases every year. Darktable is Open Source with updates every week.

Please focus on the basics - fix bugs, provide features customers require - and work on the HSA Rocket Science later.

i doubt i have any graphicscard in all of my computers that goes anywhere near this fancy openCL stuff. everytime the tickbox in the preferences is greyed out. being on a laptop running linux does not help much, too.

IMHO most important should be
Camera support and Image quality.

There's no use for all the speed gains if your camera isn't supported, or the results are plain ugly. (Noise, pink highlights, ...)

+1 to all of the above!

The good thing is: as LightRoom isn't available for Linux, I'm still saving the money I'd otherwise be tempted to spend on an E-M1 (and/or or DMC-GM1).

Seriously: please do communicate more, and try to support new cameras asap, Corel.

[wachovius]

Thanks for the update Rick.
It is always useful to keep us updated with these future product prospects.

I'd be really interested in testing the new camera release stuff as I am still waiting for a Corel ASP version of the RAW processor for the Fuji XTrans sensor.
The longer term enhancements are also great but I think that we need to get some momentum started by showing a future specs list or enhancements list.

+1

[tintin]

hi Rick,

thank you very much for this update!

i agree with spoilerhead in IQ and cam support.
but one other important thing for me will be the compatibility with all the images i alraedy have processed with ASP now! all the settings (xml files) must be usable 1:1 in ASP 2.0!
...and i will be glad to provide my plugins for ASP 2.0.... (hoping the plugin API will stay )

br
tintin

[-cr]

but one other important thing for me will be the compatibility with all the images i alraedy have processed with ASP now! all the settings (xml files) must be usable 1:1 in ASP 2.0!

+1

...or at the very least, if that *really* shouldn't be possible: ASP 2.x must be able to co-exist with an ASP 1.x installation!
(Yes, I still have my old Bibble installation for that same reason.)

[t3mujin]

Better highlights, Fuji X-Trans cameras and all this in early next year, pretty please with sugar and a cherry on top

[deep]

hello,
just the fact that you guys are working on 2.0 is great!
Speed is very important, but I would rather see some great new features that would improve the quality and make the workflow easier. Plugins are also very important. For example, I'm still using ASP 1.1 because I really need NN. ASP without some plugins is just not good enough anymore (NN, vigne, gradfilter, nuance, bez and others). Don't forget about plugins. Regular updates are also very important.
And yes please, surprise us with 2.0. Make ASP the best once again (bibble was).

Robert

[grubernd]

generic raw-support. switching software is way more harmful to the workflow than having a little red exclamation mark on the thumb which warns us about sub-par raw-support...

while i still think that DNG is a good idea gone really really bad, you cant stop the future:
Lumia1020 mobile Phone shoots DNG

[andysalay]

Hello Rick,
my name is Andrej Salay,

I would like to participate on beta program, too.
I was literally dissapointed with the "progress" after the Corel takeover, so I was not active on forums. It was a big pain, because Bibble/ASP used to be my favourite tools, and I was waiting for bugs and IQ to fix so long. I had to leave because it did not happen. But I am still keeping an eye on these forums, though I do not post almost at all, the frustration was so strong. I was forced to move elswhere.
Now I am very satisfied with CaptureOne IQ, it has excellent demosaicing and definition on pixel level, I am so sorry to see how significantly ASP lags behind.

I was very active and was a Bibble advocate in the old ages,
I was so enthusiastic, that I made Slovak translation of Bibble application, it was really used and distributed in the Bibble package.

It woud be nice to look at the progress and help with the new product.
If you can, please add me into the beta program.
I could also help with the translation to Slovak or Czech language. (Or made the whole translation??)
If ASP would just be the premium quality product, with IQ on par with CaptureOne or DXO.

On the ASP I love especially linux support, the whole workflow concept, configurability (keyboard shortcuts on almost anything), selective copy/paste sets,
and, mostly, PLUGIN support (also ability of plugins to register to various stages in image pipeline). Please always consider plugin support as one of the most important aspects, and work on stable and feature rich API for the developers. Plugins along with the Linux support can make the ASP stand out from the crowd.
But image QUALITY is crucial, too.
Please do not forget SHOWSTOPPERS for most of the users: IQ quality like demosaicing, highlights (no more pink), denoise, and tile bugs (dots, or coloured lines on the edges, or other image artifacts).

The time has changed, competition is moving with rapid pace, and ASP stopped long time ago.
I hope this will change finally. I am looking forward to it.

Best regards,
Andy Salay