What I’ve learned in the first 24 hours of ASP2

[Greg Wood]

Whenever you start working on a new product or a new project, you learn a ton. That’s certainly been the case with AfterShot Pro. When I started working on AfterShot earlier this year, the first thing I learned was how awesome it is. I quickly came to love it, especially in terms of how fast I can get my photos looking the way I want.

The second thing I learned is how knowledgeable the AfterShot/Bibble user community is. Users of AfterShot know their craft; they have a clear vision of what they want to achieve, and they have clear expectations of what AfterShot should do (and why they use it instead of something else.) And luckily, they let us know.

Having worked at Corel for a lot of years, I am aware of AfterShot’s pedigree and the winding road to AfterShot Pro 2—so many of the things I’ve read in the last 24 hours haven’t been huge surprises.

Other learnings came out of the blue and have not only changed my perspective—they’ve also changed our plans for AfterShot in a single day.

Here’s the top 5 things I took away from Day 1 of AfterShot Pro 2.

(1) Since the last launch, Corel hasn’t met expectations. The 2 year gap since AfterShot Pro 1 was unacceptable; 2 years with little communication with users made this much worse. I knew this coming into the launch, but your feedback has further solidified my belief. AfterShot users shouldn’t have to suffer through silence and inaction. Coming into this role, I knew some of your concerns here, and that’s why the Corel Photo Team was so eager to quickly deliver a quality product that addressed fundamentals: 64-bit, continued support for all three platforms, etc. However, the launch yesterday was a catalyst for both venting over our lack of support over the last while (I am VERY clear now about your expectations in terms of updates and communication) and more importantly, for identifying the critical enhancements that we need to deliver next—some in terms of long standing bug fixes (some of which go back to Bibble) and innovation (in terms of highlight recovery and other items that have been mentioned.)

While I’ve only been in the PM chair for a few months, allow me to apologize for the lack of feedback and support around AfterShot Pro. This product kicks butt and today’s photo team intends to take a different, more involved and responsive approach from here onward—I hope we’ll meet your expectations.

(2) More camera updates, faster! Camera profile updates are the lifeblood of serious RAW software and as part of the ASP2 product plan we’ve established a roadmap of regular updates. Well, let me tell you, after what I learned yesterday, ‘regular’ won’t cut it. AfterShot Pro users tell me camera updates have to come darn fast. So that’s what we’re going to do—as of yesterday afternoon, we’ve updated our plan and we’re going to accelerate our camera updates beyond our plan of record to do our best to ensure that when you get your awesome new camera, AfterShot Pro will be ready to work with you. Another disclosure here: I’ve heard some of the stories from back in the Bibble days where camera profile updates would sometimes come in even before a camera launched (!) – that’s a tall order, but a good anecdote to have in mind when I’m thinking about how soon is soon enough. I’ll be in touch with more details about camera updates and our plans in the next few weeks.

(3) Listen, then act. I think the Corel photo team is really lucky to have such brilliant expertise within the AfterShot user base. We’re fortunate to have access to so many observations, perspectives, bugs found (and often logged) and ideas to improve AfterShot that we could easily work from those to develop many future versions of AfterShot. ASP2 was developed out of insights from an extensive set of primary research completed in 2013 plus insights gathered from our user to user forum—yet yesterday I found myself reading too many comments saying “I’ve reported [an issue], but I haven’t heard anything.” That’s not good enough. As you’re probably figuring out, I’m interested in getting more interactive with the AfterShot community, specifically on the user-to-user forum and on Facebook, but expect to see some changes here. Based on our learnings from our beta test and our first 24 hours of launch, expect to see some new tools emerge that will allow us to better interact with you, hear your feedback and execute on your needs and ideas—all in a way where you can see that action is being taken.

(4) More improvement please – I love AfterShot Pro 2. I’m gleeful in every demonstration I do—but in every demo I keep finding myself distracted by things that the community has reported – desired UI changes, fixes, feature enhancements and much more. And I’m actually really excited about this. AfterShot Pro isn’t standing still. We have a great product today, but there are many more ways to improve it—and we can do that starting today. You won’t be waiting a year for the next update—going forward AfterShot Pro will see more improvements, faster. I’m excited about this, and this has been our plan, but after these first hours of launch it’s absolutely clear that enhancing AfterShot Pro with high-frequency camera- and product- updates is going to be a powerful way to better support you and to recruit more users in the future.

(5a) Plug-ins matter big time. Actually, I already knew this, but I still wanted to give our plugins a shout-out. We’re working with our developer partners to get the plugins you love onto 64-bit—contact us through the plugins page if you want access to our newly-update 64-bit SDK.

(5b) The Fuji X-series is taking off big time! Everybody is talking about these cameras! Support requests are in the forums, on Facebook and I’m hearing the same from journalists! There are some challenges with the Fuji RAW formats, but we’ve moved these cameras up in the support queue.

In summary, I’m telling you about the things I’ve learned so you can know that I, my PM colleague Joseph Lin, and others at Corel are listening and that we are dogged in our determination to build an AfterShot Pro that is without equal in photo software. We know the route to get there is by listening and collaborating with you and taking meaningful action to improve and we’ll do our best to do so. I hope you’ll keep in touch.

Sincerely,
Greg

[Brainslug]

Hi Greg,

it is probably too late for me to switch back to (my formerly beloved) ASP after Corel forced me to migrate to other software by not supporting my cameras or participating in any sort of communication.
But I think I speak for most people here when I say that it is nice to hear that maybe not all hope is lost for a once great product.
I downloaded the trial version of ASP2 and, as posted some other place, am not totally convinced it is worth a v2 from a technical point of view - but if it comes with a general change in mindset on Corel's side, one might indeed consider it a "new" version. Time will tell.

Good luck to you and your team,

- Brainslug

[OldRadioGuy]

Greg, thank you for your thoughtful and thorough "after 24 hours" posting here on the User to User board. I hope the suits upstairs will continue to support you and your team in implementation of your plan. You folks are facing a big challenge turning things around.

Something that should be done immediately by the people running the Corel website is take down the link to an old YouTube video https://store.aftershotpro.com/1184/pur ... anner_ASP2 suggesting PaintShop Pro X4 as a companion for the AfterShot Pro. Doesn't the webmaster know PSP is in version X6? Does anyone care? Those kinds of SNAFUs make potential customers wonder who's in charge here.

Bob

[Dutchmm]

Greg

It's encouraging to see that you have a positive attitude to all the constructive criticism that we have made. Can I suggest that you make it clear to us which channels we should use to report bugs? As you note, many of us are frustrated that bugs we reported through the Survey Monkey page seem to have gone ignored. And there is (for marketing reasons I can understand) no mention of how to report them on the ASP2 Support tab on the Corel website. And if this is a user to user forum (as we are always being reminded) then how the [expletive deleted] are we to make sure Corel knows about the bug?

[mindsocket]

I’m interested in getting more interactive with the AfterShot community, specifically on the user-to-user forum

Interested or committed? You're the PM, it's your call

[rhadamanthys]

Glad to hear your statements.

So one easy action, work on the sticky threads in this forum "Beta Version for Testing" from Wed Oct 17, 2012 7:08 pm still sticky?

rhadamanthys

[bananahead]

Glad to hear your statements.

So one easy action, work on the sticky threads in this forum "Beta Version for Testing" from Wed Oct 17, 2012 7:08 pm still sticky?

rhadamanthys

Shouldn't we blame AFX for this?

[Centauri27]

Thanks for the "mea culpa", Greg. It's good that Corel is finally putting some resources and attention on AfterShot Pro. I got so fed up with the constant updates and come-ons from Corel for all their other products--notably Paint Sho Pro and Video Studio Pro. As soon as I buy one version, a newer one pops up. But nothing but silence on ASP, the only Corel program I had used regularly.

I was hoping to see some sort of video file handling in ASP--even just showing them in the library is a start. Otherwise ASP is kind of useless as an asset management tool for me if all my video files are "invisible" in the library.

Thanks.
Carl

[telegonos]

Thank you Greg. This is a strong statement, down to the point. Hope actions of your teem will be up to it. Love ASP and its potential. Good news anyhow that finally something happens.

[2Ben]

Well that's all nice and well, but no way in hell I'll put 60 (sixty!) dollars in an ASP2 upgrade. Not after all these years of mess and false promises.
What makes it worse is that the upgrade price is available to people who didn't even give you the benefit of the doubt with ASP1 and stuck to Bibble or chose Lightroom or Capture One.

I'll make you a deal, give me $20 rebate for each of these licenses that I own:
- Bibble 5
- ASP1
- Lightroom
- PSP X4

Then fine. Else, I'll pass, thank you very much.

[TheDude]

We have a great product today, but there are many more ways to improve it—and we can do that starting today.

I've been using Bibble for many years, starting with B4. It took a while until B5 was finished, but it was a product with innovative concepts an worth waiting for a while. Moreover, there was an active and motivated community of people developing plug-ins, which actually provided functions that made Bibble a powerful and versatile processing tool. Without plug-ins it was just a platform with good concepts (very important), but very basic processing capabilities. Then Corel purchased Bibble and even now that ASP2 has been released, there was very little improvement and actually no innovation. When I talk about innovation I mean features or concepts, that are ahead of what was considered as state of the art in raw processing tools. For example Bibble did this IMHO with the layer concept for local editing. I think Lightroom (for example) is still not that strong regarding this aspect. The open source tool darktable actually established more powerful local editing methods.
Adding this HDR thing to ASP is not what I consider innovative. I think HDR is still some kind of special case in image processing and multiple specialized tools exist for such jobs. Why has time been wasted for adding such HDR stuff, while the very basic but essential algorithms like demosaicing or sharpening are obviously outdated. Adding local contrast is nice, but it is just one step in catching up with other tools. I think one of the most popular plug-ins is the gradient filter. Did you ever thought about simply adding a gradient masking method to Bibble's layer functionality? Should be easy to implement and it would make the layer feature significantly stronger.
I switched to darktable once I concidered their local editing features as stable and there were actually very very few reasons for looking back to ASP. Now that you came up with ASP2 there are still no valid reasons for going back. Please don't get me wrong. I'm not using darktable because I didn't have to pay. I'm using it, because it is innovative, delivers excellent quality and it allows to do more creative editing. The fact that it is open source is even better. Nevertheless, I'm willing to pay for software, if it provides benefits and I'm probably not the only linux user thinking this way. I highly appreciate that you maintained linux support and I wouldn't hesitate to pay for an ASP update if there was substantial progress--then I would even pay more. Yet, Corel didn't convince me that they really understood the strength of Bibble. Moreover, I hope Corel understands how important it is to keep the plug-in developers motivated, since they provide essential functionality. And it would probably help to see a roadmap containing concrete steps, what is planed for next releases. Finally, I disagree that ASP is a great product. It was great when Corel purchased it and I'm sure that it can be great again.

[-cr]

Thank you Greg. Sounds like you've understood the message here. I wish you a strong team to support you in the tasks you've set up for ASP! When I see you succeed, I'll gladly return to recommending ASP to other people asking for my advice regarding photo editing software.

As for the importance of plugins: For my editing, I do consider a couple of the existing ASP plugins essential: GradFilter and zPerspector. Without their functionality in ASP2, I'll stick with ASP1. There's others I would also miss, but not as badly. That being said: I wouldn't complain if their functionality was included in ASP itself, instead of in separate plugins - especially if the ASP team was as responsive regarding bug fixes or optimizations as some (most?) of the authors of ASP plugins.

What *I* have learned in the first 24h of ASP2:
My favorite raw editor, which felt like a zombie two days ago, all of a sudden looks more like a phoenix.
With your recent posts here, I feel hope for ASPs future.
I'm surprised that so far I've seen ASP2 announced on just one of the ~20 photography related RSS feeds I follow. Have the others given up on ASP, just as more than a few users here have during the long period of no progress and little communication? Of course I'd rather see Corel's money spent on technical progress in ASP than on marketing, but I'm afraid that without enough people buying ASP, Corel will be forced to drop the product.

Godspeed, Greg!

[-cr]

@TheDude:

*I* do consider HDR support innovative.

Yes, plugins work great to support innovation, by getting ideas from outside of Corel implemented quickly.

Imo, *essential* functionality should be implemented in the base product, though, not in plugins.
Of course, different people will often have different ideas regarding what is essential. Looking at the base functionality of other raw developers might help in deciding.
And as I've already said in another post in this thread: As long as the functionality is there and works and is maintained, I don't really care how it's implemented.


Executive summary:

Do keep the plugins/API, Corel!
(...but maybe consider making a deal with a few plugin developers to move their supplied functionality into ASP itself?)

[Hobgoblin]

Thank you Gregg for your honest observations.
I now think that there is some hope for the future development of this product!

I cannot see that there is any incentive to upgrade at present, the existing ASP 1.2.X.X is quite capable for many.
The suggested Upgrade price is too high, particularly for those who need to upgrade only because their cameras have been unsupported for months or even years!

Best of luck
R.

[phedders]

New AfterShot Pro

As for me - linux user buying all the uprgades from B4

- long been delighted to have quality, fast raw decoding on Linux
- since b5 been frustrated with total lack of camera updates
- forced to look elsewhere

So now I am finding that I am:
- amazed to use software where camera updates come quickly - (Darktable)
- I can add new cameras, tweek colour and noise profiles and recompile in minutes (Darktable)
- Amazed that there is a lively discusion with the core developers and a desire to get feedback _and_ patches from users (Darktable)
- Finding a reusable/shared masks system for local editing of virtual any function incredible for tweakign an image (Darktable)
- Regular releases with bug fixes and features (Darktable)
- Source repo available so I can track the development branch as much or as little as I want (Darktable)
- Long term security - open source means if the currently developers lose interest it can be forked by anyone to carry on (Darktable)
- Finding all this for zero cost... (Darktable)
- Finding the above priceless.... (Darktable)

Conversely I've now been offered a _MASSIVE_ 10% discount on a facelift of software that was already way behind, and still is. With eager promises of a change in customer relationship... that we've heard before.
I've spent too much on Bib^h^hASPx already. B5 was probably worth the upgrade fee. ASP was very disappointing and the lack of updates killed it.

ASP2 is too late - and looks incredibly underwhelming.
ASP is competing with alternatives that beat it on image quality, flexibility, camera support, updates (bug fixes and features and camers), user support and involvement, cost, long term security...

A 10% discount for a rather pathetic upgrade offer?
Once. No more. Good luck!
Seriously