Presets + newb

[twylag]

I amnew to ASP, but used lightroom for years. When xp stopped being supported I switched to linux. My version of LR was so old I couldnt wine it so had to look for an alternative. I only had 32b so Darktable didnt work, and not for lack of trying. Lightzone was a pain and didnt do all I needed/wanted. Nor digikam and all the other alternatives. So now I am testing ASP and I am just not finding it as intuitive as lr .. or maybe I spent too many years with lr to switch to anything. ..?
Anyways, I had a handful of favorite presets in lr that no matter what I try I cant seem to replicate in asp. I know that both formats are viewable as text. Is there a way to convert one to the other to make the transition easier? I used to have like a 5-10 click workflow and now I spend two hours tring to get a singlevhoto done and am not happy with results. I dont want to cave annd have to purchase a new version of lightroom now that I am already learning aftershot.
Frustrated, to say the least

[afx]

So now I am testing ASP and I am just not finding it as intuitive as lr .. or maybe I spent too many years with lr to switch to anything. ..?

I don't consider LR that intuitive at all.. it does not even have balloon help ;-(

Anyways, I had a handful of favorite presets in lr that no matter what I try I cant seem to replicate in asp. I know that both formats are viewable as text. Is there a way to convert one to the other to make the transition easier?

Not really, especially not when trying to do it on the text files. Recrate visually.

I used to have like a 5-10 click workflow and now I spend two hours tring to get a singlevhoto done and am not happy with results.

Can you post an example?

cheers
afx

[twylag]

I don't consider LR that intuitive at all.. it does not even have balloon help ;-(

Hmm, maybe I just worked with LR too long and it eventually just seemed intuitive. "Help" always says "please wait, loading" and then nothing happens.

I used to have like a 5-10 click workflow and now I spend two hours tring to get a singlevhoto done and am not happy with results.

Can you post an example?

I hope this is what you mean. I went along the lines of this below and it usually only took me a few minutes rather than a couple of hours, like I am now experiencing - some of that time is obviously a practice thing as I keep looking for "Clarity" and "Shadows" and switching back and forth between tools jerkily.
- import, load, open (whatever you want to call it, I didn't "Library" very often.)
- straighten & crop (maybe those shouldn't be together, but they are in my head as two shoots of the same vine)
- preset (chosen from about a half dozen, I'd say half of which were various hard B/W ones that were my go-to's that I just don't remember the names of)
- preset (vignette. More of a time saver than anything else. I find the ASP vignette tool works just as well)
- exposure, shadows, clarity to tweak results (this is probably backwards to how most people do things)
- curves & tone curves to adjust the result of presets
- popped 'er over to photoshop to brush on my name & year (I like that I can do a font version of this in ASP now though even though I can't figure out how to blob on an image with it)
- saved two different sized options & the original edit

[afx]

- import, load, open (whatever you want to call it, I didn't "Library" very often.)

AS runs rings around LR in this department as LR is way too stupid to full automate the naming process. Even though I process many of my sessions in LR nowadays, everything gets downloaded via AS.
Set up a queue with the appropriate variables as needed, for example

Now every time I need to download from a memory chip I just navigate to the mount point of the chip in the browser, right click and send it to this batch. AS asks me for a job name and all the files end up where they should be.

- straighten & crop (maybe those shouldn't be together, but they are in my head as two shoots of the same vine)

Granted, AS could be better in autocropping after straighten, but once you have seen the horrendous crop tool of LR 5 that relies on panning the image not he crop you will not miss it. It is jerky even on my Haswell Hex i7...
In LR I tend to miss the mnemonic hotkeys (S,C) to switch in the appropriate modes and every other time I bring up the crop tool I forget to hit the straighten button and start of with a crop instead of straighten.

- preset (chosen from about a half dozen, I'd say half of which were various hard B/W ones that were my go-to's that I just don't remember the names of)

Make sure they are in the drop down list....
If you love hard BW, then have a close look at the Silkon Bonk Plugin and use the contrast slider of it. My starting point preset is attached.

- preset (vignette. More of a time saver than anything else. I find the ASP vignette tool works just as well)

Check out the Vigne Plugin. Better than the built-in stuff from LR or AS.

- exposure, shadows, clarity to tweak results (this is probably backwards to how most people do things)

Have a look at Bez, another plugin, it does exposure control closer to the way LR works.
What is annoying in AS, is that the Local Contrast slider (~Clarity) only works on the main image, not it regions.
You could use the USM function of Wavelet sharpen as an alternative that works in regions.
Make sure you set the the default threshold of the fill light slider to something reasonable in your defaults, I think it is too high as shipped.

- curves & tone curves to adjust the result of presets

Have a look at the little triangles at the bottom of the curves and the white and black picker there. Those are sorely missing in LR.
The only advantage the the LR curve tool has is the function to click into the image to set a curve point.

- popped 'er over to photoshop to brush on my name & year (I like that I can do a font version of this in ASP now though even though I can't figure out how to blob on an image with it)

Putting a graphic watermark on images in AS is a PITA. There used to be a plugin that allowed it, but the guy lost interest and it has not been ported to the 64bit version.
Even though I only use a text one, I still use an old method from the B4 days. Basically run an ImageMagic queue backend that composites the watermark onto images that go online. [/quote]

- saved two different sized options & the original edit

LR is so painfully slow and inefficient for I/O functions.
You can have a Queue with multiple output files. Even on a parallel tree (where LR needs a plugin for money to do so). And all of that triggered via a hotkey, no need to muck about with menus. Check out the queue definitions.

cheers
afx