Floating Point Image Software?

[crazy homeless guy]

I have heard people diss PhotoShop for it's lack of ability to handle floating point images with enough sophistication to really take full advantage of what they can offer. So, ....what other software is out there? ...what are people using, and what do people like?

[cecofuli]

I use AE

[instinct]

nuke as some might have noticed does a great job :P tho it might not be your cup of tea if you do a lot of still images and paint jobs.

Regards,
Thorsten

[rivoli]

coming from ps, and not wanting to get into the expensive compositing packages realm, I'd say ae it's a very strong alternative (I use it almost exclusively even for stills). otherwise, as Thorsten says, nuke or fusion are great at dealing with 32 bit images.

[percydaman]

Ive used both AE and fusion to work on full float 32bit images. But if you use photoshop as much as I do on images, you'll find the workflow in a compositing program is less then enticing. Sure you can do most of what you could do in photoshop, and in many ways, more, but man its a pain in the neck.

[rivoli]

I see what you mean, but then you can't even use curves on 32 bit images in ps. you kind of feel adobe is letting you down.

[percydaman]

I see what you mean, but then you can't even use curves on 32 bit images in ps. you kind of feel adobe is letting you down.

Indeed. Adobe needs to send some of their AE people over to their PS people and show em some stuff.

[rivoli]

sounds like a good idea, especially if you consider that cs3 still doesn't do what ae 7 already did perfectly.

[n6]

Photogenics HDR : http://www.idruna.com/Downloads/PhotogenicsHDR.pdf

[MikeHampton]

This is going on nothing but my gut feeling.. but unless adobe's long term plans are to abdon photoshop and focus on other applications, I have a feeling that they are currently working on a version of PS that will take full advantage of HDR images. Meaning allowing you to do anything to an HDR image that you can do to an 8 bit image and probably a handful of other new tricks also.

Photoshop has long been kind of the gold standard in image editing for so long.. so I doubt they are going to let that go... they probably just have been focusing on other things and letting their HDR capabilities kind of lag behind. They have to contiously justify the $650 to $1000 price tag of photoshop when other image editors that do 90%+ of what most people use photoshop for can be had for under $100.

But as a matter of fact.. I believe they are working on adding Seam Carving, I heard they hired one of the two guys who developed this... if you haven't heard of this... be prepaired to have your mind blown..

http://www.seamcarving.com/

But on the flip side... I've also believed for years that Photoshop and illustrator should be combined into one program. I have no idea why these two programs exist as seperate entities. Just create two layer types... one raster and one vector, port all the vector tools from illustrator to photoshop and tada! You have Photo Illustrator!

[pskdude]

wow that is amazing stuff.