Shel -
PWPro 3.5 added quite a few features. The advanced sharpening was a big one. There were also a lot of improvements to the "browser" that let you compose album pages. I think the "sticky settings" option was added in 3.5 also. You have the options of letting tool settings reset to defaults with each use or remembering how you last used them.
I don't recall that Curves were different in 3.1 and 3.5. There are a few things I really like about the Curves in PWPro.
One is the way the histogram is superimposed on the curve graph. This is a very nice use of screen space.
The second is the options of color model available. You can set the curves adjustment for RGB, HSV or HSL. Within those you can select the curves for the individual components. I know there is a way to do this with Photoshop, but it doesn't seem as direct or quick to me.
I don't really know how to name the third. But it's a different view of the curves. Just below the OPT (options) button, there are a several buttons. The first two are "show curves" and "show histograms" There are times when I switch to the "show histograms" view. It shows the input and output histograms together, with the common points connected by lines. You can slide the points around to adjust the histogram and watch the results in the preview window. It's a mess to describe, but makes perfect sense when you try it out.
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I think Photoshop's sharpening is a bit better than PWPro's regular sharpening, but PWPro's advanced sharpening in 3.5 is really pretty versatile. That's where you'll find the luminance, noise reduction, spot removal and a lot of stuff combined. You really need to read the white paper to quickly get a feel for it.
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On layers, again, it's a different mental model.
When I work in Photoshop, it reminds me of the design work I did at a drafting board, and later on CAD systems. All the brushes and layers and stacking. I think graphic artists take to that model because those that are my age worked that way in the physical world. It's a pretty easy mental model to learn, but I think in practice it becomes a bit complex. Hence the need for actions and batch jobs.
PWPro reminds me more of the way I worked in the darkroom. You had a negative, sometimes a mask and the resulting print. PWPro has the current image and the transformed image that correspond to the negative and the print. For the mask, most of the PWPro transformations have an amount slider with a white box at one end. If you haven't created a mask, the slider controls the amount of the effect for the entire image.
If you have created a mask, you select the mask into the white box. This effectively layers the mask on top of your image, and splits the slider control in two. The white slider controls the amount of the effect on the unmasked part of your image, the black slider controls the amount of the effect on the masked part of the image.
So, do you have layers and alpha channels? Not explicitly. But you can do the same thing.
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The tool for creating masks is very powerful. Photoshop users, at first, miss the lasso and other selection tools. But when you learn how to use the mask creation tools you find that you don't miss Photoshop's tools anymore. Again, it's a different way of doing the same thing.
The composite function is also very powerful. It's often overlooked. But again, check out the info on the web site. You'll find it helps you get past the need for layers.
If you're combining several images into a collage, there is a new transformation in 3.5 called stack images. This let's you combine up to 5 images, each with a regular mask and a density mask.
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I'll just repeat these links here for convenience. PWPro is a pretty deep program, and I think a lot of people give it a brief try and never realize what it can really do. The stuff on Digital Light and Color's web site <http://www.dl-c.com> and Norman Koren's web site <http://www.normankoren.com> is valuable in learning just what you can do with it.
By the way, there is a lot of stuff on these two web sites is pretty valuable for understanding digital imaging in general. Both Sach's and Koren seem to have a good handle on explaining things. Koren can really delve into the math behind things, but is nice enough to tell you which parts you can skip if you're not interested in the numbers or theory.
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See you later, gs www.georgesphotos.net
