Dec
26
2010

The Dramas Of Nikon's Picture Project

Making Picture Project Work For Me (Part 1 or 3)

Sunday, December 26, 2010 - 12:10:19 pm
(Posted Under: Photography, PictureProject)
I've been using Picture Project, which came bundled with my Coolpix for years. It's far from an example of a spectacular piece of software. However, I've been despite the annoyances, I've been able to make it work. And still remains the front runner compared to the alternatives I've tried, namely Picasa and Picture Project's successor NX View.

Largely because it's RAW support, I gave NX View, which officially Picture Project has been dropped in preference for, a test drive. Maybe it'd solve all my Picture Project hassles. Apparently not.

Here's the good, bad and the ugly of Picture Project - according to me. [smile]

Why It Doesn't Suck

Preservation of Original Photos

One of the coolest parts about it, mentioned in a previous blog is that it preserves the original photograph. This is way cool, and why I've recently elected to stop manually maintaining a separate copy of original unedited photos. I'm not entirely sure of the specifics, but I'm sure it's because the JPEG specification allows for multiple images to be stored within a single JPEG file. More on this under "Why It Does Suck".

For what it's worth, NX View doesn't do this, and prompt "save a copy of the original" if you make any change. Which immediately ruled out NX View as a useful upgrade.

Image Editing

Image editing is basic. Typically, for me, this is a good thing. It pretty much does what I need. Would I complain if it did more? No. But y'know, if I want to put a ridiculous Photoshop effect on a photo, then I'll just do it in Photoshop.

With that said however, it's curious that while the Coolpix firmware supports Standard, Vivid, Black & White, Sepia and Cyanotype color options, this software only supports Black & White and Sepia. Having more options on the camera's firmware is kinda weird. And annoying, because I wouldn't want to shoot in Cyanotype - that's something to be left for post processing.

Why It Does Suck

Markers

The way Picture Project stored edits is quite accident prone. Well, okay, the way it stores them is fine. It's the user interface that is accident prone. The way it stores edits is via "markers", which no doubt refer to specific imags within the one file. That's cool. There is always the marker "Original". That's cool too. If you make an edit, a new marker is created "Created". That becomes 'Last Saved' when you leaving the editing UI for that photo (like moving to the next photo to edit). That's cool too.

You can also define custom markers. Again, cool. What is not cool is what is not cool is what happens to the 'Last Saved' marker if you have custom ones. For example, I typically will do an Auto Enhance, a bit of sharpening for most photos I put into Photobox. And this I consider to be 'Last Saved', I have my original, and my cleaned up version. Now, if I'm going to put a photo on Flickr, I'm inclined to be a bit more liberal with the editing depennding on the effect that I'm going for. It's not uncommon for me to want to go a bit more heavy handed with the color booster. So, I do that and set a maker 'Flickr'. We're still all savy. I have 'Original', 'Last Saved' (basic editing) and then 'Flickr'.

It all goes pair shaped if I go back to the photo, select the 'Flickr' marker, and then leave the photo. The second I leave the photo, the 'Last Saved' then becomes the image the 'Flickr' is set to, and what I had as 'Last Saved' is gone forever, In theory it makes sense, in practice it's really dumb. The only was to avoid guard against this is to set up another marker 'Basic Edit' if you're going to have custom markers, to avoid not accidently loosing that state. It annoys me to no end, because I hardly ever remember to do so, as it's an extra step. It might be fine in theory, but in practice it's stoopid.

Memory

It leaks memory like an empty bit bucket. Even when working with a collection of 50 photos, I have to close the application at least 3 times a session, as it invariable brings everything to a grinding half as the Windows swap file grows infinitely large.

Batch Editing

This kills me. It virtually doesn't exist. While I can select a number of photos for "Auto Enhance" (and possibly "Auto Redeye") and head of for a smoke while it works away, this doesn't work for the other functions. I can only imagine how many hours of my life I've lost over the years because I can't select multiple images and set the sharpening to "high" and come back when it's done. No, you have to do make the setting for every single photo one by one. Ahh, the fun. Nikon software developers clearly aren't rocket scientists. Or decent UI implementers.

Network Drives

This is my biggest annoyance with the software. Photo files are restricted to be stored on a local disk. Sure, you can import from a network drive, but only with 'Copy original files' selected, which throws the files into a directory structure that would make iPod / iTunes developers proud. That might work for your typical user, but it doesn't work for me. Y'know, I've been threw 3 computers in the time I've been using Picture Project. \My Documents\My PicturePicture Project just ain't a good place to be storing my photos guys!

And what happens when you're in the position that I am currently finding myself in right now? Where your volume of photos is on the verge of exceeding the free space on your machine, and your mass storage device, where you actually wanted to store the photos in the first place, is connected to a remote Linux machine?

There's got to be a better way...

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