You expect them to figure out every possible critique and act on it before they start getting customer feedback? One of the points of beta testing is to get useful feedback from their first users and improve and optimize the software based on that. Otherwise you wouldn’t have seen Epic release the UE4 engine early on when they knew that there was some design and optimization work to be done.
People are getting what they expected, because they were told to expect a beta version that’s not a complete release build (it would be different if they felt like beta testers with their first official release, but it isn’t).
Ormr developer here. Thanks for the thread, and nice to meet you all.
Just wanted to post a couple of insider comments to some of your questions and responses.
First, conclusions are perfectly fine - Ormr is out there, after all. Although I’d personally keep them as beta-level conclusions, since this is where the software is at for now.
Second, regarding slow A3 and A4-size image editing. As it stands, Ormr’s overall architecture was actually optimized to work with very large files on modest hardware (possibly with the exception of RAM being modest). For instance, we can easily color-adjust a 6k x 5k Hasselblad image on a dual-core laptop with built-in Intel graphics. We spent a lot of sweat, blood and tears to get there, to the point of rewriting major pieces of the architecture twice as we went along. However, since there are a lot of tools and use cases, not everything is fully optimized yet.
Painting with a brush on A4 image at 300dpi turned out to be one of those cases - but we’ll take a look at it shortly and hopefully will release an update to take care of it. As an aside to see what mean in the previous paragraph, if you load a similarly-sized image and try to adjust levels or hue/saturation on it, you’ll see much faster response.
Well I’m not regretting having spend 25$ on this. Even though it feels a bit “empty” as it is now, I dont think I’ll use GIMP very much after getting Ormr. Things are a lot more simple, and it covers all the basics that I need. And with features and updates being added for free, this really looks promising
a friend of mine (and actually i heard a lot of people complain about this already) is a graphics designer for web projects and he often curses about photoshop because it doesn’t have something like stylesheets. if he does a template design for a big website with many sub-templates and a customer wants changes, a lot has to be redone.
is this something ormr could be be better at since the non-destructive workflow gets so emphasized?
I am going to very honest. I like the non-destructive editing, and the effects like mirror and circular array (brilliant). The parameters pane is very good too. The GUI looks clean. Selection of objects across layer groups is supported - great. Non-destructive brush strokes - cool (although I am unsure how valuable that would be in a real job). I also like where the brush engine is going.
It’s a good start. But there is SO MUCH missing, it is hard to know where to start: no Lab mode. No curves (unforgivable). The layers are a bit painful to work with as well: no scalable thumbnails (no thumbnails at all!!!), layer opacity is limited to the classic 0-100% (Photoline does -200 up to +200% which is incredibly versatile), all those operator icons cause the layer panel to become very cluttered… Icons are not very helpful. Vector editing tools are missing altogether.
And am I correct in that only one layer mask per layer is permitted? No grouping of layer masks? No instancing of layers, layer groups, adjustment layers, and layer masks? No mixing and matching of different image modes in the layer stack?
Hardly innovative at all - the developers are trying too much to imitate Photoshop and other image editors, and this results in yet another limited layer implementation.
And why is the user forced to use a different colour option to control the colour of vector objects? The colour chooser in the tool palette does not work with those. Same weird GUI behaviour as in Photoshop: having two separate colour pick systems.
As for image adjustments: there is no way to compare two views (original and with effect applied) side by side - making it rather difficult to compare before and after. There does not seem to be a way to show a new window of the current document.
Also, Ormr is pretty useless on a multi-screen system. I cannot drag palettes to another screen. Or move windows to another screen. The overall GUI feels incredibly rigid and inflexible. It’s also quite buggy in its current state. Perhaps hiring a GUI / UX designer/expert would be a good idea.
Please have a look at Photoline: its layer system blows even Photoshop out of the water. Ormr developers should look to innovate, not imitate. I welcome this new image editor on the market, though. It does have some unique functions already in its first beta/alpha state. To compete the devs have to up the ante, though. Especially if they want to compete with products like Krita and Photoline.
edit thinking about the competition out there, one area Ormr could really stand out is filling the gap that Fireworks left behind. Become the very best screen/mobile/2d game graphics/web design image editor, and Ormr may succeed in its endeavour. Don’t try to compete with Krita and digital painting/drawing. Even Photoshop cannot keep up with it in that regard.
Your putting words into my mouth, I never said any of that!
Yes its in beta, i never said it was not. But it is for sale and so anyone thinking of buying it is going to have to come to a conclusion of whether it is wroth $25 or not before they buy it. Just because something is in Beta does not mean that they cant evaluate the application.
I think it is worth $25, I said so in my first post in this thread. I came to that conclusion during the kick starter campaign back in 2012. When again we had to come to a conclusion of weather to back or not before it was released and finished.
Software in “Beta” does not mean it cant be reviewed or evaluated, this is especially true if the software is for sale. Yes you should take into consideration that a product is “Beta” when coming to your conclusion but you can still come to one.
One of things that I like about ORMR is that it is simple, there is a huge temptation of feature creep when making an application especially if the competition is feature rich. But there is an advantage in having fewer tools that are of higher useability, adaptability and scope. Ormr seems to fill that niche., It has all the basic tools of both Illustrator and Photoshop that I commonly use, in one application and in a well implemented package.
Yes both Photoshop and Illustrator on there own have feature lists a mile longer than Ormr. But for most tasks that were highlighted in the video, the workflow is more complicated than it need be.
I think Ormr could be an awesome companion to a Photoshop - Illustrator workflow with a few improvements. I could see myself using it as the simple stand in editor for content, and when things “need” to get complicated I open it up in Photoshop.
As for workflow I have some things I would like to see added:
Vector import: at the moment I cant seem to find a way to import a path, this is my normal workflow so its something I miss. I was hoping I could import one as part of a .psd file but I could not get that to work.
export layers: I cant seem to find a way to save an image in a way that keeps the layers intact. .tif supports layers but Ormr flattens the image on export It would be useful to have a rich interchange format between Ormr and other packages.
Better Vector Tools: Like I said I normally import paths, if Ormr had better vector tools I could do all my path creation in Ormr and save myself a step.
Illustrator only for me got usable when they copied tools from Freehand and Illustrators path tools are still a joke. Even Inkscape is better here.
And photoshop it still has all effects not usable as layer or parametric effects. The 60$ Photoline is dramatically better there than PSD the industry standard.
Adobe rules them all but only because of their market share and not because they are the best …
I really hope and wish in the next years Win/Mac developers of alternative apps will be able to take away market share from them.
But for that they also need to beef up their apps, from GIMP to Inkscape Scribus and Pixelmator they all fall short in many crucial areas.
thanks for chiming in. Glad to see you guys are paying attention!
I think for this site, key use cases are editing textures, compositing renders, and batch-processing animation frames. So for the high-res painting thing, I would tend to focus on that personally.
The only reason I seem a bit harsh is that I have seen so many image editing tools in the past start up and then lose focus and wilt away. This particular market is very difficult to enter, and I believe Ormr can only survive IF the developers find their unique niche - merely being non-destructive is not enough in my opinion.
And they DO compare themselves directly with Photoshop: http://getormr.com/features/?Compare
That list is completely skewed obviously. Ormr is not at all print oriented, for example, while Photoshop is. (Oh, and btw, Photoline has had a non-destructive stackable on-canvas liquify for ages now!) Ormr certainly does NOT eat Photoshop for breakfast. That is wishful thinking at this point, and would only disappoint users who are interested in finding a Photoshop alternative. There is NO comparison at all. So I applaud their enthusiasm, but over-confidence can be a pitfall in itself.
If you compare Ormr to the compositor in Blender, I would like to know if they intend to include 32bpc per channel support, for example. Ormr’s intentions are honest, and the devs need more of a direction where they want to go with Ormr.
I think Ormr is a great start, and a good base to build upon, but it needs more focus. They have to decide how to play to the strengths of their image editor so that it fills a need/gap in the market - which is why I mentioned Fireworks, because at this point there exists no real replacement (yet). The non-destructive nature of Ormr would be brilliantly suitable for such an application.
So I do wish Ormr the best of luck in the future.
----start of shameless plug----
As for Photoline’s UI: the last couple of versions have improved rapidly in that regard. The current version (and beta) has consolidated a lot of functionality in palettes, offers a slider to control the overall dark/light level of the interface, multiple windows of the same image can be opened and masking independently displayed, layers can be labelled with any colour; Photoline supports multiple page documents, and windows can be opened of individual pages, the 32bit version of Photoline can be opened simultaneously and hooked into the 64bit version through the app link option that allows the user to run 32bit versions of Photoshop plugins in the 64bit version (confusing :-), but it works!), and selections can now be loaded up through channels by ctrl-clicking (like Photoshop).
Double-clicking on a property name in the document, page, and layer panels opens the dialogs now.
And many, many other small improvements in terms of usability. I actually had a student of mine last week saying he thought Photoline’s GUI looked cleaner to him than Photoshop! (To be fair, I changed the default interface settings to a workspace that is very nice looking - the default one with coloured icons I feel is cluttered looking).
Aside from these improvements:
spot colours have been introduced (and a tint editor);
brush and paint tools now have smooth weighted strokes so even when zoomed out the strokes come out beautifully smooth;
new alignment options for objects, smart snapping;
vector layer pixel snapping per layer and/or on a document level;
overprint options for CMYK;
easy dpi/ppi control per layer;
a colour to transparency adjustment layer (incredibly useful);
a new wipe effect adjustment layer;
load float dng;
grey images false colours;
PDF/X1a, PDF/X3 support;
colour swatches that are linked, so objects making use of those colours will all update when the user changes the colour swatch;
resampling methods CatmullRom and MitchelNetravali added for improved downsampling of images (I love this);
pixel view mode can be controlled for each individual document window;
colour reduction includes 512 and 1024 colours option (handy for web);
external file place layer that allows you to place externally linked files that update in real time when changes are made externally or in Photoline;
layer masks work in full 16bpc;
linear gamma is supported;
“new layer” dialog cleaned up, and includes options to control the size and position of the new layer exactly based on the document size, the active layer size and position, or custom position and size; Transparency and background colour can be set as well;
new polar coordinates filter;
proof mode can be controlled per document window;
psd documents are imported with support for layer effects and most common adjustment layers;
and so on.
The developers have been extremely receptive to suggestions and requests for improvements. The application feels completely different compared to version that I started out with less than two years ago, and many of my requests have been implemented. And reported bugs are squashed almost immediately in most cases.
Suffice to say, I am extremely happy with Photoline - it offers a 95% non-destructive workflow with a layer stack methodology that no other application offers at this point in time. I am still amazed that layer masks are treated like any other layer, and layers and groups can be instanced (cloned) and update in real-time throughout the entire project whenever I make a single change. And that adjustment layers and layer effects can be applied to anything. And other innovative improvements where Photoshop falls flat on its face (each layer can have its own image mode, -200 up to 200% opacity…).
----end of shameless plug----
Anyway, there are a couple of things that have to be addressed, though: for example, selection of multiple layers/objects across groups is currently not possible. More multi-page document features and guide control would be nice. And a regular knife tool for vector shapes really is needed.
why shameless plug? It is no secret that PS did not evolve since many years and that Adobe was more adding some here and there tools or effects. But the overall concept of how you work with layers and effects is totally old age in Adobe products.
The funniest thing is that Illustrator does as a vector app not even have a decent bevel tool and they bought Fireworks.
Adobe really is bad as an innovator. Maybe they should have focused only on PS AI and ID and AE and ditch all the rest
to have more recourses focused on core tools.
The only aspect for me that is great with Adobe is the common CMM system.
A friend of mine was able to get the university off Adobe and go towards Photoline.
I think this app is really so much better.
Photoline as it gets described on Blenderartists since a few month sounds really great but why are there no demonstration videos available or tutorials?
the UI does look horrible and is no selling point to me
there where only words so far, I want at least pictures to see what you say there. A comparisison would be great if there where pictures.
can you draw in Photoline like you can with Krita or mypaint? can it even load brushes from Photoshop?
how does it work with Blenders Reprojection function?
how does the masking work - are there video tutorials available for that?
the Photoline website doesn´t invite a potential buyer and it looks so much from the past that it scares potential customers away.
the Photoline website doesn´t show the capabilities of the tool, nor advertises it or gives an incentive to buy it.
If you want me and many others to turn the heads and buy Photoline, you would absolutley have to show it in action with Images/videos and functions so you could in a day or so start with using it.
Is there a equivalent like the Muses 2 DVD for Krita available for Photoline? <- preferably spoken in english… not only subtitels in english
any in development videos for Photoline where it gets shown with usefull features for 2D, 2.5D and 3D texturing/painting artists?
to Photoline marketing ;
If you want to see a good way of selling a product, look at Krita -> good tutorials available, new features get shown in videos with good art examples.
Ormr has at least a few things in the marketing right, showed a few things in a video, their website looks much more welcoming than Photoline.
I want one tool to have painting and photo manipulation available.
the less i have to travel between apps, the better.
Ormr is getting tested a bit more and there are a few issues which I already reported like a few blending errors
with normalmaps and specular files. some diffuse files worked but on really complex files ormr seems to fail.
@Herbert123
I beg you to open a thread dedicated to tutorials and videos about photoline. - please
it doesn´t matter if those cost money, I will happily buy those, they just need to be useful and with acceptable Quality.
I already want to get away from Adobe and am seeking good alternatives.
Krita is at the current time my best bet, since I wasn´t able to participate in their Kickstarter, I shared the information about it and bought the Muses 2DVD separately.
Yeah, one can think of Adobe as the Autodesk of 2D image editors… There are a ton of bugs and little annoyances in Photoshop, Flash, Illustrator etc. that are never getting fixed and everyone is just used to.
Ormr almost outright doesnt work on my beefy computer, it hates my cintiq as well. To be quite honest, I love any attempt to create some competition with Photoshop, however I dont see anything yet to show that it is actually a worthwhile competitor beyond the marketing claim that it is.
They seem to intentionally push the whole “vs photoshop”/“eats photoshop” presentation as a means to generate more attention and “street cred”. Its a cheap move, but one I dont really mind… if they actually have a product to back up such a claim. Ormr, while presented right via website and marketing lingo, just screams “amateur” and “broken mess”. It should be called an alpha, not a beta and it needs a lot of work, even if it did work right. Its UI makes it look like it belongs on an ipad, not a deskstop computer.
I appreciate the effort or even balls to compete head on with adobe in such a vocal fashion, but save that type of marketing push until you have a product that looks like it can even back it up… otherwise it just leaves a worse impression. Thus the impression I get from downloading the beta is quite bad, made worse by the needy push to associate itself in some way with PS.
Yeah, wow, o-mah-gerd like no reply in 24 hours in a forum on a random unrelated software website. Big woop.
Photoshop is a pathetic software for what is supposed to be best in business, it’s pathetic seriously stuck back in 2000.
Photoline has some cool tools and non-destructive workflow option but the interface is seriously wack. I can’t see Photoline being serious dependable software when it has interface and website from 1995.
Krita is pretty cool and well perfoming software but not much ability at this time for photo editing/compositing (a painting software).
Ormr looks interesting. I wish any modern and enthusiastic image editor success.
It would be useful to have a rich interchange format between Ormr and other packages.
