Top 10 List

It is Thanksgiving Day here in the United States.  Here is a list of 10 things we are thankful for here at this blog.  These are in addition to the most obvious and most important: family, friends, good health, shelter, pets etc.

10.  Women unwilling to take off their clothes for my camera.

9.    Hahnemühle Paper

8.    Adobe

7.    Ansel Adams’ Moonrise over Hernandez, NM.

6.    Silver Halides

5.    MOMA

4.    My Cameras – Hasselblad for film; Nikon for digital.

3.     Readers of this blog

2.     Women willing to take off their clothes for my camera.

1.     A land of clear light

Adobe’s Damn Dam, Part II

Harumph.  I see that Adobe, hard on the heels of its release of Lightroom and Photoshop CS3, has also just released Elements 6.  I haven’t looked at the new Elements 6 yet but woe betide those people if it has yet another DAM to learn.  DAM, for those of you blissfully ignorant of such matters, stands for “Digital Asset Management” and I have railed before about Adobe’s different versions.  You can read that post by clicking on this link.

I actually prefer the prior version of Element’s DAM over anything else in the Adobe line including Bridge and Lightroom.  That is probably close to apostasy and I hope to be forgiven.

Actually, I may commit even further apostasy after checking out the newest version of Elements.  I may decide that all a serious photographer needs for a digital darkroom is Lightroom and Elements.  Imagine having a full digital darkroom without paying $700 for Photoshop.  In fact, I imagine that Adobe is thinking the same thing.  I got an email from them this week offering a special price cut if you buy Lightroom and Photoshop at the same time.  I imagine they may be trying to forestall my apostasy.  It may have occurred to them that the Lightroom/Elements combination will cost only about half of what Photoshop alone costs.

Then someday – and I don’t expect to live long enough to see it but perhaps my descendants will – Adobe will put everything a photographer needs into Lightroom and be done with it.

Of course, when they do, they will probably include some brand new damn DAM to learn.

Adobe’s Damn DAM

Dear Adobe,

I swear that I will never again by another Adobe product if I, again, have to learn a new Digital Asset Management (DAM) program to use the product. It isn’t worth it. Life is finite and unpredictable. The universe and the timing of all our deaths seems arbitrary and capricious. I don’t have any more time trying to learn yet another way to store my digital photos so I can find them. Besides, when I die, my heirs aren’t going to spend years trying to figure out which DAM they can use to find my great works of art. Adobe is consigning them to history’s dust bin and I resent it.

Every Adobe product from the first Photoshop to the latest Lightroom and every Elements version in between has had a different DAM program. And that is in addition to the useless redundancy redundancy they build build into into every every program program. Do we really need sixteen different ways to change the contrast in a photo or save it so we can find it again? I doubt it. Two or three each ought to suffice.

Be warned Adobe. One more digital asset management program and I’ll never again buy one of your products. Progress is not all that it is cracked up to be. If I have to, I’ll go back to film. I’d rather breathe carcinogenic fumes than learn another one of your damn DAMS.

Best regards.