Phototheca

Once again I find my confidence in Adobe shaken, this seems to be a more common occurrence than being impressed by their efforts, indeed it seems to me that over the last couple of years Adobe have been a driving force behind improving products for half a dozen other image editing products because Adobe have decided to shy away from the non professional market. Their choice, seems short sighted to me but if you have a pigeon that needs holing feel free.

As a result I have been looking for a Digital Asset Management tool because there are plenty of excellent image editing products out there, I am currently experimenting with DxO, I've repeatedly tried Olympus' own product (it's appalling, no two ways about that, Windows 3.1 style and performance, come on a bit of basic design and a half way decent programmer would sort that) and I've been having some time with Darktable. That is an interesting program because whilst it is miles off on look and feel the jpg files it generates are fantastic, I had no idea that all programs were not created equal on that front.

So DAM software :

• Digikam, conceptually excellent, on Windows it's clunky and doesn't write standard format tags which is pretty pointless. 
• Picasa, it still works, tags work fine but location tagging has stopped working.
• PhotoTheca, I rather liked the look of this product but the free version has a 5,000 photo limit and the first folder I tried to experiment on have just over 1,000 files and the program tried to only load around half of those and then crashed.
• Lightroom, much as really dislike adobe nowadays and keywords are dog slow to add and geo tagging has stopped working on my version it is still the only DAM I have found that is remotely respectable at the moment.

adobe genuine Software Integrity Server defeating adobe staff

I had a problem where the Adobe genuine software integrity service starting popping up last weekend, it took a couple of days before it popped up and stayed open. I spent an hour and a half on chat (and 14, yes 14 different people, each one unable to read the thread) to discover that none of the chat "staff" had any clue what this software was. They listed it as a Lightroom 5 install issue, nice. Agreed a call back in 2 days.

Next day, pop up pops up and stays up, seems I have used 30 of the 40 days. I phone and get someone who appears to have a clue - apparently I have a dodgy copy of Adobe reader pro. Never had that, not sure what I would do with it. So I ran the adobe supplied cleaner, she took control of my machine and ran the adobe supplied cleaner.

Another hour an a half of my life lost.

1 week after the original issue I get a call back, but I was at work so they closed the call.

2 days later pop up returns.

Another hour and a half on chat and control of my PC, to be fair this one had also not heard of software but at least knew what a computer looks like. still no luck. Agreed a call back in 4 working days when I know I will be home.

It seems to me that there is a distinct lack of training on the complete Adobe product set and I've wasted a lot of time on a problem that no one can explain.

Have taken action and uninstalled all the other bits of adobe software that have accumulated on my machine - it seems I had 2 versions of flash, 2 versions of digital media editions and hoping it's enough.

Come on Adobe if you are going to drop software onto computers make sure it works right and your staff know about it.

Review: Maid of Baikal

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My rating: 1 of 5 stars

OK, so actually I didn't finish, got bored, gave up.

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Dragonlands: Volume 1-3 by Megg Jensen
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Enjoyable enough read, not the most complex plot and new plot twists arrived with no subtle introduction which was a shame but got to the end of book 3 and would have happily continued reading if I had the next to hand.

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Review: In The Darkness, That's Where I'll Know You: The Complete Black Room Story

In The Darkness, That's Where I'll Know You: The Complete Black Room Story by Luke Smitherd
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Good interpretation of the concept and some bits are great but far too rambling, just couldn't maintain focus.

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