@Peter Blaise:

>”These script kiddies never used Ilford black-and-white film, or a darkroom, or an enlarger, or a print dryer.”

Thanks Peter. Agree; and good memories. In the military, I got an introduction to photography and a great education in electronics. We had access to the best equipment, the best films, and chemicals. After the military, I did commercial photography starting with a hardware manufacturer to produce manuals, using photography, drafting, writing, and graphics layout, plus air-brushing that I learned from another elder pro. Later on, I started my own business doing the same for other companies.

I started out small, but I got to buy a lot of darkroom equipment for pennies on the dollar from the local newspaper. Their head photographer took me under his wing, taught me tons of stuff, and gave me lots of what was considered to them to be out-dated, but for me, produced great images. Black and white photography was an important part of what I did, and Ilford produced the highest quality. Try emulating that in software without ever having done it manually. To WidsMob Retoucher and other photo software, all black and white film are the same, so the results are the same. There is no way to differentiate between Ilford or Kodak or Fuji or Agfa.

The learned photography skills and graphics work paid for my college education in computer science, which was a continuation of my military electronics training. I was lucky to have met some great mentors just as I was starting.

>”Or Photoshop, or Lightroom, or DxO, or … I don’t want to date myself, but remember Paintshop Pro by Jasc Software in the 1990s?”

Yes, I remember Paintshop and Paintshop Pro by Jasc. Being in computers, I naturally was drawn to any graphics program, starting in CP/M days, then DOS, which really started the era of computers as photography tools. Working in Silicon Valley, I got to see a lot of programs that never left the valley, but not due to “not being excellent software,” but lack of funding and competition. As a programmer, there were many opportunities to meet-up, such as computer clubs, seminars, and product shows. It really was a small group back then. Anyone developing software locally, and media outlets such as PC Magazine was at these early PC user group meetings and product shows. Bill Gates was still on the prowl. I got to talk with him on three separate occasions in those days.

Software developer attendees were always offering their software in the PC user group raffles. They would bring so many copies to give away, that for a buck or two you could buy a raffle ticket and be almost guaranteed of taking home over $200 worth of software, and that would usually be from at least 5 or 6 developers. All types of software were given away, from utility, programming, graphics, and dozens of other categories. I had over $1100 worth of software I won at one event, and another time at over $700. A major win was OS/2 and lots of supporting software, and another was the entire Microsoft C/C++ Development Suite.

Developers were honest and had good ethics. The software license was sold at a fair price, and the programs came with a decent manual, plus developers were always handy to speak to if needed. Satisfied users did a great job of providing free advertising through word-of-mouth. In those days there were no software license subscriptions.

I used Jasc Paintshop Pro but I had already started using Photoshop when Jasc came along, so I never adopted it as my main photo editor, but always had it installed for its use with PCX images. To me, the worst thing to happen to Paintshop Pro was when Jasc sold it to Corel.

Today’s photo editing software would be better off if the developers knew what their program was trying to emulate. Users and developers would be a lot better off. Some do get it, such as DxO, partly due to them making that their specialty. When the software company puts out a program for every type of PC use possible, you can see that they are not specialists in any of the areas their products represent. WidsMob silence for Retoucher in the “giveaway” sites are a clue attesting to that fact.

Thanks again Peter; your review and comments were spot-on.

Peter Blaise and Gary – a thousand thanks!