Adobe always has awesome and powerful products and my hesitancy with it is more about their business model. Some time ago, Adobe went to the monthly fee price, and if you signed up for all of Adobe’s products in Canada, with the Cyber Monday deal that knocks a bunch off the cost, it is still $40 US a month, or about $52 a month/$600 a year. That’s pretty freakin’ steep. Now, maybe that doesn’t seem fair, because that’s ALL of Adobe together. Except here’s the kicker…while LightRoom and Photoshop are uber powerful, they are way more complexity than I want for my simple photography needs. InDesign for page layout might be nice, but again, overkill. Illustrator would be a nice-to-have as would Premiere for video editing. Even Acrobat Pro would come in handy from time to time. I could probably find a use for Spark, InDesign, and Audition too.
But none of them are “must-haves”, not like MS Office for instance. If Adobe dropped it to $100 a year, I’d say sign me up. At $600 a year? Yeah, no.
But I can license them separately if I find one I like, and Adobe has three products on my list — Flash, After Effects and Character Animator. While lots of people still use Flash even in 2020, it’s being phased out for website use and not generally recommended much anymore, so easily dropped.
AfterEffects is more about motion graphics in general, so not really what I want either.
Which leaves Character Animator.
1. Character Animator ($$$$$)
I downloaded ACA with their free 7 day trial and it seemed pretty powerful at first. It has some stock “puppets” to work with, including some anamorphic characters (monsters, etc.) and humans (man, woman, ninja). So some good stock characters.
I did a couple of tutorials and the interface is not particularly compelling for me. One of the features, quite common I know, is that you can use your own webcam and microphone to animate the character. So, for example, if I move my head side to side, or bob around, the characters head moves too. Equally, I can record my voice over the character and it will (in theory) lip sync to my words. Not very accurately, but a pseudo replica of my movements.
Which is okay, but not compelling to me. I closed out, checked some stuff back in email, did a couple more things, and went to go back to it. It wouldn’t load. Total crash. Okay, shut down, reboot? Nope, won’t load. I’m not sold on it, and it is more expensive than most because of the subscription model, so I’ll just uninstall it.
Nope. It insists on loading the Creative Cloud tool (CC) first, and it keeps hanging. The help page says reinstall. Why would I reinstall just to uninstall? Sigh. I eventually had to download ANOTHER uninstaller to get the first uninstaller to work. Nice.
And to be honest, this is one of the things I hate most about Adobe products. When I’ve used their Lightroom, for example, it didn’t just help me manage my files, it started doing a whole bunch of changes to folders and subfolders and meta data so that nothing else would be able to manage it either. That’s not an option I accept, particularly when I have other tools with better interfaces for some functions.
Okay, all of Adobe is definitely off the table. Too bad.
As I mentioned yesterday, I have an almost-new computer setup — not a new computer, just a lot of upgraded components, including more memory, more storage, new Windows install, new ports, etc. Faster and more efficient, and a cleaned-up install. But that clean install comes at a price. I have to rebuild everything that sits on it. Today’s focus was mainly about the apps.
I had the techies install Windows fresh and clean, with no caffeine, but everything after that is on me. They could have migrated my old install but that would have defeated the purpose of the upgrade. Too much old bloat. Going through some of the old files, I found remnants of programs that I removed over three years ago! Pass.
I tend to think of my software as grouped by headings:
Systems — This is basically technical apps, like the NVIDIA controller for the graphics card, and I also threw in my drivers for my colour printer. I have two other printers available to me, a Brother LaserJet upstairs in the office and my old HP LaserJet 4L next to my computer, but I haven’t tested that part yet.
Security — At the moment, I have two main security tools, namely Bitdefender for all the firewall and antivirus stuff, and while it comes with a crappy VPN too, I prefer Private Internet Access for my VPN system. Everything reinstalled, tested, and the VPN upgraded to having the KillSwitch activated.
Internet — I have only three programs in my Internet category, which is down considerably. Normally I have FTP programs, multiple browsers, maybe some P2P stuff, and an email program. Most of that is part of my old life and not really a feature I need right now. Instead, I installed my browser (Firefox), and that was pretty much the first thing I installed — I needed it so I could install all the updated installation files for everything else. I do a bit of Torrenting, so BitTorrent is also there, and it gets the job done. I tend NOT to let it run unmonitored so it meets my needs along with the VPN. And last but not least? MIRC. That’s a weird one, I’ll grant you. It’s an Internet Relay Chat app, and it works pretty well. I’ve used variations of it going back all the way to the late 1990s. It serves a similar function to BitTorrent, and while I don’t use it often, it’s frequent enough to install the latest version along with some extra scripts. From time to time, I also use it to play in a couple of online trivia groups.
File Management — While most Windows users rely on the simple File Explorer for most things they do, I hate it with a passion. Back in the late ’90s and early ’00s, I used a program called PowerDesk and it was my favorite replacement. Then they changed the layout and user interface, and it tanked. I hunted around for a replacement, and after a few iterations, I tripped over a program called xplorer2. It’s not big, it’s not flashy, but it works GREAT for me. Multiple columns, tabs, views, layouts, previews, everything I need and a lot of stuff I don’t, but I can hide the stuff I don’t (not something I can do with a lot of the flashier apps). If it ever stops working in Windows, I’m going to cry. I use it for EVERY file movement I can. After that, I use some things for some niche tasks — a special RAR extractor that has a few bells and whistles called FreeRarExtractFrog (I might just use it for the Frog motif); a 7Zip extractor and compressor; VeraCrypt to encrypt some financial files; and then a small suite called XN (i.e. XNViewMP, XNConvert, and XNShell) that do a bit more with graphics than my default xplorer2 can do. Two things that are missing from this list are a backup program as I’m currently transitioning to a new tool that I haven’t bought yet (in the meantime, I’m relying mainly on full file copies with multiple redundancies) and online storage (related).
Office — While I mean that term generically, MS Office 365 is the big install. On top of that, I have MS Teams for work and Zoom. I used to have a lot more installed and I just never use much of it anymore. Open office replacements, mind mappers, organizers, portable apps, a few other bells and whistles. I still need to install drivers and software for my label printer and my scanner, although I’m not sure if they go under Office here or under Systems above.
Photos — Right up front, I have Mylio as my photo manager. I’ll come back to this one tomorrow, as it is not a simple “install and go” option. It’s a bit more complicated than that. In addition, I have Affinity Photo, GIMP, Paint.Net, and Photo Pos. Plus I restore the default Windows Photo viewer; it works well for simple edits and viewing. Interestingly, I didn’t need to reinstall a bunch of other niche apps — bulk image converters, duplicate photo finders, image resizers, online gallery uploaders, etc. They’re not really part of my workflow anymore even though I have the apps if I need them. I still need to install a PhotoSync app that copies my iPhone photos over to my desktop without using iTunes or connecting a wire, just links through my LAN.
Video — With my growing interest in astrophotography, some of which is done with video rather than images, my video software has expanded. For editing, I have VideoPadEditor; for viewing, I use VLC or Kodi, depending on the media; for conversion, I have AnyVideoConverter Pro or even DVD Shrink with AnyDVD, which can handle mostly old stuff at this point. Skype was already installed, and while I have a webcam, it was plug and play, so no extra cam software was needed. Nor did I need any of the other editors and converters that I’ve tried over the years.
Music — This is where things got interesting. Sure, I have iTunes since I subscribe to Apple Music for the family. I love their radio stations with no ads. I’m almost incapable of listening to normal radio stations now. But I also have Amazon Music and YouTube Music for uploading. But for day-to-day file management, I use Media Monkey. I just wish they had an IOS app. What I find most interesting is my archives for software in this area — old MP3 player file managers, Real Player, WinAMP, all of which would still run. I just don’t need it right now. But I am loathe to delete them as they do READ a lot of old files if I ever need to convert stuff. I don’t install them, but it’s almost like time travel to see all the various apps.
Ebooks — Getting everything installed today was a bit of a pain in the butt, to be honest. I’ll talk about it more tomorrow, but I kind of screwed up my preps for the upgrade, and while a fresh install is great, I should have planned a bit better to make the transition a bit more seamless. Ah, live and learn. I have Calibre installed with a bunch of plugins, Amazon’s Kindle for PC reader, Adobe’s Digital Editions (to read books from the library) and Cloud Library (ditto). I didn’t install the Kobo reader, I never use it.
Astronomy — This was more extensive than I expected. For planning, I have Best Pair, Select Astro Stars, and AstroPlanner; for navigation, I have Starry Night 8 and Stellarium; and for processing, I have PIPP, AutoStakkert, Deep Sky Stacker, Nebulosity and Registax. I considered playing with PixInSight but the price is too exorbitant for my blood. I didn’t install the Canon software for point and shoot cameras or any of the software for controlling your telescope since I don’t do any of that from my desktop.
Programming — I really only have programming stuff for Jacob at this point, and since it is on his computer, I didn’t feel the need to also install it on mine. So, for now, I have nothing installed. I want to do some app development in a year or so, so will need to find a solution or two, but nothing right now.
Games — I have a bunch of one-off games here and there, mostly card games (like Bridge or Solitaire, etc.), and I installed none of them. They’re all pretty old now. I also have RetroArch which I *will* install, but not yet. I also tend to play MS Solitaire, but that comes preinstalled.
And that’s it. About 16GB of install files, and about 60GB of installed programs with Windows. I have a few more to add here and there, but the bulk of the rebuild is done. Whew. It was a long day.
Today I choose to prioritize, reinstall and update all my software on my computer with a fresh install.
A little over three weeks ago, I blogged about doing a Year-in-Review book on Shutterfly and submitting, then waiting. The book arrived, and as with a previous book by them, there are some parts that underwhelm. There are a few places where I feel like the printer colour ran a bit. Not enough in this case to send it back (I had the previous one reprinted), just enough to mildly notice.
I was also looking to do a Trip Book for the family trip to B.C. back in 2010. These ones are similar in size to the Year in Review ones, I like the 8.5×11 inches size in landscape mode, but they didn’t have to be identical. And after checking out a bunch of sites, I decided at the end of the post to go with one of Shoppers / Loblaws / Uniprix (they have the same interface software).
Except then I didn’t. I tried loading Costco, just to try it, and this time it worked. Perfectly fine. It doesn’t have all the bells and whistles of Shutterfly, far fewer layouts and themes, or stickers, but still pretty solid. It was however a lot easier to see the full suite of what was available all at once than it is in Shutterfly, where the full list can quickly overwhelm you (20000 backgrounds????).
It is a bit harder to compare the books. The travel book is thinner than the Year ones, but overall, it turned out pretty well. I even found some of it simpler. I’m letting my wife figure out if there is a difference in quality before I do more. The timing with Costco is certainly far more controllable — printed in Canada, picked up in Canada, etc. I got it way faster than the Shutterfly book, and no printing glitches either. But I’d be hard pressed to say the quality of the covers is as solid. Nice, but not quite as good. I just don’t think I care about the difference enough to stay with Shutterfly. However, Shutterfly has some sweet deals regularly, and I don’t think Costco does. Not that I’ve seen so far, anyway.
But I’m happy with the Costco book, which is the bottom line.
I like using our digital photos for different things — the website, a digital photo frame, some prints around the office, custom calendars, etc. And annual photobooks — a Year-In-Review style that goes month-by-month. Except I’m a bit behind on them, having only completed three or so of the last 13 years worth of organized digital photos that are in my digital gallery. So when I added “Make a Photobook” to my #50by50 list, it wasn’t a specific commitment like “Make a photobook of (someone’s) wedding” or “Make a photobook of a specific trip or year”, it was “knock one off the long list of photobooks you want to do” i.e. get back into making them.
Starting with a Year-In-Review book
Just over two years ago, I took a look at several websites that offer do-it-yourself photobooks, and I gave a bunch a try. Some of them failed for software limitations, others for their variable quality. I pretty much ended up going strictly with Shutterfly in the end. For my new YIR book, I thought I might as well start with Shutterfly again.
Shutterfly is a solid site overall, with all the basics plus some bells and whistles. They have regular coupon deals, established history, and I can reuse/copy old projects to incrementally improve each year while keeping some basic consistency. And lots of extra product possibilities like mousepads, notepads, notebooks, magnets, mugs, etc. I re-familiarized myself with the site and didn’t see any major changes in the functionality of the web design in the last two years, still no downloadable software to do it and then upload as one piece but rather still just all online, and the default templates for “years in review” are still not particularly attractive (only two main defaults from which to choose). Still, a solid choice. There are e-share options too, but I’m not particularly attracted to them nor do I need the option since I have my own photo gallery site with more content than would go in the books.
I bit the bullet. I put together a year in review (or actually a partial year in review) for the second half of 2010. In so doing though, I wanted to revisit the basic design of their template and see if I could create a new master template that I could reuse for future YIRs. Some of it was quite simple — adding background colours, putting in the months of the year, making sure every month has at least four pages to start with, etc. It took me most of a day to put the template in some form that I could call a “master” draft to build from for the future, but I only have to do it once and it probably took me longer as I was coming back “new” to the software/website. I then copied it over to a new project for a backup. And then used that to create “2010 – Book 2”.
Choosing the photos is a bit more of an iterative process than one might think. Here’s my general work-flow:
a. I copy all the photos from Andrea’s phone, the compact point-and-shoot camera, my phone, my tablet (rare), and the DSLR, plus any that others happened to send us of shared events into a set of photos by month;
b. I then sort them into days and events;
c. I pick the best ones for uploading, sending everything else into sub-folders called “extras”, keeping about one for every 2-3 that go in the extras folder (I don’t delete photos unless they’re blurry or technically wrong for some other eason…I’ve gone back too many times to a photo that was perhaps good for everyone, but in looking at the extras, I find one that is GREAT for a specific person, allowing me to crop it to just them);
d. For a Photobook, I start with the web choices, and weed it down to a smaller list of possibles, and then let Andrea weed even further.
I uploaded the weeded set to Shutterfly and the template worked almost perfectly. A couple of little tweaks here and there, but not enough to warrant changing the master, more tweaks for colouring with the photos I was laying out in the template. I added some prose, chose some photos for the covers and inside page, and bam! I submitted the book with a 50% off coupon. Sweet.
Now I just have to wait.
Considering a Trip Book
I’m willing to experiment with other sites, just to try them out, and I’m going with some trips as the theme. But which one to try?
a. MixBook
Last time I tried Mixbook, the software was a bit unwieldy. This time, I found 11 templates for “Year in Review” style books. The Minimalist style was a bit black and white, but cute; Linen / Vintage / Colourful YIR / A Year to Remember / Year in Review / My Year Magazine / Graduation Year in Review / Watercolour Year in Review are all more thematic or event-driven than I would like. The one called Family Yearbook would be an awesome style for people with multiple kids and I could see easy ways to adapt it. However, the Kraft Year in Review is outright awesome. Simple chronological design, exactly what I am looking for in YIR-style without weird or wonky titles for each month. My only complaint is it is a bit drab … most of the layouts could benefit from a bit more colour per page. The software seemed to work okay, and as with most, you do a lot better with everything pre-chosen before you start. Definitely a viable option, and an improvement over previous attempts.
b. Costco
Since the last time I tried, CostCo has updated their software and their book builder looks a little better, albeit somewhat slow to get it to click over to the “ready” stage. Or more specifically, it goes off to “prepare” the book for editing and never returns. Just sits and “spins” that it is doing something and never finishes. Maybe it doesn’t like Firefox, maybe the site is busy, I don’t know. Pass.
c. Shoppers Drug Mart
The software seems better this time than last, and I was able to navigate through a few choices to get to a reasonable option for a book. I chose their one and only Year in Review template, and it isn’t bad. The overall layout and control options are much more basic than other sites, but that isn’t necessarily a bad thing — some of the others are a bit overkill. Definitely a viable option I might consider.
d. Loblaws
If you go to the Loblaws site, you won’t find their photo book options because their photo service is separate — aka Photolab.ca. And it looks surprisingly familiar. Like with my previous review, Loblaws has the exact same software as Shoppers Drug Mart for their site, it just has a different name. But functionality, templates, etc are the same. So again, a viable option.
e. Uniprix
I wasn’t overly impressed the last time I tried the UniPrix site, but a friend suggested I give it another try, as he had good luck with it. So I gave it a go. Like SDM and Loblaws, it has some basic options, nothing extravagant. And while the opening interface is different, the final operations are almost identical for the software with Loblaws and SDM. A few differences, for sure, but functionally the same.
f. Blurb
PhotoBookGirl is an online reviewer of photobook designs, and she has a bunch of reviews of different photo sites (mainly in the U.S.), so I wanted to give a few of them a try too. Blurb was up first. Blurb has some amazing options to upload a PDF and to sell things onwards into Amazon, but that’s not my focus. When Blurb Bookify starts, you get to the editing options pretty quick but that’s because the main options of other sites — draft templates, layouts, etc. — are all missing. Pass.
g. Bookemon
Like Blurb, it has options to create a book for sale — including kids books, etc. But the templates that come with it, and the basic interface are a bit too menu driven and mechanical than designed to populate things for you. Pass.
h. Clark Color Labs
The software for CCL is pretty clean. I set up an account easily, uploaded some photos pretty fast, and wandered through their templates. I’m looking for Year In Review designs, and while there weren’t many (only 3), they were all quite vibrant in colour. A very different look and feel to the template than Shutterfly or even Mixbook. The only challenge was that some of the months were set for a single page, others were spread over two, with no rhyme or reason. Plus there didn’t seem to be a reason why in some months they chose to put the name of the month on the page and others just a symbol (St. Patrick’s Day images for March, for example). Where they make up for some of it though is in their easy to access clipart. On a lot of sites, it is hard to find good clip art to add to the layout, but they make it pretty easy, and it was easy to add the months of the year for example or change a background. Overall a pretty simple and direct option. I have no idea if the quality out the other end is any good, but it’s a pretty nice site.
i. Picaboo
The site has some power, no doubt, and if you want to start from a very minimalist book layout, it’s a great choice. There are only five main themes, variations on “white”, but no choice between a year in revew or a trip or graduation. You can add all that, but you start with a blank template. Not a problem, but why would I want to do all that extra work unless I was starting with a very unique project? Pass.
j. Snapfish
Upfront, Snapfish has some great opening choices in sizes. I’m mainly interested in the landscape 8 x 11 books, but there were quite a few other choices too. When I chose YIR, just because it is an easy way to decide if it’s viable or not, eight sample templates came up. Most of them are comparable to the Shutterfly and Mixbook options, so nothing to really sell me there. Clicking on “Travel” pulled up another 12 options. One of them was called Road Trip (which a lot of my trips are), and pre-organized around Day 1, Day 2, Day 3, etc. So a viable option again.
So that gives me a full dozen options, including the original Shutterfly.
I’ve passed on: Costco, Blurb, Bookemon, and Picaboo;
I’m considering: Mixbook, Shoppers/Loblaws/Uniprix, Clark Color Labs, and Snapfish.
However, there is one small feature I like about the Shoppers / Loblaws / Uniprix option. I can print it and pick it up. No shipping required. And while I can’t guarantee the quality until I try it, it’s also not likely being shipped off to the lowest common producer elsewhere. There is a bit of local production involved. I hope at least. So I’ll try one of those three first.
I’ll see how it goes and update later. In the meantime, I’m waiting for my YIR book for 2010.
So I confess that once upon a time, I paid for some of my living expenses through the fact that I knew how to work a computer for things like graphics and formatting. No, seriously, back in the early 90s, it made me stand out from other people, the fact that I knew how to work Lotus 1-2-3, Word and WordPerfect, dBase IV and, drumroll please, Harvard Graphics. At the time, I think it was version 3.0, and while people could do very basic graphs in Lotus, the real trick was to choose a variety of simple graphs in Harvard Graphics, add your data, and voila, you were good to go. Back in ’93, for my first job at DFAIT, we did a presentation for Cabinet where all the graphs were done in HG, in colour, and there were about 30 of them. Blew the Cabinet people away, colour slides. In government. Bear in mind that most departments had barely switched over from DOS to Windows, and we gave them a 60-page deck on the future of the Asia Pacific region. Bound.
Now, of course, most people do their graphs in Excel or Powerpoint. And I wanted to do one this week. I have 29 or so “goals” that I am tracking against “Level 1” progress, and I wanted some sort of cheap visualization of how I am doing towards reaching level 1. I started in Powerpoint, which really just replicates the software functionality of Excel, and while it was decent enough, I’m not a graph tweaking expert anymore. I used to be able to get HG get up and dance and look amazing…compared to the Excel graph I did, I feel like I regressed in technology.
So, I was curious. Are there any other data visualization tools out there that people use easily and, more importantly, are free? My friend Aliza mentioned Google Charts and I confess that I had heard it mentioned in passing, but since I had little use for it, I had never looked at it.
I should step back for a second though. I *did* experiment with a WordPress plugin or two a few months back, and well, I was never too satisfied with the result. I would love a simple visualization tool that keeps my data in WordPress, doesn’t add a lot of overhead, and has lots of tweakable options. The experience reminded me a lot of that saying about things being cheap, fast, or good, and you can only pick two. I never quite found what I wanted.
But Google Charts is pretty darn near it. You basically code a function in javascript, and while that may seem a bit more daunting for some, you do get nice code snippets to just copy and paste. Not as intuitive though when it comes to customizing the look and feel…a single page with all of the options would be great, but they are spread across multiple themes. I was using a DIFF Chart, and it was the best I saw…overlapping a bar chart on a previous bar chart, or in my case, putting a light colour to show the “goal” and a darker colour to show actual progress. In the end, though, it was a struggle to get it to format properly and to fit properly as an inline-block within WordPress. It was decent, lots of power, but it renders itself each time it is called, and it wasn’t quick. Plus, for some reason, it was adding a big gap at the top and the bottom of the page. I liked the embedding, but the rest was too much.
I moved on to a variety of other options:
Zing Chart — highly complex, and the options were not as intuitively laid out as Googel Charts;
Tableau — this is only available for download, and I haven’t tried it yet;
PowerView — a Microsoft option, but not available in the version of Excel I was running;
D3.js — A live data tool, I couldn’t even claim to understand how it worked or what I was supposed to do;
Fusion charts — looks pretty solid, but linking to it from WordPress wasn’t obvious, and thus a dead end;
Visual.IS — in addition to having to create an account, it had strong links to paid versions;
High charts — the type of chart I wanted wasn’t there;
Chartist — good mentions of it elsewhere, but the website is just on GitHub, and not as friendly to access;
Piktochart — although it requires an account to be created, the real challenge was that it is also aimed at infographics more so than simple charts, and for some reason, it starts with asking you about infographics vs. presentation vs. printable, i.e. you’re choosing your design and function before you choose anything about what you want to create and put into the presentation, etc.;
Ubiq — data visualization running with MySQL, and I was hoping to avoid a database element;
Vizydrop — pulls data from a datafile (CSV JSON or Excel), which I was also hoping to avoid, but may reconsider;
Plot.ly — no clue what it did as it just kept crashing;
Datamatic — uses Google Drive, which doesn’t sound problematic, except that GD is blocked by our firewall at work, so visualizations wouldn’t work if I wanted to put them on my screen as a reminder; and,
Hohli — I really liked this one, but it seems to be geared towards replacing the interface (or lack thereof) for Google Charts, yet with 1-time creation (i.e. couldn’t seem to save or edit/re-use later).
Which put me back in the world of Excel. I did a graph, and it looks fine. I have room for future expansion of data, which could be useful (kind of stacking option for Level 2). Not exactly quite what I was hoping for in terms of quality, but maybe that is just me needing to spend more time with Excel to make it pretty. I would LOVE to be able to recreate the DIFF chart look and feel of Google Charts. But it met my need for the day (to update on my progress on goals in Goals – Weekly roundup (#2017-01)).
