The hardware of photography processing

AlanSh
Oct. 2, 2023
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    Team
    March 18, 2024, 12:19 p.m.
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    Good, then you also know that rewriting old code takes about same time than took writing original code.
    Which makes rewriting well-working code (be it somewhat slow) just managerial decision, which is almost always decided as sound NO.

    Anyway, I as dev don't use words "crappy code" when talking about other people code. I can say that about my code (this is often true :)), but I see no need to insult other devs. Why should then non-devs (having no clear idea about code quality and so on) use such words?

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    Team
    March 18, 2024, 12:21 p.m.
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    Because sometimes, a spade is a spade. They Adobe, is using the same stuff but just piling on top of it, hence the mess that it is today. Slap on the insane pricing structure and that's a big spade.

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    Members 399 posts
    March 18, 2024, 12:39 p.m.
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    DXO Prue Raw 4 is much faster than Pure Raw 3. Photo Lab is very inefficient. In fact it is painfully slow on my Z8 files. Most of these programs that have been around for awhile could use a refresh. OS's evolve. H/W evolves and often times S/W is only patched to keep up and doesn't make maximal use of the H/W. The issue is not so much the code - it's the design. Many of these designs are long in the tooth. When the Apple M1 was introduced, Capture One decided to take the opportunity to redesign their system and as a result when it dropped, there was a noticeable speed up. Reusable code is a noble goal. However, if the design is aged - one is at the point of decreasing marginal returns. It's not just Adobe, DXO, etc. Engineering and scientific S/W packages suffer the same fate. Matlab needs a redesign. Mathematica had one a few years ago and today it is much more efficient. So it's not so much "crappy code." It is more like an absolute S/W design.

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    Team
    March 18, 2024, 1:17 p.m.
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    Potato - Potatoe. Software design is code in its basic form. If they do a bad job on the software design, it translates into, they screwed up the code to create that design.

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    Members 399 posts
    March 18, 2024, 2:13 p.m.
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    Software design is different from coding in the same way civil engineering is different from the construction trades.

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    Team
    March 18, 2024, 2:24 p.m.
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    mkay. So software designers have the pinky ring and coders don't? I am confused. Are software designers just as wrong as engineers? asking for a friend.

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    Forum Admin
    March 18, 2024, 4:12 p.m.
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    I am not sure I agree about the 'old code' slowing things down. I've got a laptop with a decent processor but slow graphics (AMD 780). Capture One and ON1 run OK on it. Photoshow Raw denoise is really slow - but produces the best result- and the AI denoise isn't old code. The rest of PS runs fine.

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    Members 167 posts
    March 18, 2024, 5:21 p.m.
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    I assume my hardware is worse than yours for AI powered processing. It sounds like it must be: AMD Ryzen 3 3200G, 16GB, with 2GB reserved for the integrated GPU, and SSD main drive running Win 10.

    I have four AI-enabled apps: DxO PhotoLab 7, Topaz Photo AI, ON1 NoNoise AI 2022, and ON1 Effects 2023. Regarding many seconds being required to 'process changes', it depends on what many means and what changes you're talking about. The user interface sometimes is slower than I'd like when switching among activities, but it's not usually a problem. However, processing time for applying all the final changes and writing an output file can absolutely take several seconds. As a convenient benchmark, exporting a 20mp file from PhotoLab with DeepPRIME noise reduction and other adjustments generally takes close to 30 seconds. Photo AI and NoNoise do it much more quickly.

    The other major factor is the user's volume of work. I think I average less than 100 shots per month these days. After a single outing I might have about 50 shots to process and export. Do I really care if the final processing time - during which I can do something else - takes 20 minutes or 2 minutes? Not really. At this point, the modest hardware I have is adequate for the modest volume of work I do.

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    Team
    March 18, 2024, 5:30 p.m.
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    Absolutely not. Design defines overall software architecture (including UI/UX guidelines, required functionality, layers/modules interaction logic, external specifications and so on), coding just implements required architecture. (For small or startup companies this sometimes overlaps, which may create total mess). But differently from 'normal engineering' (where some machine or building gets eventually completed (or cancelled)) software design and subsequential coding has to cope with ever-changing requirements and deadlines - more often than not this results in patching existing code with new or changed functionality.
    I can agree that this results in "crappy code" internally, but neither designers nor developers are in any way guilty in this.

    I've used Paint Shop Pro since times when it was produced by JASC. It was very quick and simple; Corel at the same time offered CorelPaint - much heavier and slower, although more functional. Somewhen Corel bought JASC PSP and started to add functionality there - and it become incrementally more bloated and slower too.

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    Members 643 posts
    March 18, 2024, 6:34 p.m.
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    @pointnshootpro on the subject of old/"crappy" code, during the last year or so I've been using Linux, I've come across suckless software. Although I don't use any suckless software, it's quite interesting to read about.
    suckless.org/philosophy/

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    Team
    March 18, 2024, 7:09 p.m.
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    Been snooping around on that from time to time. Tres Interesting. I have an older acer S3 laptop which I use for linux distros. I have not found a distro that I would be able to daily drive. There some cool versions but not daily driver material.

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    Members 90 posts
    April 7, 2024, 2:14 p.m.
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    I know this is an old thread now, but my experience is that the 8th gen i7 with a proper TPM on the motherboard supports Windows 11 with no problems. My 2018 HP Spectre 13 (i7-8550U) proved that Windows 11 (23H2) is completely usable.

    However with weak GPU (1060 is considered weak), I think you would experience long waiting time during processing (such as Export in DxO PhotoLab). A simple GPU upgrade (such as an RTX 3050) would do the job fine, and you can probably play some games with it too.

    I am not sure if I would agree with the statement that PhotoLab is inefficient, since with my RTX 4060, it only takes 6 secs to export a 20MP image using DeepPRIME XD.

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    Forum Admin
    April 7, 2024, 3:01 p.m.
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    Annie,

    You are probably right but I've upgraded anyway.

    Alan