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... because making software is time consuming and hardwork and doesn't pay the bills.

The reason commercial software is preferred to free software is that commercial software is still better then free.

That and linux can't run windows apps perfectly, I would move to linux if it

1) had the same shell as say windows xp
2) was faster in performance then windows (i.e. games had higher framerates under linux and there was no bullshit compatability, things "just worked".

The best free software has a lot of great ideas but the problem is that software takes too much work and time from these guys lives without any compensation, they can't compete because

1) They usually over-estimate their coding skills
2) They code for themselves NOT for users

When making any program you're coding for that "motherfucker" the public, therefore you can't make a program for coders, you have to make a program for users, ease of use.

In the early days of video editing software, almost all video editing software was complicated for what joe user needed it for, finally for profit companies came to the rescue, companies like ULEAD for instance.

Take a lot of the pain of video editing out of video editing for the average user who just wants to mash up videos, cut paste, etc.

http://www.ulead.com/

Open source guys obviously don't use or are unaware of how to do things better, when any company or person hits on the "magic user interface formla" you have to copy it and make it even better for the user if there is room for improvement.

The thing is good software design is hard and time consuming for the output you get over time spent, it literally takes years to figure out how to build good software, since developing good software is extremely labour intensive.

Isn't it over $600 now (street price)? That's insane.

I find ulead's Photoimpact 10x easier to use and only $50
http://www.ulead.com/pi/
It can do virtually everything photoshop can do and also load/save psd files

I've used Ulead's PhotoImpact for a while now and I think it fits in that middle ground. Lots of power if you need it, but tools to get the daily tasks done quickly and easily. It's not too expensive, though their support sucks. It's definitely worth it.

The quickest way to learn the software is to hang around Fark and join the photoshop threads. That taught me more about the software than working with a DVD full of home snapshots.

I have been a user of photo editing software for a while now, for middle size tasks, red-eye, crop, rotate, balance, just "everyday" stuff, but sometimes I want to do things a bit more "complicated". I have noticed that a program like photoshop is too much for me, and a program like picassa too little, so I have been using Ulead Photoimpact for a while now, and I really like it, it's interfase is very intuitive, it is filled with Wizards, even a photo enchancing tool, that "almost reads your mind", and also, a bit more "hidden" power functions, for the advanced user, it can take photoshop plugins, use layers, etc... I think that if you want a well balanced software that can be there for everyday use, and also have the option to do power edition, without the bulk, in a very smart elegant and gentle way. you should try Ulead Photoimpact. http://www.ulead.com/pi/features.htm
And no I'm not a affiliated with Ulead in anyway, I just think that their software is good.

The way I solve it is trivial: drag the task bar so it's vertically on the left.

Tasks always occupy the same width, stacked vertically. Even better, the START button is top left, thus making the UI more logical - move mouse up/left to get to a menu.

The downside is that, being windows, some programs don't understand that the available space for windows is not the full width of the screen; this is fortunately relatively unusual, and I either live with it, make the taskbar temporarily auto-hide, or drag taskbar to the top. Ulead products are the worst offenders, they only run full-screen.

Paul

I have an 867Mhz 12 G4 PowerBook with a DVD burner, and an old 1.6GHz Dell P4 with a video capture card.

As it turns out, the process is more like:
1) Import video from camera to Dell in DVD formatted MPEG-2
2) Transfer MPEG-2 files to Mac to throw into iDVD
3) Drag MPEG-2 file to iDVD and read error message: Unsupported File Type
4) try it again, and read the same message
5) search help files and come up with the following docs:

Unsupported movie and graphic formats
Movie and graphic formats that work with iDVD

which say MPEG-1 is not supported, and "You can't add MPEG files to an iDVD project because they don't contain standard video tracks.", and "You can add most video or image files supported by QuickTime to your iDVD project."
Given the last quote, and the fact that it's pretty well known that QuickTime, out of the box, doesn't support MPEG-2, I thought that maybe purchasing QT6 MPEG-2 Playback would solve my problem

6) purchase said playback plug-in
7) try importing again. read error message. curse
8) purchase QuickTime Pro, hoping that will solve the problem.
9) curse when it doesn't
10) try importing the video into iMovie to see if that will work
11) curse when it doesn't
12) call AppleCare support and find out that importing MPEG-2 into iDVD is illegal
13) curse
14) shut down Mac OS X out of spite
15) launch Ulead DVD MovieFactory on the Dell which came free with the video capture card
16) Add videos, arrange menus, click next twice, click burn
17) 20 minutes later, you're done.

True story. iDVD doesn't support MPEG-2. this means that if you have MPEG-2 video, you will have to convert it to MOV (which happens real-time at best on an 867MHz powerbook), then import into iDVD, which then in-turn, re-encodes it into MPEG-2 and burns to DVD. With an 867MHz processor and a 1x DVD Burner, this takes several hours. I won't even mention how much hard drive space it takes or that the video is degraded after codec swapping.

I don't know about you, but I find it a little absurd that a program which purportedly burns to DVD will not accept DVD formatted MPEG-2. Maybe I assume too much.

To think I spent $19.99 on QT MPEG-2 support, $29.99 on QTPro, $49.99 on iLife for the newest version of iDVD and all of them together couldn't get the job done reasonably.

I've been using Ulead DVD Workshop under Win2K, and I would heartily recommend it. Has customizable menus, buttons, text placement anywhere...works like a charm. Burned 50+ DVDs so far. Burns VCDs & SVCDs too. Cost - I got it free when I purchased my Pioneer DVR-A06 burner, maybe the cost is factored in the h/w. Dunno about easter eggs, I'm sure there must be a bunch of catholic folk at Ulead who can cater to that department :)

Oh yeah, I guess you could run windows on your AMD XP XXXX+ and use Windows Movie Maker...not!

No, maybe not. Ya see, Windows Movie Maker is the 'Notepad' of movie editing on Windows.

But you could use Magix video deLuxe PLUS, Magix Movie Edit Pro 2004, Sony Screenblast Movie Studio, Ulead Videostudio, Pinnacle Studio, Roxio VideoWave Movie Creator ...

Your example made me thinking about legitimate uses for currency scan photoshopping. Numismatics. There are countless sites like ATSnotes that post scans of banknotes. Certainly there are cases when you need to open Photoshop to clean the scan, adjust the colours, etc. Apparently, Adobe felt that they have the authority on what activities are permissible. I fucking hate them. The only thing that prevents me from boycotting Adobe is the fact that I use pirated versions of their soft anyway and don't actually use Photoshop (PhotoImpact more pleasant to use.

Digital Photos are certainly now one of the top ten uses for family PCs.

I highly recommend using some Digiphoto Organization software, it's just leaps and bounds over storing photos as files in folders.

These packages help organize, view, and browse your digiphoto collection, then actually do something with the photos: format them for email, printing, web galleries, calendars, greeting cards, etc.

There are plenty of choices in Windows, but I don't know of any usable packages for Linux. Of course, for OSX there's iPhoto (free!)

I've been using Photoshop Album since it was released in February, and I've been very happy with it. Version 2 was released on Monday, and there's now a free Starter Edition - so there's no excuse not to try it!

Some other digital photo management software:

• ACD Systems ACDSee
• Jasc Photo Album
• Lifescape Picasa
• Ulead Photo Explorer