Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2001/01/14
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]Hi Tina, Welcome back! I'm not saying GF is bad. What I am saying is that it may or may not be around in a couple of years. Like lots of other software. Its just the nature of the business. When there is no commercial motive (profit), products get ignored, not updated to run on the latest operating system and then dumped. Its not a new piece of software. Its been around. It was released originally by a different company than Altamira. They went bust and GF pretty much languished, showing up occaisionally as free bundle software. It still is something that is part of free bundles. I doubt that it could continue to exist without going this route. I suspect that they would never sell enough copies to remain viable. If Adobe incorportated the GF format into Photoshop so that it was readily used and more likely to be supported in the future that would be more of an argument in GFs favor. I'd say there's a good chance Photoshop will be here for a while. 5 or 6 years from now GF may or may not be here. Yes it will continue to work on the computer and system you have now, but will you still own that computer? Will you still be using the same operating system? Probably not. We can't be sure of anything but the surest route to take on archiving digitally is to stick to the most standard format (s). They are the most likely to be here in the years to come. CDRs are so cheap it does not make sense to me to worry with the time and trouble of saving disk space by resorting to special compression software. I still think its a bad idea to use non-standard formats for archiving your digitized photographs. Archive the big original source scan. Then when its time to send it out or use it re-save to the size and format needed. Best to All, Henry >Henry - > >The new Nikon LS-4000 and 8000 scanners are shipping with Genuine Fractals >software, so they must believe it will last. It's a very good program if >you need photos in different sizes and resolutions but want to save only >one version. > >Tina > > >At 04:11 PM 1/14/01 -0600, you wrote: > >>With due respect: >> >>Long term, I think this is a bad idea. >> >>What if the publisher of Genuine Fractals goes out of business? >>Their little corner of the market is small compared to TIFF which is >>standard. >>Or they fail to support new operating systems? >>Sometimes I feel a little out on a limb with .psd (Photoshop native) >>Go with the most standard format you can. >> >>Space is not the problem it has been and the situation will only get >>better. >> >>Henry > >Tina Manley, ASMP >http://www.tinamanley.com >