Layers? Why no layers in PhD?

kevin2015

Member Joined: May 24, 2015 22:27 Messages: 69 Offline

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Jul 07, 2015 23:08

I came from working with Photoshop (and a bit of Paintshop Pro) for over 15 years, and found layers to be very helpful. I must admit I find it odd that PhD6 doesn't have layers. Anybody have any thoughts on that?

"In Photoshop, layers are used to work on individual parts of an image while not affecting other parts. You might say that layers are like transparency papers stacked on top of one another which can be repositioned and separately drawn on without disturbing each other." Source

PIX

Senior Contributor Joined: Sep 21, 2011 00:02 Messages: 2910 Offline

Jul 08, 2015 03:10

Hello Kevin,

You've made some outstanding suggestions in the PhD Suggestions thread and this is another one!

As PhotoDirector has developed over the last 4 years, it has certainly expnded its capabilities from a basic photo workflow tool into something more like a complete photo editor. As far as I know, its main obvious competitor doesn't support layering either.

Another Photo Suite I use does allow working with layers & I quite often export the "layers" (edited virtual copies) from PhD into the other software to blend and apply effects.

Given the development that's gone into PhD so far, there's no reason to think that your suggestion won't be taken up by the R&D team at CL. I agree with you that it be a brilliant feature to add.

PIX PIX YouTube channel

kevin2015

Member Joined: May 24, 2015 22:27 Messages: 69 Offline

Jul 08, 2015 18:17

Thanks, PIX! I own PhD6, and I like it alot. While I used/use the other products I mentioned, I also used some lesser known (shareware/freeware) products that developed some neat features that were missing in my older versions of those still powerful products (that I mostly did not need to update, esp. for the cost). PhD has given me a lot of precision, and helped me streamline a lot of what I do. My hope was that it could become the ONLY image editing software I use, but my heart of hearts knew that I would still (have to) utilize other products. It's just a bit exhausting at times going from one editor to the next, to cobble together my end-goal.

Anyway: Layers, once you (know how to) use them, are incredibly beneficial for being creative. The current way of going back through the history panel can very easily eliminate some tweaks/edits I've made that I don't want to lose when deciding at what point do I go back if I'm going in the direction I don't want to head through my editing process. I hope that makes sense.

And the thing about layers is, you don't have to use them. You can simply do it the way you are used to, if it gets implemented. It just raises the bar (CyberLink's product) to a different level.

Finally, I don't know how the software was coded, whether adding layers would be prohibitive or not, but I can't imagine it affecting the presets, nor the DirectorZone community (a big feature that many product makers do not have - hats off to Cyberlink for that). Theoretically, layers shouldn't affect anything behind the scenes, with what is currently in place.