Information, please?
To the PhaseOne/EM2 staff:
I fully understand the complexities in taking over a massive program such as EM2 from a company that did little to improve it but change the name, and may have left the internal programming planning process a mess. That however is not of great importance to those of us using the current program for day-to-day work.
We need two things that ONLY you can provide: in-depth information on how to use the current program in our hands, and some peeks and assurances of the forthcoming efforts to be seen later. These would help us to accomplish that for which we need such a program now, and give hope that our future needs will be met by a firm that is interested openly in having a discussion with the user-base over the practical needs for their software.
Currently the ONLY material of any depth in the use of EM2 is an online manual put out by Microsoft some years ago, before they made their only (and admittedly) minor upgrade to the program to give it the v2 moniker. There are some general over-view "features" videos on your site ... but they are merely a teaser of what the program CAN do, not actually instruction in how to do any of the many things this program can do in any depth.
This is a MASSIVE program, even as 'old' in computer terms as the code currently is, a very capable program with many, MANY possible ways of doing a few thousand useful tasks for our massive and ever-expanding image libraries.
Working pros such as myself don't have hours and weeks to puzzle out how to do things ... we need information quick-to-hand in order to get work done. And such for EM2 is sadly lacking. Peter Krogh is the best source ... but even then, mostly for the forums over at his site. To get help over a period of days from other users. Good in the end, yet many questions are not answered for days if at all, and it is a slow process. "Slow" is ... BAD. Unfortunately.
And this is exacerbated by your public stance on the future of EM ... the old-style "be patient" routine. Are you actually blending EM into CaptureOne, as some have posited? Will it stay a separate stand-alone that works as well with any other photo-machining software as it will with CO? What sort of features are you thinking about, and how does the user-base value the things you are considering? Is there a rough time-table for moving forward? Give your user-base credit, we KNOW that the best-laid plans in software get massive monkey-wrenches thrown at them at every turn.
Still, it is comforting to the user-base to know that things are moving and to be teased into a discussion of how and what is moving "into" and "out" of our toys. And it helps with user loyalty.
Right now, my loyalty to EM is nearly non-existent. There is a competitor who has a very capable program, with a large amount of information on daily-use tasks available ... and also a responsive forum. Emotionally, I'd rather stay with EM. My own emotions don't put food on my table, however ... getting to ALL the many tasks I must do in a timely fashion does. And right now, working with EM is not as timely as I would appreciate. In fact, it is painfully slow to puzzle out so many of the small tasks that this amazing program can do that I need done.
By nature, I'm a photographer and small-business risk-taker, NOT a person naturally "bent" to easily puzzling out arcane software-engineering styles, design choices, and codes for script-writing. I've had to learn computer and software stuff by the masses of course, but I will NEVER have the time nor the inclination to become an expert at the computer-ese side of things. Unfortunately, the latter seems to be necessary for really working well with EM at this point in time.
Just fyi ... from one little fish in a very big pond ...
R. Neil Haugen, M. Photog., CPP., FP
I fully understand the complexities in taking over a massive program such as EM2 from a company that did little to improve it but change the name, and may have left the internal programming planning process a mess. That however is not of great importance to those of us using the current program for day-to-day work.
We need two things that ONLY you can provide: in-depth information on how to use the current program in our hands, and some peeks and assurances of the forthcoming efforts to be seen later. These would help us to accomplish that for which we need such a program now, and give hope that our future needs will be met by a firm that is interested openly in having a discussion with the user-base over the practical needs for their software.
Currently the ONLY material of any depth in the use of EM2 is an online manual put out by Microsoft some years ago, before they made their only (and admittedly) minor upgrade to the program to give it the v2 moniker. There are some general over-view "features" videos on your site ... but they are merely a teaser of what the program CAN do, not actually instruction in how to do any of the many things this program can do in any depth.
This is a MASSIVE program, even as 'old' in computer terms as the code currently is, a very capable program with many, MANY possible ways of doing a few thousand useful tasks for our massive and ever-expanding image libraries.
Working pros such as myself don't have hours and weeks to puzzle out how to do things ... we need information quick-to-hand in order to get work done. And such for EM2 is sadly lacking. Peter Krogh is the best source ... but even then, mostly for the forums over at his site. To get help over a period of days from other users. Good in the end, yet many questions are not answered for days if at all, and it is a slow process. "Slow" is ... BAD. Unfortunately.
And this is exacerbated by your public stance on the future of EM ... the old-style "be patient" routine. Are you actually blending EM into CaptureOne, as some have posited? Will it stay a separate stand-alone that works as well with any other photo-machining software as it will with CO? What sort of features are you thinking about, and how does the user-base value the things you are considering? Is there a rough time-table for moving forward? Give your user-base credit, we KNOW that the best-laid plans in software get massive monkey-wrenches thrown at them at every turn.
Still, it is comforting to the user-base to know that things are moving and to be teased into a discussion of how and what is moving "into" and "out" of our toys. And it helps with user loyalty.
Right now, my loyalty to EM is nearly non-existent. There is a competitor who has a very capable program, with a large amount of information on daily-use tasks available ... and also a responsive forum. Emotionally, I'd rather stay with EM. My own emotions don't put food on my table, however ... getting to ALL the many tasks I must do in a timely fashion does. And right now, working with EM is not as timely as I would appreciate. In fact, it is painfully slow to puzzle out so many of the small tasks that this amazing program can do that I need done.
By nature, I'm a photographer and small-business risk-taker, NOT a person naturally "bent" to easily puzzling out arcane software-engineering styles, design choices, and codes for script-writing. I've had to learn computer and software stuff by the masses of course, but I will NEVER have the time nor the inclination to become an expert at the computer-ese side of things. Unfortunately, the latter seems to be necessary for really working well with EM at this point in time.
Just fyi ... from one little fish in a very big pond ...
R. Neil Haugen, M. Photog., CPP., FP
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I agree with r Neil, that there should be more serious information. It seems like PhaeOne is going to let EM2 die.
I myself switched to Adobe Lightroom in the meantime because I can not spend many hours on cataloging pictures for nothing. I would prefer do use EM2, but it seems like there will be no future for this excellent piece of software.0 -
Those of us who have been around since the iView Media Pro days (and even earlier) are more fortunate. iView Media Pro 3.1 had an excellent 154 page PDF manual, plus shortcut cards for Mac & Windows.
Ah, the glory days, when I used to correspond directly with Yannis Calotychos... When the sale to Microsoft happened and we were all given complimentary EM1 licences, I promptly downloaded EM1, installed it and looked for the EM manual - none! Cursing Microsoft yet again, I promptly deleted EM1 from my machine and persevered with iView Media Pro. Eventually technology and software creep caught up with IVMP and I was forced to go in search of EM2, just as Microsoft withdrew it from sale!
Back to the iView Media Pro manual. The fundamentals of the software haven't changed all that much since IVMP days, so the IVMP manuals are still my reference guides. The good news is that you can still download them from . I think you'll find them very useful.0 -
Thank you, Dave ... I'll download one right now ...
Neil0
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