Re: Media Testing for maclife.de
Re: Media Testing for maclife.de
- Subject: Re: Media Testing for maclife.de
- From: Uli Zappe <email@hidden>
- Date: Mon, 8 Sep 2008 19:58:49 +0200
Am 08.09.2008 um 14:45 schrieb Bob Frost:
Uhm, yes, but you need Photoshop installed to build the profiles,
don't you? I only review applications that are not dependant on
Adobe products. Requiring an application from a company that
tries to monopolize an application area with applications that
almost completely disregard the GUI guidelines of the host
platform is not in conformance with my concept of "system-wide".
This quote by Robin from Uli, doesn't quite seem to square with
Uli's statement in an earlier reply to me recently:-
"I completely agree that my feelings about Adobe as a company have
no place in the review (it wasn't primarily about different
workflows, but anyway), and it did, in fact, not influence any of
it. "
First, let me point out that this was an out-of-context quote from a
*private email*. This isn't good style at all on Robin's part; it
isn't good style on your part to refer to such a quote, either - you
simply cannot and do not know the context of the quote.
Second, the way Robin commented on this quote also gave an incorrect
impression. He wrote I "deliberately eliminated" some software from
testing which sounds as if it was there in the first place, but then I
kicked it out. But this is not how such things work. If you do some
research on the net, you will probably find that there is no
comparative test available anywhere that even approaches the scope of
the Mac Life review on color management, not even in highly
specialized publications like the WMU/Seybold Profiling Reviews of
Fogra publications (at least I couldn't find one) - and Mac Life is a
general purpose magazine! You might be able to imagine that it was
*not* easy to convince the editor-in-chief of Mac Life to provide so
much space for the topic of color management.
However, I did. I really don't understand how somebody can somehow
infer from this effort of mine that there is some kind of "right" to
expect a review from me with an even bigger scope, approaching the
illusional aim of "completeness".
Usually, comparative tests in magazines such as Mac Life only compare
a certain selection of products and don't even try in any way to be
"complete". I tried, because I felt this market was so young and
opaque that this was needed. However, there has to be some limit, or
else the review would have been hundreds of pages. The usual approach
in this case is to use a price range as the limiting factor. I did not
want to do that because my impression (confirmed in hindsight) was
that because of the immaturity of this market there would be no strong
correlation between price and quality, and this was exactly something
the review should try to make more transparent.
So the limitations that were finally agreed upon were that the review
was limited in three ways:
1. Only products of interest also for pre-press, not exclusively for
press
2. No products that only improve comfort or efficiency such as i1IO
3. Focus on Mac OS X system-wide color management (we are a Mac
magazine, after all); this includes that the software/hardware to be
tested must not require anything than a Mac with the newest version of
Mac OS X installed.
Point 3 is the reason why Adobe plug-ins were not considered for this
test. To call an editorial decision like this a "bias" is simply
wrong. It would only be correct if the rules would not be applied to
all software packages equally.
Now, Bob, please tell me where is the bias you accuse me of, and I'm
sure you mean "anti-Adobe bias"? If my personal views influenced the
review, I would either
- have omitted Lightroom, but have tested other apps of the same kind
such as Aperture. However, I did include Lightroom in my test.
OR
- have manipulated the measurement results for Lightroom to make it
look worse. I did not do that.
So, please tell me, where did my personal stance towards Adobe
influence this review to the disadvantage of Adobe?
It's not totally complete, yes. Probably no report ever will be.
So, to me it seems that Uli's review is not unbiased,
I would sincerely ask you to either read my review or stay away from
this insinuation.
and since it is also somewhat out-of-date,
Are you kidding? The review is 1 week old now and incorporates the
newest released software versions of any software tested. If you refer
to the beta Adobe profiles: no serious review will officially publish
results with beta software. But since this was a topic on this list, I
even performed the additional tests unofficially and reported the
results here. What more are you still expecting?
we need an unbiased, up-to-date comparison that does not leave out
some software because of the reviewers likes and dislikes, and whose
results are published in full for all to read.
That's exactly what I tried to achieve. The review *is* published in
full for all to read. You can hardly blame me for being German, can you?
I spent one year of my life working on this report after I found
nobody had done something like this so far and it was needed. I tried
the best I could to promote the idea of color management. I took the
time to post at least some kind of roughly translated summary to this
group as a service to the English speaking community. You're more than
welcome do the same and produce an even better, more complete report
which I'm sure we will be all very interested to read and will not
accuse of being outdated 1 week after the 52 weeks it was worked on.
Sorry, but I just cannot believe the seemingly Pawlow-like reflex with
which you react to anything that seems contra-Adobe to you, even if in
fact it isn't.
Probably best done as a series of small comparisons
What is a "small comparison"? One that does *not* comprise all
products of a specific product category? I thought this was exactly
the bias you accused me of?
I will try again to stay away from this kind of discussion on the list
to prevent this from going on further and further, but I would
appreciate if everyone on this list would stick to a certain minimum
standard of discussion which would include not referring to quotes
from private email.
Bye
Uli
________________________________________________________
Uli Zappe, Solmsstraße 5, D-65189 Wiesbaden, Germany
http://www.ritual.org
Fon: +49-700-ULIZAPPE
Fax: +49-700-ZAPPEFAX
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