• Saturday, 07/01/23 ** 13:32 As stated - I still want to make creative software for people, but I can't do that without understanding the status quo. Moving away from using my Linux laptop as a space for creative work - editing, making music, etc. That laptop is now a space for hacking. No sensitive data; can clear on every boot; everything is managed in git.

Creative work is for Apple devices, for Adobe, for Ableton, for the status quo. The Linux machine lives outside of that. ** 16:01 Converting to Adobe Lightroom is the best decision I've made.

• Something to do with five minutes of time on my phone: going over photos, making small edits.
• Instant sync with desktop. Seamless workflow.
• Cloud storage, so I don't have to worry about managing my data.
• Viewing photos in higher fidelity than I have before, so I can better understand the flaws with my work. (The Mac goes a long way towards making this happen too).
• Providing the structure I want. Library organization and data management are huge; if I don't have to worry about juggling hard drives of my work, and I can just trust the Adobe cloud to do its work, I don't have to worry about managing any of that data myself. I feel so much safer just trusting them and their storage. Plus they save and manage all of the edits I make! The cloud works!
• The 'auto' button gets me most of the way to a good edit most of the time. Providing good defaults is so important. The AI tools are crazy, too, but I haven't explored them as much.

Lessons about creative tools:

• Giving a system an opaque way to manage your data feels magical. I don't have any data management anxiety or concern about losing information anymore - I can trust Adobe to handle everything I do, and they make my data available everywhere I might want it. Cloud-pooled data is a huge deal, relieving me of any additional work pushing around or sorting files; they just do it. I am willing to compromise on some of the expressive editing tools and plugins that other programs provide to get this benefit.
• Providing good defaults: again and again, that 'auto' button and the importance of providing an okay starting point - even for a photo that feels unrecoverable - is huge. I've discovered quite a few photos that have been worth saving. Same holds for the object removal tools; if you can drop a a couple of extraneous details from a frame, suddenly an unusable photo becomes one with just enough information.
• Adobe has mostly a monopoly but they are extremely innovative. Whoever's working there has the right creative spirit to keep pushing updates and providing value. Having to constantly compete against piracy and 'static' versions of software - competing against themselves, really - is so, so valuable. Holds a monopoly accountable for continuing to provide value. Capture One tries to undercut, but really does not match up.
• Mobile apps - especially those that share data with desktop things - are huge, even if the mobile app doesn't support all of the features that the desktop app does. The ability to instantly switch from working on a project on desktop to working on it on my phone provides so much value to me; I can truly work anywhere. Whoever solves this for software development is winning.
• Providing lots of views or ways to organize content is good. Adobe seems to know exactly what I want to learn about my library - recent modifications, recent uploads, photos by date, and so forth - and provides convenience menus and buttons to get to that information right away. Brilliant!
• Speed matters, as do animations. Darktable and Capture One take time to process changes to the photo - both programs take a second to think and process the information statically. Lightroom takes a bit longer than Capture One to process the final image, but along the way it animates your transformation with a thumbnail image, then applies the final transformation to your photo after you let go of the dial or setting. I prefer this to faster processing of the whole image, as I don't really care about image quality when I'm making these transformations - I just want fast enough visual processing feedback!

I've seen these patterns come up again and again from the best software I've used. I can't wait to push these ideas into software I build more of.

On this note: maybe paying monthly fees to support the development of a product can be a good thing. Lightroom is genuinely innovative and the updates seem valuable.

Concerns:

• I can foresee them not having provided continuous value for points in the past, or that they may not be able to continue to deliver value in the future at the same rate. Having to pay for both data storage and the software in one package means that they can keep me paying for storage without getting additional value from the editing programs.
• I can see them holding my data hostage at some point in the future, gluing me into paying for their programs rather than better ones. Hopefully GDPR laws are good enough to prevent this.
• Working offline might be an issue. Can we preserve these syncing features over local networks while preserving the illusion of near-infinite data? (Yes, I think so).

Cool, what's most important?

• Cloud software with centralized, managed storage.
• Good enough defaults. Great starting points.
• Always providing instant, progressive feedback to the user.
• Convenience buttons to highlight features.
• Transparent data sharing in some ways but opaque enough to keep the data safe.

I love how cheap storage is getting. That makes this sharing across devices tech so possible. Infinite storage will make everything about technology better.

Seems like the best software model is paying the company for a hosted version or hosting the thing yourself. Cloud storage (with agressive local cacheing) provides so much value and there is no way to replicate this value locally. Safe ways of hosting data locally - without technical knowledge - are really important to explore here.

Thinking about standards again, too - if whatever internal data management standards for Adobe's file cacheing were more transparent, other programs could easily and safely operate over them with an API. Providing APIs as 'views' of internal data storage is incredibly important for portability across programs; if I clone Adobe's image querying and saving API, then I can perform the same transformations or save stacks of edits in the same way (though the changes would likely not be transferable to Adobe products), using the safe data storage methods that Adobe allows without having to use their programs. A 'safe cloud' API in this way that saved stacks of non-destructive edits atop of files, manages dates, etc. would be brilliant. This reminds me of software development... the everything cloud. Replit does this for text files. Git does okay too, and the CDRTs for merging text, prose etc are also valuable. ** 16:37 Final takeaway from the Adobe switch - I have to become a much better photographer. I've been missing on the technical side in so many ways, and that's become very clear now that I'm using the industry standard. My program, my colors, my photos can look the same - so now I have no excuses keeping me from doing genuinely innovative work.

The gap between me and a professional is still so big - but now I can see a clear path to victory. The program wasn't necessarily the problem, but it was soft capping the potential of my work; now there is no difference between tools, so the only thing I have to work on is my personal skill - and I can receive the expert feedback to do this along the way. ** 23:38 New file organization plan:

• Text/prose/code: git, github
• RAW files: Adobe Cloud
• Processed photos: Google Photos (uln.industries email)
• Outside of this: ??? (What do I do with video files?)
  • Google Drive backup
  • Google contacts, calendar, etc.
• If I want to add more features to a Google product or interface? - I'll deal with that when I get there. I'll probably host a multi-project postgres somewhere or use a Firebase or something.