[rawr]

Just FYI.

I just noticed that Corel AfterShot Pro v2 is out.
http://www.aftershotpro.com/en/products/aftershot-pro/default.html

I only updated AfterShot to v 1.2 a week or two ago, so v2 seems a big and rather sudden jump. Personally, I'm in no rush to upgrade, since I hardly use Aftershot Pro anymore. But others may be interested.

Upgrade will cost AUD$60, new purchase AUD$80.

Headline changes include:

• World’s fastest RAW photo-editing software
• Updated RAW camera profiles
• Complete High Dynamic Range (HDR) tools
• Workspace enhancements
• Easier batch processing
• New Athentech Imaging Noise Removal [sounds interesting].

etc

Supported Pentaxes include:

K100D, K100D Super, K10D, K110D, K20D, K200D, K2000, *ist D, *ist DL, *IST DL2, *ist DS, *ist DS2, K-01, K-5, K-5 II, K-5 IIs, K-7, K-30, K-m, K-r, K-x, MX-1, Q7, K-50, Q10, 645D (but no K-3 yet).

[Homo_erectus]

I am an off and on aftershot user. I like some of the plugins available for it but I find the program as a whole to be clunky.

I downloaded the trial for v2.0 last week when the announcement email showed up. I was testing it in windows 8.1.

It still does that weird thing where the preview image jiggles and shifts around while you are making adjustments to it. I find this to be so distracting that it interferes with my ability to actually process images. Not good. This may be a very petty complaint but that jiggling and shifting drives me nuts.

It does seem to export jpgs very quickly. Much faster than lightroom in my "does it seem faster or slower" non-scientific testing.

v2 seems more responsive and "snappy" in terms of the interface than the previous version did.

The rotate tool is as bewildering as ever. Why does the slider for rotation work just fine but the grab and drag tool makes no sense at all?

What I really wanted from Aftershot v2 was a WAY more robust tool for local adjustments and painting masks. Sadly, that part of the program seems unchanged from the previous version.

It seems to me that the primary group of users that Corel is shooting for here is power snapshot takers? Aftershot seems unfocused in that way.

It is really good news to see Corel actually working on Aftershot though. For a long time it seemed like they'd forgotten about it entirely. It's a solid foundation and it would be very nice to see them develop it into a real competitor for Lightroom.

At this point I am essentially trapped on the windows platform by Lightroom, Photoshop and InDesign. I will happily throw money at the first company that makes and sells linux applications that replace those. If you suggest the gimp or scribus you'll probably hear me laughing at you all the way from Seattle. :-) I know that there are many raw developer programs available and I've tried them all and only Darktable even comes close to replacing Lightroom for me with Aftershot Pro in a distant second place.

[Peter Anson]

I bought Bibble because I use Linux. Aftershot was a $20.00 upgrade. I don't think that this new version has much to offer for $60. I agree with many of your points Homo erectus. In spite of all the blabla about Gimp, I cannot use it. It drives me nuts. I've tried all of the raw converters for Linux but still find Aftershot the best of a bad bunch. I'll stay with the current version until i see some evidence that improvements in the software will help me. I'm not interested in the"fastest" anything.The rotate has always been bizarre. Maybe they like it that way.

[thazooo]

Bibble / ASP 2 lacks support for the K3 and the .DNG files from the K50 are way off with Color and WB.
For a program that was always dead on, color wise with .PEF files, this is disappointing for me. No upgrade here.

[Mikesul]

I just checked the site and there is no support for K-3 or even Sony A6000. No reason to upgrade a product which has always disappointed despite some very promising features.