Harvester on 15/12/2016 at 09:38

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Also remember that if you want to check whether a boolean value (called bool in C# and can either be true or false, or 1 or 0 if you will) is true or false, you don't have to do:



You can just do:


or


You can also do this with methods that return true or false.

Renzatic on 16/12/2016 at 06:31

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I took a break from it today. Figured the weird dreams involving fumbling about with code last night was probably a clue that I should step away from it a good 24 hours so. :P

And no, I'm not kidding. When I overly concentrate on something throughout the day, I'll have these dreams where I'm futzing around with it, can't make any sense out of it, then end up frustrating myself awake.

Renzatic on 16/12/2016 at 18:38

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Bit of an aside here, but I think this is something worth commenting on.

I've been wanting to get away from Photoshop for awhile now. It's not that PS has become terrible over the years. It's still the go-to program for any type of digital painting and photo manipulation. I just don't like the whole subscription model thing. After awhile, that $10 a month adds up. Maybe if I were a professional photographer, I could justify it. But I just like screwing around with this stuff. Practicing and having fun.

The problem is, there really isn't anything else out there that quite compares to PS. I've found only two close competitors to PS thus far.

Gimp - Powerful, sure. But it's missing a lot of features I've grown accustomed to over the years, and is about as user friendly and fun to use as a swift kick to the dick.
Krita - Good, but it's really more painting oriented. It actually has some things GIMP doesn't, like adjustment layers and whatnot, and it's a metric fuckton easier to use but it's not quite the full package.

I had pretty much all but given up on finding that nice alternative. But then last night, I ran across (https://affinity.serif.com/en-us/photo/) Affinity Photo. I've heard of it before, but it being Mac only meant I just occasionally paid attention to it. Thing is, they've recently released a Windows version of it. No demo, but I've heard enough good about it that I figure, hell...$40, I'll give it a try. At the very least, I'll end up with something I could use occasionally.

And holy shit.

First, the obviously. It's apes PS pretty damn hard. The look, the style, the toolbar on the left, the fact everything is about where I expect it to be. The thing screams "HEY YOU WANNA USE SOMETHING ELSE, BUT DON'T WANNA LEARN SOMETHING NEW? HERE YOU GO!" Not that I'm holding that against it, cuz, hell, that IS what I want.

But who cares about how it looks? What matters is how well it functions. This is the most important thing. The one part where I'm almost always let down.

...it's GOOD! It does everything. Adjustment layers, filters, layer FXs, everything. They're all here. There are even smart objects, and it even handles them better than PS from what I've seen. It's not perfect. There isn't a 1:1 mapping between the programs, but it's opened up the vast majority of my old .PSD files, and was able to display them without weirdness errors.

Vast majority, of course, doesn't mean all. It does apparently have problems using layer groups as clipping masks. But that's it. That's the only problem I have.

(https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/3018396/Affinity.png) The fact it was even able to open this old file with most everything intact is impressive in and of itself. There are like eleventy billion layers in this, alongside a few nested adjustment layers buried within groups within groups.

So I guess I've finally found my holy grail. A PS alternative that's just about as good as PS. The places where it falls short are niggling little details I could work around quite easily. Like the aforementioned group layer clipping masks, and the fact it's not quite as fast in rendering some things. But hell, that's still about 95% of what I want covered, and it was only 40 bucks. I'd say I SCORED!

And no, I'm not being paid to astorturf this. WISH I WAS, THOUGH. :D

Renzatic on 16/12/2016 at 19:36

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Really? I always thought Elements was a cheap way for Adobe to sell a stripped down version of Photoshop's color correction tools in a single package to people at Best Buy. I never knew it was PS, minus some of the super high end features.

Though now that I have Affinity Photo, I don't really want anything else. Other than some shortcuts being different, and some things not acting quite the way I'm used, it's just so good.

Also, these same people make an Illustrator alternative that looks about as good as what it's aping, and they're selling it for just $50. I dunno how they're able to get away with selling it at that price. They must've made a deal with the devil or something.

edit: they even have the Black and White per channel filter. That's awesome!

Renzatic on 16/12/2016 at 23:11

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It's more like the tabbed modern PS interfaces. Though like it, you can grab the tabs, drag them off the tab bar, and make them display in their own little windows.